out of bed--anyhow, it
killed him--and--"

"Daniel Dott! DON'T talk so idiotic!"

"Humph! that's nothin' to the idiocy that's been talked to me this
forenoon. I've done nothin' for the last hour but say 'No' to folks that
come tearin' in to unload lies and ask questions. And some of 'em was
people you'd expect to have common sense, too. My head's kind of wobbly
this mornin', after the shock that hit it last night, but it's a regular
Dan'l Webster's alongside the general run of heads in this town. Aunt
Laviny's will has turned Trumet into an asylum, and the patients are all
runnin' loose."

"But WHAT foolishness was that about a cousin in California?"

"'Twa'n't foolishness, I tell you. You ask any one of a dozen folks you
meet outside the post-office now, and they'll all tell you you had
one. They might not agree whether 'twas a cousin or a grandmother or a
step-child, or whether it lived in Californy or the Cape of Good Hope,
but they all know it's dead now, and we've got anywheres from a postage
stamp to a hogshead of diamonds. Serena, if you hear yells for help this
afternoon, don't pay any attention. It'll only mean that my patience has
run out and I'm tryin' to make this community short one devilish fool at
least. There'll be enough left; he'll never be missed."

"Daniel, I never saw you so worked up. You must expect people to be
excited. I'm excited myself."

The captain wiped his forehead with his napkin. "_I_ ain't exactly a
graven image, now that you mention it," he admitted. "But you and I have
got some excuse and they ain't. Haven't they been in to see you; or did
you lock the doors?"

"I have had callers, of course. Mrs. Berry was here, and Mrs. Tripp, and
the Cahoon girls, and Issachar Eldredge's wife. The first four pretended
they came on lodge business, and the Eldredge woman to get my recipe for
chocolate doughnuts; but, of course, I knew what they really came for.
Daniel, HOW do you suppose the news got out so soon? I didn't tell a
soul and you promised you wouldn't."

"I didn't, neither. Probably that lawyer man dropped a hint down at the
Manonquit House, and that set things goin'. Just heave over one seed
of a yarn in most any hotel or boardin' house and you'll have a crop of
lies next mornin' that would load a three-master. They come up in the
night, like toadstools."

"But you didn't tell anyone how much your Aunt Lavinia left us?"

"You bet I didn't. I told 'em I didn't know yet. I was