Pshaw! why should there be anything of this involved? Cocks had crowed before, even at noon-tide in summer, and the world had outlived the omen! Nevertheless the sound, especially so loud and grating a one, in which the bray of the donkey was so evenly mixed with the hideous scream of the peacock before rain, was an inopportune and impudent one; and the Colonel would have been very likely to wring chanticleer's neck if it had happened to come within the clutch of his fingers. As it was, he determined to cause an immediate abandonment of that stronghold, and sprung up to look for a club or a stone with which the enemy could be dislodged; when the rooster espying danger afar off, evacuated his Manassas before the enemy could reach him, and went back to his cackling harem. To them he no doubt related, in the appropriate language of the bipeds with feathers, what a couple of sleepy-heads he had seen upon the piazza, and how he had startled them both with a voluntary upon his private organ. Meanwhile the Colonel had dropped back into his seat.
But old John Crawford, fully awakened by the sound, did not seem likely to fall away into slumber again. As Egbert resumed his place in the chair, the old man said, feebly:
"Egbert."
Instantly the Colonel, never forgetting his cue of attention to the invalid, drew closer to his side.
"Yes, Uncle, what can I do for you?"
"Where is Mary?" asked the old man, who had probably before asked the question half a dozen times since she had left the house.
"Gone out for a walk, Uncle," said the expectant son-in-law. "I suppose she is calling upon some of the neighbors. It is her last day, you know, Uncle."
"Her last day?—yes, you are going to be married to-night. I know," whispered the old man, with the air of a child to whom the intelligence has been communicated as a great secret—not that of a father who had thus willed for the happiness of a dear child.
"Domine Rodgers is to come at six," said the Colonel. "And then I hope I shall have the pleasure of calling you by a dearer name than that of Uncle."
"Yes, yes—Mary is a good girl," said the old man. "Take good care of her, Egbert. I am afraid I shan't live long, myself—not many years"—(Poor old man!—no efforts had been sufficient to awake him to the fact that his remaining time on the earth was probably to be measured by days or hours instead of years!) "I am going to have my will made, Egbert, the moment you are married, and I am going to leave all my property to her—her—her and you. You will have it all. Don't waste it, and don't let it go out of the family—not out of the family, Egbert! You are a Crawford, and I want to keep the property in the family. Eh, Egbert?"