“No! Who’s got it?” John exclaimed.
“He gave it to me, with a note asking me not to read it till after he was buried, if he should die.”
John and Elizabeth followed the doctor’s rig home across the long stretch of prairie.
“Did you know that Hugh left a will?” John Hunter asked Elizabeth, after driving a long time in silence.
“Luther told me last night. I didn’t think much about it and I forgot to tell you,” Elizabeth returned briefly, and fell back into her own sad thoughts again.
John Hunter looked at his wife in surprise.
“Luther!” he exclaimed.
“Yes,” she answered indifferently, not looking up, and unaware that John was regarding her with a surprise which amounted almost to suspicion.
John let the subject drop, but as they rode home he had an uncomfortable sense of unpleasant things to come: first of all why had the presence of the will been concealed from him, Hugh Noland’s partner and closest friend? secondly, why had Luther Hansen been told? thirdly, why had Elizabeth declined just now to discuss it with him after knowing about it for some time? He could not put his finger on the exact trouble, but John Hunter was affronted.
The truth of the matter was that Elizabeth had only heard of the will the night before, and had been too stunned by other things to care much about it. If she had thought about it at all she would have supposed that John had been told also, but Elizabeth had been occupied with troubles quite aside from material things, and now did not talk because she was concerned with certain sad aspects of the past and almost as sad forebodings for the future.