“A man there was who died of late

Whom angels did impatient wait,

With outstretched arms and smiles of love

To take him to the Realms Above.

“While angels hovered in the skies

Disputing who should bear the prize,

In slipped the Devil like a weasel

And Down Below he kicked old Keazle! ”

—An Epitaph by “Rhymester” Tuttle.

The Squire had pulled his arm-chair into the centre of the broadest patch of sunshine that carpeted the dusty floor of his office. The light flooded his book’s pages until he almost closed his eyes, but he welcomed sunshine this morning. It fitted into his mood. When Brickett started his coffee-grinder there was a certain rhythm about it that set the Squire to whistling. “Hard-Times” Wharff was playing on his tin flute down in the yard of the little brown house behind the currier’s shop, the music serving as his daily relaxation from his meditations on astronomy. Usually the monotonous “toodle-oodle” irritated the Squire. This day he tapped time with his finger on the open page.

He wanted to say something aloud and he glanced up at the “Creosote Supreme Bench.” No, that wasn’t the right kind of an audience! He looked down at the floor. Eli’s steadfast, worshipful gaze caught his. The dog rapped his tail genially.

“Eli,” said the Squire, smiling at him, “when you load your gun to bring down a particular human heart, there isn’t any telling how many others the scatter-fire will hit.”

Then for a little while he sat and dreamed over that walk home along the Cove road, past the pines that whispered and along the shore where the waves seemed to follow them with a sort of a dance step. And neither of them had said a word about love during all the long walk!

In fact, Squire Phin hadn’t said much of anything. It was so good to hear her voice. Since he had talked to her that August day across the iron fence he had been afraid she would think that he was whining and sentimental. To be sure, he reflected, his feelings had been cruelly stirred that day, and that was some excuse; and then, too, he had waited ten years to say even the little that he did say. He was rather proud that he hadn’t raked up the old topic during the walk. This was the pride of New England reserve that distrusts over-much lip service. It had been hard to hold in sometimes along the way, when she praised his courage in handling the affair in the Dunham district and showed her appreciation of other things that he didn’t know she had heard about.

“I suppose some men would have taken advantage and pestered her again with love-talk,” he had pondered as he walked away from the iron gate of the Willard place, “but I reckon I’ll never get fussed up enough again to bother her that way. It’s a tough thing for a woman to feel that she can’t walk with a man without his everlastingly dinging away his own troubles into her ears—and—and there may be a time when she will walk with me again if she realises that I know enough to keep my mouth shut.”

All of which might indicate to those versed in such matters that Squire Phin Look understood litigation better than love-making, which has its own court days, its calendar for service, its notice and its set time for appeal. He, however, felt that he had played the part of chivalry.

So the morning had seemed fair and he had slapped Hiram on the back at breakfast time and had hummed a tune as he walked to his office, and everything had seemed to be music, even the mournful cooing of “Hard-Times’s” tin flute.

And when old Sumner Badger came dragging up the stairs and into the office, and dolorously announced that he was going to die inside of two days and wanted to make his will, the Squire leaned back in his chair and laughed, to the indignant disgust of old Sumner.

“If there’s anything funny about my havin’ a call to the Speret Land I’d be much obleeged if you’d ’loosidate it, Squire Phin Look.” There was a scowl on the old man’s yellow face, and his shock of white hair bristled.

“Die!” echoed the Squire; “why, Sum, who talks of dying with the sun warm overhead, and the waves sparkling out yonder in the Cove, and even Asa Brickett’s coffee-grinder down there playing dance music with every twist of the handle? Never say die, Sum.”

“I donno what’s happened to chirk you up so’t you giggle at your neighbour’s solum warnin’s as have come to ’em, nor I don’t care a ding, Squire Look, but it ain’t right to mix in your own joys with others’ sorrers.”

A close observer might have seen in the lawyer’s countenance a flicker of contrition, as though he had suddenly remembered that every man in Palermo didn’t have such cause for joy as he.

“Sun a-shinin’, you say!” went on Badger, grimly. “Yes, and a sun-dog each side of it like wings on a bat, and a-showin’ that we’re goin’ to have a line gale that will blow the knot-holes out of apple trees. Waves sparklin’, hey? Porgy scum from that stinkin’ Cod Lead fact’ry that they’ve stuck under our noses out our way. Music in a coffee-grinder! And Brickett chargin’ three cents more a pound for Rio than he ever done. There’s some as can laugh at a fun’ral, but they ain’t got no good wit.”

“I never laughed yet at anybody’s troubles, Uncle Sum,” said the Squire, gently; “but you and I, with life still in us, don’t know the day and the hour of our passing out. You’re not going to die.”

“You think you know more about me than my guardeen angel, do you, hah? When my guardeen angel comes a-rappin’ the death knock on my headboard night after night I know what it means.”

The Squire remembered that Badger was a Spiritualist of fervent faith. He made no comment.

“Three times at our circle Mis’ Achorn has seen a shroud around me and angel hands beckoning over my head. You ain’t denyin’ that Mis’ Achorp is the best medium in this country, be ye?”

“Mrs. Achorn is, probably, a good and well-meaning woman, Sum, I have no doubt; but if I were you I wouldn’t let any one scare me into conniptions. It doesn’t pay.”

“I know what I’m talkin’ about,” persisted Badger. “I want to make my will.”

“There’s no reason why you shouldn’t,” the Squire replied, and he pulled a long sheet of paper from the drawer.

“I allus like to know prices before I buy. What will sech a dockyment cost me?”

Sumner Badger was known widely as the “closest figgerer” in Palermo. He often boasted that he had never been extravagant in his life except once when he bought five cents’ worth of peppermint-drops for a girl. He was young then, he said.

“She set and et the whole mess right down, one after the other,” he frequently related, “and that fixed me with her. I wouldn’t have no sech extravagance as that in a wife and so she lost her chance. I went and got me a woman that knowed how to make things spend for what they was wuth.” And on their little farm, denying themselves everything except the barest necessities, the couple had amassed their little competence.

The Squire eyed the old man’s sun-faded clothes and his knotted hands and his seamed, gaunt face, yellow with bile, and he pitied this slave who had half-starved himself, in the midst of his herds and his harvests.

“Poor old gaffer, you’ve sold your cream all along and drunk the skim milk,” he reflected—“a life ordeal worse than Tantalus went through, for Tantalus couldn’t reach what he was hungry for, and all you have had to do was to stick out your hand and dip into bounty.”

He looked long at Badger, his shrewd eyes twinkling with the humour that replaced his momentary pity. Then he answered the old man’s question.

“I’m willing to be reasonable, Sum. Now, what would you say was a fair price for drawing a will?”

“Lawyers’ money comes dretful easy,” growled Badger. “’Tain’t like diggin’ it out of a farm.” He pondered, screwing up his eyes and calculating. “I should say if you’d draw up one that couldn’t be busted I’d be willin’ to pay a shillin’.” He made a move to draw his wallet, but the lawyer put up his hand.

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do with you, Sum. If you’ll carry home to-day a good big piece of steak and eat it with your wife—lots of butter on it—I’ll draw your will for nothing.”

Badger surveyed him dubiously and with sullen suspicion.

“We don’t go much on meat vittles to our house—not with beef prices stuck ’way up where they be.”

“That’s my price. And it’s got to be sirloin, not round.”

The lawyer saw by the expression on Badger’s face that he had anticipated the old man’s prompt thought as to quality.

“Steak’s steak, ain’t it?” he muttered. “I never heard of payin’ a lawyer’s bill in no sech fashion, but”—he sighed—“I’ll do it.”

“And aren’t you going to thank me into the bargain?” demanded the Squire. “I usually get five dollars, at least, for a document of this sort.”

“I reckon it’s lib’ral as law goes, Squire.” He suddenly warmed a bit. “You’ve been reasonable with me. Now I’ll do something for you. You’ve allus kind of cocked your nose up at s’p’tu’lism. I know it. You needn’t tell me! Now it’s goin’ to be worth something for you to reelly know whether there’s anything on the Other Side. So after I arrive there and git a little bit wonted to the place I’ll come back and appear to you and tell you all about it.”

“Oh, no, Sum,” expostulated the lawyer, his face serious. “I couldn’t think of asking you to take all that trouble for a hard old nut like me.”

“But a word from you to the people—you bein’ prominent—sayin’ that you’d seen me—materialised, mebbe; known by knocks, anyway—and I’d said ’twas so-and-so, would carry a good deal of weight and prove that I ain’t been no dum fool to b’lieve in s’p’tu’lism. I say, I’m comin’ back and appear to you and you needn’t think it’s anything strange.”

The Squire leaned forward and shook his finger at Badger.

“Let me advise you on one point, Sum. This advice isn’t going to cost a cent. Now, if you ever get so much as one foot into heaven—even get your fingers through the crack in the door, you stay right there. Don’t you ever take any chances on coming away to visit. They might get to asking leading questions about you the next time you came back to the door.”

“You don’t mean that for a slur, do you?” The old man’s face hardened.

“Let’s get to the business of drawing the will before we go to talking personal, Sum. I don’t have the same ideas as you on some ways of living.”

He wrote the usual heading at the top of the page, dipped his pen and, suddenly looking Badger in the eye, asked bluntly:

“I suppose it all goes to the wife so long as she lives, and after her to your niece, seeing that you have no children. To ’Liza Haskell, poor Ben’s girl, I mean?”

The old man shook his head with determination.

“What! you aren’t going to leave it to your only niece—your dead sister’s child—a little girl that——?”

“This is my will and it’s my own property that I’m willin’,” interrupted the farmer. “You can make it short and right to the point. It’s all goin’ to be turned into cash when I die, and Mirandy will git the interest as long as she lives, to be paid to her by the trustees that I shall name. Then the whole is goin’ to pay for a monnyment over my grave.”

Squire Phin leaned back and stared at the old man.

“Yess’r, a monnyment with my statoot on top and poetry about s’p’tu’lism carved around the bottom. I’ll show ’em that has scoffed and sneered that there is more to it than they thought.”

“But how do you prove anything by putting, say, ten thousand dollars into such infernal foolishness as that?” stormed the Squire.

“It will show that one man believed in it thirteen thousand dollars’ wuth—and that’s all he had and what he’d worked for all his life,” persisted the farmer, stubbornly. He stood up and cracked his fist on the table.

“Now, you can’t change my mind on that one jot or tittle, Squire Phin Look. You put it into any kind of lawyer lingo that will stick, and mind your own business.”

The Squire completed the writing without further comment, but his face was stern and he drove his pen into the inkstand with violent thrusts. Badger during the writing informed him that he wanted him to be one of the trustees. The lawyer paused and frowned at the old man as though he were intending to refuse, then inserted the name.

“And I want you to take these notes,” went on Badger, “and figger the interest up on ’em and put ’em in your safe and keep ’em.”

He passed across the table a dog’s-eared bank-book with a few papers between the leaves. The Squire examined them without particular interest. There were half a dozen for small amounts. But at sight of the last he sat up straighter, studied the document with increasing attention, turned it over and over, and then stared at Badger, arching his eyebrows.

“Where did you get hold of this town note?” he demanded.

“I lent good money for it. I got it right from the man whose name is signed at the bottom—and he’s been town treasurer of Palermo for thirty years. I reckon you know him!”

“Seven thousand dollars!” muttered the Squire. “Why, this town hasn’t——”

“There ain’t nothin’ out of the way, is there, about me havin’ a town note?” Badger went on. He paused a moment, then added, “So long as you’re my lawyer and one of the trustees and I’m goin’ to die and shan’t be lendin’ the money any longer, I tell you that’s a good way to let your money out—on a town note.”

For the first time since he had come into the office his face twisted into something like a smile. He leaned forward and whispered:

“Says the Judge to me, ‘You keep right still about how you’ve lent this money to the town and you won’t git taxed. So long’s it’s between you and me it won’t git onto the assessors’ books.’”

The Squire had the note spread before him and was studying it, his hands clutched into his thick hair, his elbows on the table.

“Yess’r, the Judge says, ‘You’re a friend of mine, Sum, and so long’s you keep still you’ll git your six per cent, and not be taxed on it!’ But there ain’t no need of keepin’ still any longer. I shan’t need extra int’rest. You can collect as soon as I’m dead.”

“Sum,” said the Squire, slowly lifting his eyes to the old man’s face—eyes in which there was a sort of shocked bewilderment, “I don’t want you to say anything about this note. It isn’t to be talked of.”

“But I’ve told Figger-Four Avery about it,” cried Badger, looking scared.

“Figger-Four Avery!” Squire Phin shouted the name. “Why, you might as well have put it into the Seaside Oracle. What do you want to go blurting your affairs for?”

“He was inquirin’ on bus’ness for your brother Hime,” faltered Badger. “He said Hime was borryin’ and lendin’ and was willing to pay seven per cent. Figger-Four is clerkin’ for Hime and gittin’ facts and figgers for him, and you know it jest as well as I do.”

“No, I don’t know——” but the lawyer checked his exclamation, setting his lips hard. He put the bank-book and the notes away in the safe.

“It’s best for you to keep your mouth shut about this,” he said curtly to the old man who followed his movements with frightened stare. “I won’t answer for what may happen to you otherwise.”

He threw up the window and looked out. Uncle Buck and Marriner Amazeen sat on the store platform, their chairs tilted back. They were the lawyer’s regular stand-bys as witnesses of legal papers, and came upstairs at his call.

“Your will, hey?” observed Buck as he pulled his spectacles down from his forehead and looked over the paper preparatory to signing it. “I allus thought you cal’lated on takin’ it all with ye, Sum.”

When his eyes fell on the writing designating the purpose to which the estate was to be applied, he snorted, “Well, it’s about as I reckoned, after all. That’s the next thing to luggin’ it away to Kingdom Come.” He read the clause aloud to Amazeen.

“Statoot to be life-size?” that individual blandly inquired.

“It will be as big’s there’s money for,” replied Badger, stiffly. “It will be sculped out from my photograft and I reckon the sculper can make me nine feet high. There’s risin’ thirteen thousand to do it with.” He gazed at his auditors with triumph.

“Le’s see!” pursued Amazeen, reflectively, “that would make your ear about as big over as a chiny nappy. Before you’ve been standin’ there two days them cussed sparrers will set up housekeepin’ in both ears. And a robin will have a nest under your arm, and there’ll be a crow settin’ on your head ha’f the time. You want to add a codicil there providin’ for about four scarecrow windmills set around over you. You’re goin’ to be almighty uncomfortable if you don’t. A statoot with twine string and feathers sticking out of the ears ain’t going to attract no particular admirin’ interest.”

“If the citerzens of this town stand round and see a thirteen thousand dollar monnyment get all cluttered and gurried up, then they ain’t got no more public sperit than quahaugs,” cried Badger.

Amazeen took Uncle Buck’s place at the table and proceeded to affix his signature. While he wrote he said:

“Mebbe you think you’ve done enough for this town so that the citerzens will stand out there in the grave-yard, turn and turn about, and keep the flies off’n that statoot with a feather duster! But I’m more inclined to think that the youngsters will do it with rocks.”

Badger replied to the sally with violent language, and the debate was becoming acrimonious when the Squire brusquely advised them to continue their dispute out of doors. His tone was harsher than usual, and his face was troubled. The old men went out, Amazeen shouting further directions to Badger, who hurried ahead, advising lightning rods and fire extinguishers and other appurtenances. Uncle Buck greeted each suggestion with a cackle of laughter. Squire Phin heard them pursuing their furious victim across the square, but he listened with abstracted frown, though at another time the grim jests might have amused him.

He took the town note out of the safe and examined it again. Then he pulled down a bundle of small pamphlets bearing the cover inscription, “Town Reports of Palermo.” He studied them with care and at last leaned back in his chair and gazed long at the ceiling.

“If I,” he said, softly, “were town treasurer of Palermo and had borrowed seven thousand dollars simply on my own name as treasurer, after the town had voted that two of the selectmen should sign with the treasurer on town loans, and had continued to pay six per cent, for that money after the town had voted to refund all floating indebtedness at four per cent., and, finally, still owed that seven thousand after making oath in my last report that the town owed less than two thousand dollars, why, I—I couldn’t explain it to myself, much less to the voters of this town.”

Brickett began to grind coffee again.

“Don’t the people of this place buy anything except coffee?” growled the Squire, jumping up and striding around the office. The noise racked his nerves now.

“It can’t be,” he muttered. “It’s some mistake or—or——” The recollection of certain gossip he had heard a year before at the county court regarding alleged dealings in stock by “a prominent Palermo man” and his losses occurred to him, and he remembered that he had stoutly averred that no one in his town ever dealt in stocks. He knew that people outside were usually the first to hear of such things, but this was a story that he didn’t believe. This note was there on his table—a document that demanded explanation—a document that could be explained by a desperate man’s financial stress and in no other way. Men did not take such chances for amusement.

Aquarius Wharff’s little flute piped away insistently.

“What a devilish nuisance that old fool is!” the lawyer growled, and he went along and slammed down the window.

Who properly should demand that explanation? Himself as town agent.

Brickett was now unheading a barrel, and the clamour made the Squire pound his table with a boyish and futile rage. Every noise jarred on him and the sun didn’t shine in at the windows any longer.

There was no doubt about his duty. The note must be shown to the selectmen. He picked it up, put it into his pocketbook, hesitated at the door, then hastily went back to the safe, tucked it into the most remote pigeon-hole, slammed the safe door and whirled the lock knob vigorously.

“No, sir,” he muttered as he went down the stairs, “this isn’t a thing to prick with a crowbar. It needs a fine needle. There’s a woman to be considered first, and, by the gods! there’s no steer-team of selectmen going to walk over her to get to her father—no matter how the land lies.”

He stopped at the foot of the stairs and looked back at his office door with a singular air of apprehension, as though he had left there some ugly and hideous object.

“No, it can’t be.” He stamped his foot upon the turf. “It isn’t the Willard stripe to do a thing like that. He’s a hog, but not a thief. I guess I’ll go and sit under the old poplars and think about it a bit.”

As he walked along the street he remembered what Badger had said about his brother Hiram’s activity in the matter of that town note.