"It's pretty near killed his mother. Seems funny; a young fellow with nothing to do but spend money, getting it into his head to write books! Well, they said I wasn't to tell anybody, and I _ain't_ told anybody but you, and I thought as you was a writer, and pretty busy, I guessed you wouldn't want to waste your time over his book. They say, folks do, that it's first-rate, as far as it goes; but you see it don't never get any farther, and it never will. I thought I'd better tell you about it," said Wilson, his plebeian, kindly face crimson with a delicate pity that would have done honor to an aristocrat, and still working assiduously at the little twig, "I knew you was a genuine writer yourself, and it seemed a pity for you to take up your valuable time helpin' him on, about something that can't amount to anything."
May he be forgiven that gentle falsehood!
I looked for a moment at the wide-spread field and distant woodland, lying green in the peaceful sunshine, at the place grown so dear to me, that now whirled before my eyes. Far down the road a heavy farm-wagon creaked its way toward us, in a cloud of white dust.
"You did quite right to tell me, Wilson," I said, turning to go. "No one shall hear of it from me."
I looked down at the buff envelope from "----'s Magazine," which I had crushed in my hand, and smoothed it out mechanically, as I went on in the increasing heat.
It was only August, but my summer was over.
"Of course it is very curious; but if you'll pardon me, my dear fellow, you might as well tell me you had found a philosopher's stone."
Still, the rough glass phial, with odd metal bands around its neck, had a fascination for me. I picked it up again, and tilted it idly back and forth in my hand, watching the slimy brown fluid, the color of poppy-juice, slip along its sides.
Hilyard smoked on imperturbably. The color mounted under his bronzed skin up to the light rings of his hair; there was a momentary angry flash in his pale blue eyes, but it was only for an instant.
"Perhaps you would like to try it, since you are so skeptical," he said, grimly.
"Thanks, I have no wish to poison myself, and I have no doubt it is a poison; but what I do doubt is the remarkable qualities you claim for it. How did you come across the vile stuff, anyway?"