Whether the other members of the family had the same feeling about the dead man's alertness or not, they saw the lid of the coffin screwed down with complacency. Tobias was one of those who bore the coffin out to the churchyard and lowered it into the newly opened grave, the sides of which had to be bulkheaded to keep the sand from caving in.
Following the prayer there was a little lingering in the graveyard. Judge Waddams had announced that he would read the dead man's will in his office an hour later. Those interested began drifting back to the village along the white shell road.
CHAPTER VI
DEAD MEN'S SHOES
A dozen or more grim-faced men and women were gathered in the lawyer's office when Tobias Bassett entered. He had seen them all at the church and grave, but there had been no opportunity to greet personally the Pottses, the Bassetts and the Dawsons, names which for the most part made up the roster of Captain Jethro's immediate family.
The lightkeeper proceeded to speak to each in turn. He was of no grim disposition himself, and was sport enough in any case to shake hands with his deadliest enemy before the battle.
His smile and cheerful word were for all, even for Icivilla Potts who was, of all the dead captain's relatives, the one who considered that Tobias's interest in the will should be infinitesimal. She had lived next door to Captain Jethro's little box of a house for thirty years, and had kept a sharp and hungry eye upon him and his affairs during all of that time.
"Yes," she was saying, "he depended upon me for everything. If Cap'n Jethro had been my own father I could have taken no more pains with him."
"I don't doubt it! I don't doubt it!" put in Mrs. Andrew Dawson, as sharp as any sparrow. "Cap'n Jethro told me that you'd interfered with everything you could, the whole endurin' time. He said, the Cap'n did, that you'd change the sun and moon, let alone the stars, in their courses, if so be you could!"
"Haw! Haw!" chortled Isaac Bassett, a bewhiskered old man whose bleary eyes and empurpled nose told the tale of much secret tippling. "Le's speak right out in meetin' and tell all we know. Who'll be the first of you women to tell how ye fished ter get the old Cap'n ter come and live with ye?"