“Mr. Jonah Featherstone and young Cranch are sleeping here.”
“Oh ay, they stick, do they? and the rest—they come every day, I’ll warrant—Solomon and Jane, and all the young uns? They come peeping, and counting and casting up?”
“Not all of them every day. Mr. Solomon and Mrs. Waule are here every day, and the others come often.”
The old man listened with a grimace while she spoke, and then said, relaxing his face, “The more fools they. You hearken, missy. It’s three o’clock in the morning, and I’ve got all my faculties as well as ever I had in my life. I know all my property, and where the money’s put out, and everything. And I’ve made everything ready to change my mind, and do as I like at the last. Do you hear, missy? I’ve got my faculties.”
“Well, sir?” said Mary, quietly.
He now lowered his tone with an air of deeper cunning. “I’ve made two wills, and I’m going to burn one. Now you do as I tell you. This is the key of my iron chest, in the closet there. You push well at the side of the brass plate at the top, till it goes like a bolt: then you can put the key in the front lock and turn it. See and do that; and take out the topmost paper—Last Will and Testament—big printed.”
“No, sir,” said Mary, in a firm voice, “I cannot do that.”
“Not do it? I tell you, you must,” said the old man, his voice beginning to shake under the shock of this resistance.
“I cannot touch your iron chest or your will. I must refuse to do anything that might lay me open to suspicion.”
“I tell you, I’m in my right mind. Shan’t I do as I like at the last? I made two wills on purpose. Take the key, I say.”