They talked late.  The Captain alternated from his bed to a chair, seemed unwilling for Bedient to leave and unable to sleep or find ease anywhere.  He was over-tired, he explained, and hearing about Bedient’s experience with the Andante con moto, insisted upon it being played that night....

“It’s very soothing,” Carreras said, when Andrew returned to the upper apartment.  “I think I can sleep now.  Off to bed with you, lad.”

So lightly did Bedient sleep, however,—­for the music haunted his brain,—­that he was aroused by the bare feet of a servant in the hall-way, before the latter touched his door to call him.  Captain Carreras had asked for him.  The glow of dawn was in the old man’s quarters, and he smiled in a queer, complacent way from his bed, as if a long-looked-for solution to some grave problem had come in the night, and he wanted his friend to guess.  A hand lifted from the coverlet, and Bedient’s sped to it; yet he saw that something more was wanted.  The Captain’s shoulder nudged a little, and the smile had become wistful.  He did not fail to understand the need, but other realizations were pressing into his brain.  So the Captain nudged his shoulder again bashfully.  Bedient bent and took him in his arms.

It was death.  Bedient had known it from the first instant of entering, but he was not prepared.  He could not speak—­only look into the tender, glowing smile.  Captain Carreras finally turned his eyes into the morning: 

“You know it was very foolish of me—­very—­to think I could make you happy, Andrew, with all these riches,” he said at last, not thickly, but very low, as if he had saved strength for what he wished to say....  “You were a long time coming, but I knew you would come—­knew it would be just like this—­in your arms.  Queer, isn’t it?  And all the waiting years, I kept piling up lands and money, saying:  ’This shall be his when he comes.’...  It was a little hard at first to know you didn’t care—­you couldn’t care—­that one, and ten, were all the same to you.  And last night, I saw it all again.  Had I brought you word that Celestino Rey had the government and that confiscation of these lands were inevitable, you would never have compared it in importance with finding that part of the symphony.  It’s all right.  I wouldn’t have it changed....”

Andrew listened with bowed head, patting the Captain’s shoulder gently, as he sustained.

“But I have given you more than money, boy.  And this you know—­as a man, who knew money better, could never understand.  I have given you an old man’s love for a son—­but more than that, too,—­something of the old man’s love for the mother of his son....  I thought only women had the delicacy and fineness—­you have shown me, sir....  It is all done, and you have made me very glad for these years—­since the great wind failed to get us—­”

Then he mingled silences with sentences that finally became aimless—­seas, ships, cooks, and the boy who had nipped him from the post he meant to hold—­and a final genial blending of goats and symphonies, on the borders of the Crossing.  Then he nestled, and Bedient felt the hand he had taken, try to sense his own through the gathering cold....  It was very easy and beautiful—­and so brief that Bedient’s arm was not even tired.