Gent's just not the sort of fella to talk about many of these things that have happened in the course of his life. Chalk it up to his age, his generation among men, I suppose. Mild mannered, kindly, generous and considerate -- these are words many used to describe Gent before one weary night in that dank Mercantile basement and since. While true enough and easily noted by most who meet him, there are other words seldom and barely whispered of him at a distance.Knightsbridge folk reckoned that year's harvest one of the better in the last two decades. Already Gent had seen threescore and more harvests in his lifetime. He spent the last twoscore working at the Mercantile. From sweeping the floors as a lad to stacking the stores and finally to keeping the books and balancing accounts, Hardliford lived a rather unremarkable life of dutiful days doing dilligent deeds.Hardliford liked his predictable life, with it's simple pleasures and quiet satisfactions. Tales of great adventure were a pleasant distraction at most, but Gent was never one to pine for roads not travelled. So it was on a day just like so many other days, after a harvest better than most, our good man started down the cellar steps to secure the account records and treat himself to a celebratory jar of chandlerberry jam and tea.When he first heard the squeak down those old wooden stairs, the sound gave him pause for a second. Fourteen steps, always fourteen with a squeak on the seventh and tenth. But Hardliford's foot had only found the fourth, variety enough to loose a tingle of unease low in his back. He stood there a moment, almost as if he'd forgotten something, unsure of why he had even noticed the sound. Routine, it is said, keeps senility at bay or at least apparently so.On the seventh and tenth the squeaks sounded where they should, so shrugging an old man's shrug his feet followed the floor to the loose flagstone in the southeast corner. Kneeling there, he felt for the hidden latch on the lid of the stone vault box fitted into the floor. The sound again drew his eyes to glance puzzled over shoulder to the stairs where once more the sound, the squeak. Everyone else had gone home hours ago.The quiet click of the latch under his fingers drew him back to the task at hand and Gent lifted the stone lid aside. Within, where the stack of 10 years' records should have been, lay a single sheet weighted by a golden-etched stone.A clammy dread sweated it's way down Gent's brow and back and he set this year's records down slowly beside him and placed his hands calmly, one on each knee, and just stared.Hardliford knelt in silence while the dark, still minutes piled up into an hour and then two beside him there on the empty, cold stone floor. A thousand thoughts could have raced through his mind: rationalizations, theories, explanations, excuses. Could have, save Gent was transfixed by the words on that lone remaining page, leaving him numbed somewhere between puzzled and panicked:----------------------------------------All debts canceled. All accounts closed.All sales are final. More so than supposed.Thanks for our whole new lot of nothing.Here's a whole new lot of nothing for you.Clancy Delancy -n-Fancy Nan Ratkins----------------------------------------The Sheriff and Duke would never believe Gent himself was not in on it. Not when the note was signed by his own blood cousin and niece. They'd just left the night before last, while the Mercantile was closed for the harvest festival days, after staying a month in Gent's sparse bachelor cottage. "Ruined," Gent thought. "I'm ruined. After all these years. They'll hang me on the hills west of town, no matter what I say... with no way to prove who owes what to the Mercantile?"Then Gent bent forward on that cold stone floor, reached in and grabbed hold of the small, heavy stone. The rat glyph shimmered faintly in the palm of his hand, as his other crumpled the niece's note. "Ruined," Gent thought, "or Runed."His seasoned resolve settled itself on its course. Gent raised the rune to his mouth and felt it click on his teeth just once before he swallowed it down. Standing then, he began the climb up the stairs. The tenth squeaked. The seventh squeaked. The fourth step from the top squeaked for the second time in the last twoscore years. And as Gent left the Mercantile on all fours, he twitched his whiskers with one last look back and let out a small squeak of his own.