He went away, striding by the fairy oak in his wide cloak and steeple hat, with a pale, wrathful, intense face. Aderhold returned to the room and his patient. Master Hardwick lay upon his pillows, with a countenance much as it had been. Aderhold, saying nothing, sat beside him, and presently he fell asleep. Outside it was high summer, but cool, with a moving air and a rustling of every leaf. Hours passed, the day waned, the dusk set in. Aderhold, moving softly, made a fire in the cavernous fireplace, where, even in winter, Master Hardwick rarely wasted firewood. When he came back the old man was awake. “Gilbert!” “Yes, cousin.” “I have a feeling that I am going to-night—” “It is possible.” “Gilbert ... you’ve been comfortable to me these four years. You’ve been a kind of warmth and stay, asking nothing, not wasting or spending, but giving.... They think I am rich, but I am not. I was never very rich.... I ventured in the Indies’ voyage and gained, and then I was a fool and ventured again and lost. Since then I have been a poor man. It is the truth.... Give me something to keep me up—” Aderhold gave him wine. After a moment he spoke again. “There are creditors in the town that you’ll hear from. They’ll take the land—all but the bit about the house. That and the house I’ve willed you—kin to me, and kind as well.... The gold they say I’ve buried—I’ve buried none. There are twenty pieces that you’ll find in an opening of the wall behind the panel there—” He pointed with a shaking hand that sank at once. “It’s all that’s left—and you’ll have to bury me from it.... A miser.... Maybe, but what I saved only lasted me through with spare living. If I had told them of that heavy loss—my gold gone down at sea, and that, even so, it was not so much I had had to venture ... would they have believed me? No! I was a miser—I lied and hid my gold.... Well, I did not tell them.... Do not tell all that you know and empty yourself like a wine skin—” His voice sank, he slept again. Aderhold thought that he might sink from sleep into stupor and so die painlessly and without words. But in the middle of the night he waked again. “Gilbert!” “Yes, I am here.” “What did you think of all that which Master Clement had to say?... How much was true and how much was false?” “There was some truth. But much of it was false. It is false because reason and feeling, the mind and the spirit recoil from it. Whatever is, that is not.” “I never thought it was.... I’ve been called sour and hard and withholding, and maybe I am it all. But I would not make an imperfect creature and then plague it through eternity for its imperfection.... Gilbert—” “Yes?” “What would you do?”