e many lying here with
him, that he was sore with frenzied dreaming; just enough to watch
that thread of river and be able to remember faintly those far-away
things....

The sun was nearly down. It would be cooler soon. He would have liked
to know the time--to feel his old watch, so butter-smooth, to hear the
repeater strike. It would have been friendly, home-like. He had not even
strength to remember that the old watch was last wound the day he began
to lie here. The pulse of his brain beat so feebly that faces which came
and went, nurse's, doctor's, orderly's, were indistinguishable, just
one indifferent face; and the words spoken about him meant all the same
thing, and that almost nothing. Those things he used to do, though far
and faint, were more distinct--walking past the foot of the old steps
at Harrow 'bill'--'Here, sir! Here, sir!'--wrapping boots in the
Westminster Gazette, greenish paper, shining boots--grandfather coming
from somewhere dark--a smell of earth--the mushroom house! Robin Hill!
Burying poor old Balthasar in the leaves! Dad! Home....

Consciousness came again with noticing that the river had no water in
it--someone was speaking too. Want anything? No. What could one want?
Too weak to want--only to hear his watch strike....

Holly! She wouldn't bowl properly. Oh! Pitch them up! Not sneaks!...
'Back her, Two and Bow!' He was Two!... Consciousness came once more
with a sense of the violet dusk outside, and a rising blood-red
crescent moon. His eyes rested on it fascinated; in the long minutes of
brain-nothingness it went moving up and up....

"He's going, doctor!" Not pack boots again? Never? 'Mind your form,
Two!' Don't cry! Go quietly--over the river--sleep!... Dark? If somebody
would--strike--his--watch!...

CHAPTER V--SOAMES ACTS

A sealed letter in the handwriting of Mr. Polteed remained unopened
in Soames' pocket throughout two hours of sustained attention to the
affairs of the 'New Colliery Company,' which, declining almost from the
moment of old Jolyon's retirement from the Chairmanship, had lately run
down so fast that there was now nothing for it but a 'winding-up.' He
took the letter out to lunch at his City Club, sacred to him for the
meals he had eaten there with his father in the early seventies, when
James used to like him to come and see for himself the nature of his
future life.

Here in a remote corner before a plate of roast mutton and mashed
potato, he read:

"