B. Little." Isom had never spoken in her hearing that way
of any man. Perhaps there was some bond between the two men, reaching
back to the escapades of youth, and maybe Judge Little had the rusty old
key to some past romance in Isom's life.

"Laws of mercy!" said Mrs. Greening, freeing a sigh of indignation which
surely must have burst her if it had been repressed.

"This document is dated almost thirty years ago," said the judge. "It is
possible that Isom left a later will. We must make a search of the
premises to determine that."

"In sixty-seven he wrote it," said Sol, "and that was the year he was
married. The certificate's hangin' in there on the wall. Before that,
Isom he went off to St. Louis to business college a year or two and got
all of his learnin' and smart ways. I might 'a' went, too, just as well
as not. Always wisht I had."

"Very true, very true," nodded Judge Little, as if to say: "You're on
the trail of his iniquities now, Sol."

Sol's mouth gaped like an old-fashioned corn-planter as he looked from
the judge to Mrs. Greening, from Mrs. Greening to Ollie. Sol believed
the true light of the situation had reached his brain.

"Walker--Isom Walker Chase! No Walkers around in this part of the
country to name a boy after--never was."

"His mother was a Walker, from Ellinoi, dunce!" corrected his wife.

"Oh!" said Sol, his scandalous case collapsing about him as quickly as
it had puffed up. "I forgot about her."

"Don't you worry about that will, honey," advised Mrs. Greening, going
to Ollie and putting her large freckled arm around the young woman's
shoulders; "for it won't amount to shucks! Isom never had a son, and
even if he did by some woman he wasn't married to, how's he goin' to
prove he's the feller?"

Nobody attempted to answer her, and Mrs. Greening accepted that as proof
that her argument was indubitable.

"It--can't--be--true!" said Ollie.

"Well, it gits the best of me!" sighed Greening, shaking his uncombed
head. "Isom he was too much of a business man to go and try to play off
a joke like that on anybody."

"After the funeral I would advise a thorough search among Isom's papers
in the chance of finding another and later will than this," said Judge
Little. "And in the meantime, as a legal precaution, merely as a legal
precaution and formality, Mrs. Chase----"

The judge stopped, looking at Ollie from beneath the rims of his specs,
as if waiting for her permission to proceed. O