nt drank, and the
maid replaced glass and decanter. The eyes of the butcher and the baker
followed the sparkling vessel till it disappeared, and the maker of
candlesticks made a dry swallow and faintly licked his lips. The notary
remarked that there must be no intervention of speakers between himself
and the person making the will, nor any turning aside to other matters;
but that merely stopping a moment to satisfy thirst without leaving the
room was not a vitiative turning aside and would not be, even if done by
others besides the party making the will. But here the patient moaned and
said audibly, "Let us go on." And they went on. The notary asked the
patient's name, the place and date of his birth, etc., and the patient's
answers were in every case whatever the Englishman's would have been.
Presently the point was reached where the patient should express his
wishes unprompted by suggestion or inquiry. He said faintly, "I will and
bequeath"--

The servant girl, seeing her mistress bury her face in her handkerchief,
did the same. The patient gasped audibly and said again, but more faintly:

"I will and bequeath--some more brandy."

The decanter was brought. He drank again. He let Attalie hand it back to
the maid and the maid get nearly to the bureau when he said in a low tone
of distinct reproof:

"Pass it 'round." The four visitors drank.

Then the patient resumed with stronger voice. "I will and bequeath to my
friend Camille Ducour"--

Attalie started from her chair with a half-uttered cry of amazement and
protest, but dropped back again at the notary's gesture for silence, and
the patient spoke straight on without hesitation--"to my friend Camille
Ducour, the sum of fifteen hundred dollars in cash."

Attalie and her handmaiden looked at each other with a dumb show of
lamentation; but her butcher and her baker turned slowly upon her
candlestick-maker, and he upon them, a look of quiet but profound
approval. The notary wrote, and the patient spoke again:

"I will everything else which I may leave at my death, both real and
personal property, to Madame Attalie Brouillard."

"Ah!" exclaimed Attalie, in the manner of one largely, but not entirely,
propitiated. The maid suited her silent movement to the utterance, and the
three witnesses exchanged slow looks of grave satisfaction. Mistress and
maid, since the will seemed to them so manifestly and entirely finished,
began to whisper together, although the patient