"I am wasting words," said he, shrugging his shoulders. "A chose faite conseil pris. 'Advice after action is like medicine after death'—or brandy after one has ceased to be thirsty."
"Take another glass," said Major Bergan.
Dick obeyed with alacrity. The dram was scarcely swallowed, ere a tap at the door announced the arrival of the overseer from "Number Two,"—a tall, lank, taciturn Texan, whom the Major had recently taken into his employ, as a short cut to that avoidance of the rice fields which Doctor Remy had recommended.
The ceremonies of signing and sealing the will immediately followed. Dick Causton was greatly disappointed that the document was not read in his hearing, as he had expected.
"Never buy a pig in a poke, nor sign a paper without reading it," said he, as he took the pen into his hand. "How am I to tell what will I really signed, if I know nothing of the contents? However, it's your risk, not mine," he added, hastily, seeing that Major Bergan was beginning to look impatient. And, forthwith, he bent his energies to the task of writing his name in a large, angular, and very tremulous hand; and then shook his head dubiously over the result.
"It looks like nothing that ever I wrote before," he remarked, as he laid down the pen. "But Hund er hund om han er aldrig saa broget,—A dog, is a dog whatever be his color,—and so, a signature must be a signature though it wiggle across the paper like a tipsy eel. Perhaps I shall know it by that token, when I see it again. But I can't promise."
"I shall know mine," observed the overseer, confidently, as he lifted the pen.
Doctor Remy leaned forward with sudden interest. The name was written in commonplace fashion enough, but it was finished with an odd, complicated flourish.
"Do you always sign your name in that way?" he asked.
"Always."