, though. He
chucked them in the fire as soon as he made out who they come from.

Mary [Aside.] My poor mother.

Asa You see, as nigh as we could reckon it up, she had gone and got
married again his will, and that made him mad, and well, he was a queer
kind of a rusty fusty old coon, and it appeared that he got older, and
rustier, and fustier and coonier every fall, you see it always took him
in the fall, it was too much for him. He got took down with the ague, he
was so bad the doctors gave him up, and mother she went for a minister,
and while she was gone the old man called me in his room, `come in, Asa,
boy,' says he, and his voice rang loud and clear as a bell, `come in,'
says he. Well I comed in; `sit down,' says he; well I sot down. You see
I was always a favorite with the old man. `Asa, my boy,' says he, takin'
a great piece of paper, `when I die, this sheet of paper makes you heir
to all my property in England'. Well, you can calculate I pricked up my
ears about that time, bime-by the minister came, and I left the room,
and I do believe he had a three day's fight with the devil, for that
old man's soul, but he got the upper hand of satan at last, and when
the minister had gone the old man called me into his room again. The
old Squire was sitting up in his bed, his face as pale as the sheet that
covered him, his silken hair flowing in silvery locks from under his red
cap, and the tears rolling from his large blue eyes down his furrowed
cheek, like two mill streams. Will you excuse my lighting a cigar? For
the story is a long, awful moveing, and I don't think I could get on
without a smoke. [Strikes match.] Wal, says he to me, and his voice was
not as loud as it was afore--it was like the whisper of the wind in
a pine forest, low and awful. `Asa, boy,' said he, 'I feel that I've
sinned in hardening my heart against my own flesh and blood, but I will
not wrong the last that is left of them; give me the light,' says he.
Wal I gave him the candle that stood by his bedside, and he took the
sheet of paper I was telling you of, just as I might take this. [Takes
will from pocket.] And he twisted it up as I might this, [Lights will,]
and he lights it just this way, and he watched it burn slowly and slowly
away. Then, says he, `Asa, boy that act disinherits you, but it leaves
all my property to one who has a better right to it. My own daughter's
darling child, Mary Meredith,' and then he smiled, sank back upon his
pillow,