"I confess that sometimes I do." Uncle John looked tired, Reuben saw, as though he might have lost interest in Socratic method, might even prefer to be playing chess. He enjoyed it most with Ben, Reuben knew; when Reuben himself entered the dry brilliant world of the chessboard he found it nearly impossible to temper his own sharp skill, and victory came with too much ease. He wondered if the doctor could be a chess-player. Strange, the remoteness like a sadness that had come over Mr. Welland there at the top of the rise. "If you run, Reuben, you can meet them in front of the house." That had been like a mind reading. "I don't run nowadays, Reuben." He recalled the doctor's brief mirthless smile as they shook hands. "I think I'd admire to see you run. I'll take the path through this other field--it'll bring me out back of my own house.... Run, boy, run!" He had missed a part of something Uncle John was saying concerning the influence on the human spirit of every change suffered by the flesh. The old man was speaking of youth and age. It was all reasonable and wise, Reuben thought. Uncle John was seldom anything but reasonable and wise. "I think truth may be both a humbler and a sterner thing. I think, Mr. Hibbs, there can never be any truth but a partial truth, subject to change by every new observation." "But that is...." "Terrifying? For my part I don't find it so. This may be a matter of one's disposition, I suppose." And so I ran from Mr. Welland, and because I knew my own speed and was loving the wind around me, I did not look back.... "Beyond such partial truth," said John Kenny, "you enter the region of faith; and by faith, Mr. Hibbs, I think men have moved no mountains. I think in mine old age that men have moved mountains by art and by the sweat of discontent, while faith never stirred one grain of sand." And Ben had spurred the mare, running up the road to meet him, leaving Uncle John far behind, sweeping off his hat to let the wind at his hair. Reuben recalled his gray eyes wide and curious and sweet, his flushed face somehow surprised, as though Ben had never dreamed the world could be as good to him as it was.... John Kenny was saying something more, about the arrogance of certainty; it was not completed, for someone was knocking. The man in the green coat stood ghostlike in the dining-room doorway behind the bulk of a bothered Kate Dobson. He should have waited for Kate to announce him. To Reuben he was a shadow of something not quite acceptable, even dimly alarming, tall with his ancient hat held to his breast, sweeping them all in a blue stare. But Uncle John was pleased. "Only a poor matter of business, Mr. Kenny, and had I known you was entertaining guests----"