“What d'you mean?”
“Twenty dollars and costs,” moaned Jay Dee. “And me an old man, getting ready for his latter end soon. I ain't made my will, either. I ought to've done it.”
What could Jay Dee mean? If he made no will his property would come to Albion. No will made yet. A hinted intention to make one in favor of Stephen Ballister or the Winslows. The foundry was mortgaged.—Jay was worth sixty thousand. Diggory Gorge was a dark whispering place of ancient crime, of more than one unexplained accident. The hemlocks whispered, the brook gurgled and glimmered. Such darkness might well cloak and cover the sunny instincts that look upwards, scruples of the social daylight. Would Jay Dee trap him to his ruin? Jay Dee would not expect to enjoy it if he were dead himself. But accidents befall, and men not seldom meet sudden deaths, and an open, free-speaking neighbor is not suspected. Success lies before him in the broad road.
It rushed through Albion's mind, a flood, sudden, stupefying—thoughts that he could not master, push back, or stamp down.
He started and roused himself; his hands were cold and shaking. He sprang from his buggy and cried angrily:
“What d'ye mean by all that? Tempt me, a God-fearing man? Throw ye off'n the gorge! Break your old neck! I've good notion to it, if I wasn't a God-fearing man. Crank your wheel there!”
He jerked his buggy free, sprang in, and lashed his horse. The horse leaped, the wheels locked again. Jay Dee's buckboard, thrust slanting aside, went over the edge, slid and stopped with a thud, caught by the hemlock trunks. A ghostly glimmer of white hair one instant, and Jay Dee was gone down the black pit of the gorge. A wheezing moan, and nothing more was heard in the confusion. Then only the complaining murmur of the brook, the hemlocks at their secrets.
“Jay! Jay!” called Albion, and then leaped out, ran and whispered, “Jay!”
Only the mutter of the brook and the shimmer of foam could be made out as he stared and listened, leaning over, clinging to a tree, feeling about for the buckboard. He fumbled, lit a match and lifted it. The seat was empty, the left wheels still in the road. The two horses, with twisted necks and glimmering eyes, were looking back quietly at him, Albion Dee, a man of ideas and determination, now muttering things unintelligible in the same tone with the muttering water, with wet forehead and nerveless hands, heir of Jay Dee's thousands, staring down the gorge of Diggory Brook, the scene of old crime. He gripped with difficulty as he let himself slide past the first row of trees, and felt for some footing below. He noticed dully that it was a steep slope, not a precipice at that point. He lit more matches as he crept down, and peered around to find something crushed and huddled against some tree, a lifeless, fearful thing. The slope grew more moderate. There were thick ferns. And closely above the brook, that gurgled and laughed quietly, now near at hand, sat Jay Dee. He looked up and blinked dizzily, whispered and piped:
“Twenty dollars and costs! You oughtn't to pester me. I ain't made my will.”