brother's
face. "Now there was all that money one o' Mis' Elbert Swayne's
relations left her last year, an' Lucy Scramm, that's poorer 'n
poverty's back kitchin, an' the same relation to him that Mis' Swayne
was, only got a thousan' dollars, an' the Swaynes rich already. Not but
what the thousan' was a godsend to the Scramms, but he might jest as
well 'a' left 'em comf'tibly off as not, 'stid of pilin' more onto the
Swaynes that didn't need it."

"Does seem kind o' tough," David observed, leaning forward to drop his
cigar ash clear of the veranda floor, "but that's the way things goes,
an' I've often had to notice that a man'll sometimes do the foolishist
thing or the meanest thing in his hull life after he's dead."

"You never told me," said Mrs. Bixbee, after a minute or two, in which
she appeared to be following up a train of reflection, "much of anythin'
about John's matters. Hain't he ever told you anythin' more 'n what
you've told me? or don't ye want me to know? Didn't his father leave
anythin'?"

"The' was a little money," replied her brother, blowing out a cloud of
smoke, "an' a lot of unlikely chances, but nothin' to live on."

"An' the' wa'n't nothin' for 't but he had to come up here?" she
queried.

"He'd 'a' had to work on a salary somewhere, I reckon," was the reply.
"The' was one thing," added David thoughtfully after a moment, "that'll
mebbe come to somethin' some time, but it may be a good while fust, an'
don't you ever let on to him nor nobody else 't I ever said anythin'
about it."

"I won't open my head to a livin' soul," she declared. "What was it?"

"Wa'al, I don't know 's I ever told ye," he said, "but a good many years
ago I took some little hand in the oil bus'nis, but though I didn't git
in as deep as I wish now 't I had, I've alwus kept up a kind of int'rist
in what goes on in that line."

"No, I guess you never told me," she said. "Where you goin'?" as he got
out of his chair.

"Goin' to git my cap," he answered. "Dum the dum things! I don't believe
the's a fly in Freeland County that hain't danced the wild kachuky on my
head sence we set here. Be I much specked?" he asked, as he bent his
bald poll for her inspection.

"Oh, go 'long!" she cried, as she gave him a laughing push.

"'Mongst other-things," he resumed, when he had returned to his chair
and relighted his cigar, "the' was a piece of about ten or twelve
hunderd acres of land down in Pennsylvany havin' some coal on it,