The wide-eyed boy looked up into the crinkled parchment face of the old man and said "I am scared to tell the truth..." The old man narrowed his ink blot eyes, took his pipe pointedly from his mouth, leaned forward slowly and puffed out this advice in curls of smoke that wove around the lad's head:
"Well boy, ask yourself this... is your fear greater than your want to be a good and noble person?
The boy looked down and away, "I don't think so..."
The old man's brow scrunched a little more. The boy swore he heard the quiet crunch of moving paper. He quickly focused back on the blots.
"Boy, fear is nothing but uncertainty. And truth, being a constant and immovable thing, is therefore quite the opposite of uncertainty. And, if this in the case, which it most certainly is, then you're in luck, as it would seem to be the absolute antidote if ever there was one...only snakes are wary of antidotes and I can tell you ain't one"
The parchment eased and flattened at his brow but the creases remained like afterthoughts do. He leaned back in his chair and looked out the window just behind the boy's head, where the evening light cast long shadows on the dying day.
"And upon nobility, well..." Here he sucked at great length on the pipe, as if this unrushed and deliberate ritual were quite necessary to form the sounds of the final commentary that comes puffing suddenly from his cheeks like the triumphant call of a steam train bolting from a station...
"If there ain't nobility in truth, then nobility doesn't exist!"