“I reckon it’s lib’ral as law goes, Squire.” He suddenly warmed a bit. “You’ve been reasonable with me. Now I’ll do something for you. You’ve allus kind of cocked your nose up at s’p’tu’lism. I know it. You needn’t tell me! Now it’s goin’ to be worth something for you to reelly know whether there’s anything on the Other Side. So after I arrive there and git a little bit wonted to the place I’ll come back and appear to you and tell you all about it.” “Oh, no, Sum,” expostulated the lawyer, his face serious. “I couldn’t think of asking you to take all that trouble for a hard old nut like me.” “But a word from you to the people--you bein’ prominent--sayin’ that you’d seen me--materialised, mebbe; known by knocks, anyway--and I’d said ’twas so-and-so, would carry a good deal of weight and prove that I ain’t been no dum fool to b’lieve in s’p’tu’lism. I say, I’m comin’ back and appear to you and you needn’t think it’s anything strange.” The Squire leaned forward and shook his finger at Badger. “Let me advise you on one point, Sum. This advice isn’t going to cost a cent. Now, if you ever get so much as one foot into heaven--even get your fingers through the crack in the door, you stay right there. Don’t you ever take any chances on coming away to visit. They might get to asking leading questions about you the next time you came back to the door.” “You don’t mean that for a slur, do you?” The old man’s face hardened. “Let’s get to the business of drawing the will before we go to talking personal, Sum. I don’t have the same ideas as you on some ways of living.” He wrote the usual heading at the top of the page, dipped his pen and, suddenly looking Badger in the eye, asked bluntly: “I suppose it all goes to the wife so long as she lives, and after her to your niece, seeing that you have no children. To ’Liza Haskell, poor Ben’s girl, I mean?” The old man shook his head with determination. “What! you aren’t going to leave it to your only niece--your dead sister’s child--a little girl that----?” “This is my will and it’s my own property that I’m willin’,” interrupted the farmer. “You can make it short and right to the point. It’s all goin’ to be turned into cash when I die, and Mirandy will git the interest as long as she lives, to be paid to her by the trustees that I shall name. Then the whole is goin’ to pay for a monnyment over my grave.” Squire Phin leaned back and stared at the old man. “Yess’r, a monnyment with my statoot on top and poetry about s’p’tu’lism carved around the bottom. I’ll show ’em that has scoffed and sneered that there is more to it than they thought.” “But how do you prove anything by putting, say, ten thousand dollars into such infernal foolishness as that?” stormed the Squire. “It will show that one man believed in it thirteen thousand dollars’ wuth--and that’s all he had and what he’d worked for all his life,” persisted the farmer, stubbornly. He stood up and cracked his fist on the table.