Yes, I hardly dare let myself think of that. However well the source of tears in me is stopped up, that opens it afresh every time. Well, it’s a good thing, too. If ever I get dropsy, there’ll be the less water to tap off. (Changing his tone.) What do you think? If you went on a Sunday afternoon to smoke a pipe with the man you owed everything to, and found him all dazed and confused, with a knife in his hand, the very knife you had cut him his bread with hundreds of times, and bleeding at the throat and holding a cloth to the wound in terror——
Leonard.
Is that how his end came?
Anthony.
And if you came in time to save him and help him, not just by taking his knife from him and binding up his wound, but by giving him a dirty two hundred pounds you’d saved up, all in secret, because else he wouldn’t take it,—what would you do?
Leonard.
Being a free man without wife or child, I’d sacrifice the money.
Anthony.
And if you had ten wives, like the Turks, and as many children as were promised to Father Abraham, and you had only a minute to decide in, you’d—well, anyway you’re going to be my son-in-law. Now you know where the money is. I can tell you to-day because my old master was buried yesterday. A month ago I’d have kept it to myself on my death-bed. I put the I O U under the dead man’s head before they nailed up his coffin. If I could write, I would have put “Honourably paid” at the bottom, but all I could do in my ignorance was to tear the paper lengthways. Now he’ll sleep in peace, and I hope I shall too, when I stretch myself some day by his side.