He did not do it in a rage, or to punish, or to have the last word.

“I will not reward people,” he said simply, when it was done, “who waited for me to die so they could divide up a fortune they did not even know I had.

That is all.

It is not revenge.

It is only that I would like my life’s work to go to people who understand what it is to be left alone.

I have thought since about why he chose wounded veterans, of all the causes a man of his means might have chosen, and I think it was not only that he had served among them.