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 … Anisty always divided square. … I used to advise him. … Of course you won't understand,—you've never wanted for a dollar in your life. …"

Maitland said nothing. But his hand remained upon the dying man's.

"This would never have happened if … Anisty hadn't been impatient. He was hard to handle, sometimes. I wasn't sure, you know, about the jewels; I only said I thought they were at Greenfields. Then I undertook to find out from you, but he was restive, and without saying anything to me went down to Greenfields on his own hook—just to have a look around, he said. And so … so the fat was in the fire."

"Don't talk any more, Bannerman," Maitland tried to soothe him. "You'll pull through this all right, and— You need never have gone to such lengths. If you'd come to me"

The ghost of a sardonic smile flitted, incongruously, across the dying man's waxen, cherubic features.