There was an immediate snuffing and drying of tears all around. Uncle Davy looked sheepishly at Aunt Sally, she passed the same look on to Tilly, and Tilly passed it to the coon dog. Here it rested in its birthplace.
"Come to think of it, Hillard," said Uncle Dave after a while, "but I believe you are right."
Tilly came back, and she and Aunt Sally nodded their heads: "Yes, Hillard, you're right," went on Uncle Davy, "Tilly and Sally both say so."
"How come you to think you was dyin' anyway?" asked the Bishop.
"Hillard,--you kno', Hillard--the old man's been thinkin' he'd go sudden-like a long time." He raised his eyes to heaven: "Yes, Lord, thy servant is even ready."
"Last night I felt a kind o' flutterin' of my heart an' I cudn't breathe good. I thought it was death--death,--Hillard, on the back of his pale horse. Tilly and Sally both thought so."
The Bishop laughed. "That warn't death on the back of a horse, Davy--that was jus' wind on the stomach of an ass."
This was too much for Uncle Davy--especially when Tilly and Sally made it unanimous by giggling outright.
"You et cabbages for supper," said the Bishop.
"Then I sed my will an' Tilly writ it down an', oh, Hillard, I am so anxious to hear you read it. I wanter see how it'ull feel fer a man to have his will read after he is dead--an'--an' how his widder takes it," he added, glancing at Aunt Sally--"an' his friends. I wanter heah you read it, Hillard, in that deep organ way of yours,--like you read the Old Testament. In that _In-the-Beginning-God-Created-the-Heaven-an'-the-Earth-Kinder_ voice! Drap your voice low like a organ, an' let the old man hear it befo' he goes. I fixed it when I thought I was a-dyin'."
"Makin' yo' will ain't no sign you're dyin'," said the Bishop.
"But Tilly an' Aunt Sally both said so," said Uncle Davy, earnestly.
"All yo' needs," said the Bishop going to his saddle bags, "is a good straight whiskey. I keep a little--a very, very little bit in my saddle bags, for jes' sech occasions as these. It's twenty years old," he said, "an' genuwine old Lincoln County. I keep it only for folks that's dyin'," he winked, "an' sometimes, Davy, I feel mighty like I'm about to pass away myself."
He poured out a very small medicine glass of it, shining and shimmering in the morning light like a big ruby,--and handed it to Uncle Davy.