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 them, pressing Uncle Hal, driving him to the wall. We've got to work fast, Ed, or it will be too late."

There in the sunny patio, the red and amber leaves falling around them, they worked out the best, the most promising plan they could devise for coming at Hal Nearing's secret, in all kindness and fidelity to him. But Barrett suspected, although he did not know, that in baring the secret which Nearing covered so jealously in his breast, they might multiply his sorrows and their own. Yet it were better that the patient die in the quick agony of the operation, than linger on in the sapping torture of an incurable disease.