let alone blubberin' like a calf. It's agin
nature. Davy, dyin' men don't weep. It's always all right with 'em.
It's the one moment of all their lives, often, that everything is all
right, seein' as they do, that all life has been a dream--all back of
death jes' a beginnin' to live, an' so they die contented. No--no,
Davy, if they've lived right they want to smile, not weep."

There was an immediate snuffing and drying of tears all around. Uncle
Davy looked sheepishly at Aunt Sally, she passed the same look on to
Tilly, and Tilly passed it to the coon dog. Here it rested in its
birthplace.

"Come to think of it, Hillard," said Uncle Dave after a while, "but I
believe you are right."

Tilly came back, and she and Aunt Sally nodded their heads: "Yes,
Hillard, you're right," went on Uncle Davy, "Tilly and Sally both say
so."

"How come you to think you was dyin' anyway?" asked the Bishop.

"Hillard,--you kno', Hillard--the old man's been thinkin' he'd go
sudden-like a long time." He raised his eyes to heaven: "Yes, Lord,
thy servant is even ready."

"Last night I felt a kind o' flutterin' of my heart an' I cudn't
breathe good. I thought it was death--death,--Hillard, on the back of
his pale horse. Tilly and Sally both thought so."

The Bishop laughed. "That warn't death on the back of a horse,
Davy--that was jus' wind on the stomach of an ass."

This was too much for Uncle Davy--especially when Tilly and Sally
made it unanimous by giggling outright.

"You et cabbages for supper," said the Bishop.

Uncle Davy nodded, sheepishly.

"Then I sed my will an' Tilly writ it down an', oh, Hillard,
I am so anxious to hear you read it. I wanter see how it'ull
feel fer a man to have his will read after he is dead--an'--an'
how his widder takes it," he added, glancing at Aunt Sally--"an'
his friends. I wanter heah you read it, Hillard, in that deep
organ way of yours,--like you read the Old Testament. In that
_In-the-Beginning-God-Created-the-Heaven-an'-the-Earth-Kinder_ voice!
Drap your voice low like a organ, an' let the old man hear it befo' he
goes. I fixed it when I thought I was a-dyin'."

"Makin' yo' will ain't no sign you're dyin'," said the Bishop.

"But Tilly an' Aunt Sally both said so," said Uncle Davy, earnestly.

"All yo' needs," said the Bishop going to his saddle bags, "is a good
straight whiskey. I keep a little--a very, very little bit in my
saddle bags, for jes' sech occasions as these. It's twenty