More questioning brought out the information that it was a rule of the secret brotherhood which Isom had joined in those far days, for each candidate for initiation to make his will before the administration of the rites.
“What a sturdy old goat that must have been!” thought the lawyer.
“Do you remember to whom Isom left his property in that will?” read the pasteboard under the old man’s hands.
Uncle John smiled, reminiscently, and nodded.
“To his son,” he wrote. “Isom was the name.”
“Do you know when and where that son was born?”
Uncle John’s smile was broader, and of purely humorous cast, as he bent over the slate and began to write carefully, in smaller hand than usual, as if he had a great deal to say.
“He never was born,” he wrote, “not up to the time that I lost the world. Isom was a man of Belial all his days that I knew him. He was set on a son from his wedding day.
“The last time I saw him I joked him about that will, and 309 told him he would have to change it. He said no, it would stand that way. He said he would get a son yet. Abraham was a hundred when Isaac was born, he reminded me. Did Isom get him?”
“No,” was the word that Uncle John’s fingers found. He shook his head, sadly.