“Know what I've been thinkin' of, to-day, boy?”
“No, daddy; anything about the crops?”
“Ha! ha! a pretty good crop for somebody it'll be! Nearly time for me to make my will, eh? I'm so old and weak—no life left in me—can't last many days!”
He laughed with a hideous irony, as he pronounced these words. His son stared at him, and the fire died out in the pipe between his teeth. Was the old man getting childish? he asked himself. But no; he had never looked more diabolically cunning and watchful.
“Why, daddy,” Alfred said at last, “I thought—I fancied, at least, you'd done that, long ago.”
“Maybe I have, boy; but maybe I want to change it. I had a talk with the Doctor when he came down to bleed me, and since there's to be no match between you and the girl”—
He paused, keeping his eyes on his son's face, which lengthened and grew vacant with a vague alarm.
“Why, then,” he presently resumed, “you're so much poorer by the amount o' her money. Would it be fair, do you think, if I was to put that much to what I might ha' meant for you before? Don't you allow you ought to have a little more, on account o' your disapp'intment?
“If you think so, dad, it's all right,” said the son, relighting his pipe. “I don't know, though what Elisha'd say to it; but then, he's no right to complain, for he married full as much as I'd ha' got.”
“That he did, boy; and when all's said and done, the money's my own to do with it what I please. There's no law o' the oldest takin' all. Yes, yes, I'll have to make a new will!”