Means looked at them, all the shrewd humor faded out of his face. "I've got something to tell both of you," he said, gravely; "and, Eben, while I think of it, I have a letter that _he_ wanted given to your daughter. Remind me to hand it over to you to take to her when you go home to-night. I've got something to tell you; the time has come; _he_ said it would. I didn't half believe it, God forgive me. I tell you, I've got a keen scent for the bad in human nature, but he had a keen one for the good. He'd have made a sharp counsel on the right side. After _he_ got his money, he used to talk day and night about the poverty of this town. He had a great heart. He--_wanted and intended that twenty-five thousand dollars to go just the way it is going_." The lawyer, with every word, shook his skinny right hand before the others' faces; he paused a second and looked at them with solemn impressiveness; then he continued: "He wanted to give that twenty-five thousand dollars, in equal parts, to the poor of this town, as indicated in that instrument which I drew up at Robinson's for Prescott and Basset, but instead of giving it himself he left it to Jerome Edwards to give. He said that it would amount to the same thing, and I tried to argue him out of it. I did not believe any man could stand the temptation of a fortune between his fingers, but _he_ said Jerome Edwards could and would, and the money was as sure to go as he intended it to as if he doled it out himself in dollars and cents, and he was right. God bless him! And--_that twenty-five thousand dollars is going just the way he meant it to go_." Chapter XXXIX The next day Jerome went again to Lawyer Means's. It was near noon when he returned; he met many people on the road, and they all looked at him strangely. Men stood in knots, and the hum of their conversation died low when he drew near. They nodded to him with curious respect and formality; after he had passed, the rumble of voices began anew. One woman, whom he met just before he turned the corner of his own road, stopped and held out a slender, trembling hand. "I want to shake hands with you, J'rome," she said, in a sweet, hysterical voice. Then she raised to his a worn face, with the piteous downward lines of old tears at mouth and eyes, and a rasped red, as of tears and frost, on thin cheeks. "That money is goin' to save my little home for me; I didn't know but I'd got to go on the town. God bless you, J'rome," she whispered, quaveringly. "The Colonel's the one to be thanked," Jerome said. "I come under that agreement, don't I?" she asked, anxiously. "They told me that lone women without anybody to support 'em came under it." "Yes, you do, Miss Patch." "Oh, God bless you, God bless you, J'rome Edwards!" she cried, with a fervor strange upon a New England tongue.