The Squire, John Jennings, and Lawyer Means all sat by the dead body of their friend, with pale and sternly downcast faces. Jerome looked scarcely less sad. He remembered as he sat there every kind word which the Colonel had ever spoken to him, and every one seemed magnified a thousand-fold. This call to lend his living strength towards the bearing of the dead man to his last home seemed like a call to a labor of love and gratitude, though he was still much perplexed that he should have been selected.
“There's Doctor Prescott and Cyrus Robinson and Uncle Ozias—any one of them nearer his own age,” he thought. It was not until the next day but one that the mystery was solved. That night Lawyer Eliphalet Means came to see Jerome, and informed him that the Colonel had left a will, whereby he was entitled to a legacy of twenty-five thousand dollars.
Chapter XXXVII
Colonel Lamson's will divided sixty-five thousand dollars among five legatees—ten thousand was given to John Jennings, five thousand to Eliphalet Means, five thousand to Eben Merritt, twenty thousand to Lucina Merritt, and twenty-five thousand to Jerome Edwards.
Upham was not astonished by the first four bequests; the last almost struck it dumb. “What in creation did he leave twenty-five thousand dollars to that feller for? He wa'n't nothin' to him,” Simon Basset stammered, when he first heard the news on Tuesday night in Robinson's store. His face was pale and gaping, and folk stared at him.
Suddenly a man cried out, “By gosh, J'rome promised to give the hull on't away! Don't ye remember?”
“That's so,” cried another; “an' Doctor Prescott an' Basset have got to hand out ten thousand apiece if he does. Fork over, Simon.”
“Guess ye'll wait till doomsday afore J'rome sticks to his part on't,” said Basset, with a sneer; but his lips were white.
“No, I won't; no, I won't,” responded the man, hilariously. “J'rome's goin' to do it; Jake here says he heard so; it come real straight.” He winked at the others, who closed around, grinning maliciously.
Basset broke through them with an oath and made for the door. “It's a damned lie, I tell ye!” he shouted, hoarsely; “an' if J'rome's sech a G— d— fool, I'll see ye all to h—, and him too, afore I pay a dollar on't.”