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.]