“Don’t say such things now, doctor, don’t,” urged his companion. “Ain’t he paid in his full price, whatever his sins was? Poor soul! he can’t be worse’n dead.”
“Oh, yes, he can, and for one I believe he is,” interrupted the doctor. His crisp white hair seemed to Mr. Gowan to curl tighter over his head as he frowned with some thought he was nursing. “You haven’t seen the will I had to witness this morning!” he burst out. “Just you wait a little! Upon my soul! the more I think of it the madder I get! It’s out of my bailiwick, but if I were a lawyer I’d walk right up now under those old apple-trees yonder, and before that man was cold on his bed I’d have his sister’s promise to break his old will into a thousand splinters! Wait till you hear it. Good-morning.”
When the will was read and its contents announced, the town of Leonard, including its butcher, took the doctor’s view to a man.
“A brute,” said Dr. Michel, hotly, “who has let his old sister work her hands to the bone for him, and then turned her off like some old worn-out horse, has, in my opinion, no right to a will at all. How about setting this will aside in his sister’s interests, judge?”
A little convocation of the leading spirits of Leonard were met together in Dr. Michel’s office to discuss the matter of Carshena’s will, and what should be done with Adelia, cast on the charity of the village. Judge Bowles, when appealed to, raised his mild blue eyes and looked around the company.
“Adelia,” he said, “is the best sister I ever knew. Had the man no shame?”
“Shame!” said the town’s barber, with a reminiscent chuckle; “why, he came into my parlors one day and asked me if I’d cut the back of his hair for twelve cents, and let him cut the front himself; and I did it, for the joke of the thing! He saved thirteen cents that way.”
“Gentlemen, gentlemen!” demurred the judge; but amid the general laughter the tax-gatherer’s voice rose:
“There isn’t a tax he didn’t fight. This town got nothing out of Carshena Hubblestone that he could help paying; and now he leaves us his relatives to support.”
Judge Bowles rose to his feet.