When Iosefo reported next morning, Old Dibs paid him a hundred dollars and dispensed with his services, saying that though he'd always be glad to see him around as a friend, he had no more call to keep him sitting on the chest. This made Tom and me feel good, for it showed he trusted us now, which he had never quite done before. In a day or two he was almost as lively as ever, out in the graveyard playing on his flute, and attending to church work on committee nights the same as before.
But there was a big change in him for all that, and me and Tom got it into our heads that he wasn't going to live very long, for he had that distressed look on his face that showed something wrong inside. He used to run on talking to himself half the night, and once he burst in to where I was asleep, saying he had seen me at the treasure chest, prizing off the lid, and what did I mean by it? After having lived together so long and comfortable, it wasn't very pleasant to see him going crazy on us--and going crazy that way--being suspicious we meant to rob and kill him, and all of us being in a conspiracy. He told the pastor he was afraid of his life of Tom and me, and if it wasn't for Iosefo he would be fearful to stay in my house a minute; and he told Tom _he_ was the only friend he had; and then said the same to me, warning me against Tom and Iosefo, saying they were at the winder every night trying to break in. And all this, maybe, on the very self-same day, the three of us comparing notes and wondering where it was all going to end.
It ended sooner than any of us expected; for one morning, when Sarah went to take him his coffee, his door was locked, and for all our hammering we couldn't raise a sound. I broke it in at last, expecting that he'd rise up and shoot me, and dodging when it went inward with a crash. But there was nobody to shoot, the room being stark empty, and the only thing of Old Dibs his clothes on a chair. We were at a loss what to do, and waited for half an hour, thinking he might turn up. Then, real uneasy in our minds, we went out to look for him. He wasn't anywhere near the house or the beach, and as a last resort we went across the island to the graveyard, thinking perhaps he had taken it into his head to have a before-breakfast tootle on the flute. We found him, sure enough, in the middle of the graveyard, but laying forward in his old crimson dressing gown, dead.