"I don't know. I--don't--know," pulling his beard meditatively. "It'll
be left in a lump: that much the jedge told me himself. 'I'll not part
the proputty,' he says, 'but I'll leave it whar it'll keep up the
standin' of the family.' The old man always hed his sheer of pride in
the Scroopes, you know."

"Dave Cabarreux is his cousin once removed," interrupted Bright the
landlord, who had sauntered back with the major, and engineered that
unsteady worthy to a place on the trough. "He hes no other kin than
Dave, that I know of. David's as genteel a young man as walks Sevier
streets."

"He's a damned cub!" The major staggered to his feet, gesticulating
angrily with his trembling hands.

"Tut, tut, Sam! sit down," said the squire, pulling at his coat-tail.
"You begrudge Dave his pretty little sweetheart. I understand: I've
watched you. Why, Fetridge, you're old enough to be her father, you
moon-calf!"

Sam stiffened his shaky body into a drunken dignity: "Squire, you can
talk of me as you choose: every scrag-end of humanity kin take liberties
with my name now, and does it. But the pump is no place to mention that
lady, nor any lady, sir."

"No, it's not: that's a fact, Sam. I beg her pardon. But Primus tells
me, gentlemen, that the jedge has been talkin' incessant of his nephew
Boyer. Who's Boyer?"

"I've heerd the jedge talk of him frequent, sittin' on that very cheer,"
said Byloe the carpenter. "He's his grand-nephew. Peter Marmyduke Boyer
is the full name. Governor of Iowy. The jedge has told me he was one of
the first men of the present century. He'd all the genius of the Scroope
family. Fact is, I used to think he was a straw man the jedge had made
expressly to hang the honors of the family on."

"What's the jedge callin' on him now for?" said the major.

The doctor glanced around cautiously to the circle of attentive faces,
the silent street beyond, the houses that fenced them in: "It's my
opinion--in strict confidence, gentlemen," lowering his voice: the faces
gathered more closely, Sam's, pimpled and eager, the nearest--"it's my
opinion that the jedge means to cut off Dave without a shilling, and
leave the proputty to this Honorable Peter M. Boyer. But what's the
difference?" he continued after waiting a moment to allow the sensation
produced by his words to subside. "This man Boyer, they tell me, has not
been heard of for years. He didn't even turn up in the war. Undoubtedly,
he's dead."

Major Fetri