Now I began to stammer my thanks, but he stopped me.  ’The sum that you will inherit, nephew, amounts in all to about five thousand gold pesos, or perhaps twelve thousand of your English pounds, enough for a young man to begin life on, even with a wife.  Indeed there in England it may well be held a great fortune, and I think that your betrothed’s father will make no more objection to you as a son-in-law.  Also there is this house and all that it contains; the library and the silver are valuable, and you will do well to keep them.  All is left to you with the fullest formality, so that no question can arise as to your right to take it; indeed, foreseeing my end, I have of late called in my moneys, and for the most part the gold lies in strong boxes in the secret cupboard in the wall yonder that you know of.  It would have been more had I known you some years ago, for then, thinking that I grew too rich who was without an heir, I gave away as much as what remains in acts of mercy and in providing refuge for the homeless and the suffering.  Thomas Wingfield, for the most part this money has come to me as the fruit of human folly and human wretchedness, frailty and sin.  Use it for the purposes of wisdom and the advancing of right and liberty.  May it prosper you, and remind you of me, your old master, the Spanish quack, till at last you pass it on to your children or the poor.  And now one word more.  If your conscience will let you, abandon the pursuit of de Garcia.  Take your fortune and go with it to England; wed that maid whom you desire, and follow after happiness in whatever way seems best to you.  Who are you that you should meet out vengeance on this knave de Garcia?  Let him be, and he will avenge himself upon himself.  Otherwise you may undergo much toil and danger, and in the end lose love, and life, and fortune at a blow.’

‘But I have sworn to kill him,’ I answered, ’and how can I break so solemn an oath?  How could I sit at home in peace beneath the burden of such shame?’

’I do not know; it is not for me to judge.  You must do as you wish, but in the doing of it, it may happen that you will fall into greater shames than this.  You have fought the man and he has escaped you.  Let him go if you are wise.  Now bend down and kiss me, and bid me farewell.  I do not desire that you should see me die, and my death is near.  I cannot tell if we shall meet again when in your turn you have lain as I lie now, or if we shape our course for different stars.  If so, farewell for ever.’

Then I leant down and kissed him on the forehead, and as I did so I wept, for not till this hour did I learn how truly I had come to love him, so truly that it seemed to me as though my father lay there dying.

‘Weep not,’ he said, ’for all our life is but a parting.  Once I had a son like you, and ours was the bitterest of farewells.  Now I go to seek for him again who could not come back to me, so weep not because I die.  Good-bye, Thomas Wingfield.  May God prosper and protect you!  Now go!’