The chair in which the Colonel had been used to sit stood a little aloof, at a corner of the fireplace. Often one of the trio would eye it with furtive mournfulness, looking away again directly without a glance at the others.
When Means entered, he was smiling, for the first time that evening. “Well,” he said, “I have seen something to-night that I have never seen before, that I shall never see again, and that no man in this town has ever seen before, or will see again, unless he lives till the millennium.”
The others stared at him. “What d'ye mean?” asked the Squire.
“I have seen something rarer than a white black-bird, and harder to discover than the north pole. I have seen a poor man, clothed and in his right mind, give away every dollar of a fortune within three days after he got it.”
The two men looked at him, speechless. “He hasn't!” gasped the Squire, finally.
“He has.”
“By the Lord Harry!”
“Well,” said John Jennings, slowly, “if I had started out on a search for such a man I should have wanted more than Diogenes's lantern.”
“And I should have called for blue-lights and rockets, the aurora borealis, chain lightning, the solar system, and the eternal light of nature, but I discovered him with a penny dip,” said Eliphalet Means, chuckling. He stood on the hearth before his two friends, his back to the fire; it was a cool night, and he had got chilled at the open door.
“He is going to give away the whole of it?” John Jennings said, with wondering rumination.