as impulsive, even headlong, but he never wrangled or quarrelled
and seldom lost his temper. I had feared a still more violent outburst
from him, but my admonition brought him to himself.

"I apologize," he said, the red fading from his face. "Tell me the whole
matter, so that I may comprehend. I'll listen in silence."

"The vital fact," I said, "is that, although I fully expected my uncle, in
his will, to free Agathemer, he not only did not free him, but he enjoined
me not to free him within five years after my entrance into my
inheritance."

"Well," said Tanno, "I take back what I said of you when I called you a
hog, but, even if we are taught to utter nothing but good of the dead, I
repeat that your uncle was a hog. What do you think of it, Agathemer?"

Agathemer sat at ease now on his stool and his face was placid.

"Since you have asked what I think," he said, "may I assume that you
accord me permission to utter what I think, as if I were even a free man?"

"Utter precisely what you think, without any reservations or
modifications," said Tanno. "I want to have exactly what you think and all
you think."

"I think," spoke Agathemer, "that you are neither wise to speak so of the
dead nor justified in speaking so of my former master. He was a just man
and a wise man. Though I cannot conjecture his reason, I am sure that what
he did was, somehow, for the best."

Tanno stared at him with a puzzled expression.

He turned to me.

"Isn't it true," he queried, "that your uncle had on his hands an
hereditary lawsuit of the most exasperating sort, in the course of which
the other side had won the first decision and every appeal?"

"Everybody knows that, Socrates," I admitted.

"Didn't Agathemer," Tanno pressed me, "just before the case was heard in
the highest court, make a suggestion which your uncle's lawyers utilized
and through which they won the case?"

"That is also true," I affirmed.

"Didn't they all say, that Agathemer's suggestion was just what they
should have thought of at the very first and didn't they admit that they
had not thought of it until Agathemer suggested it and that they never
would have thought of it if he had not suggested it?"

"Those are the facts," I confessed.

"In view of those facts," Tanno continued, "what did you yourself expect
your uncle to do for Agathemer in his will?"

I ruminated.

"The very least I anticipated," I said, "was that he would free Agathemer
and make hi