Page:Post - Uncle Abner (Appleton, 1918).djvu/51

 Abner did not move. For the last five minutes he had been at work at something, but I could not see what it was, for his back was toward me. Now he turned to the table beside Gaul and I saw what he had been doing. He had been making a pen out of a goosequill! He laid the pen down on the table and beside it a horn of ink. He opened out the deed that he had brought, put his finger on a line, dipped the quill into the ink and held it out to Gaul.

"Sign there!" he said.

The hunchback got on his feet, with an oath.

"Begone with your damned paper!" he cried.

Abner did not move.

"When you have signed," he said.

"Signed!" cried the hunchback. "I will see you and your brother Rufus, and Elnathan Stone, and all the kit and kittle of you in hell!"

"Gaul," said Abner, "you will surely see all who are to be seen in hell!"

By Abner's manner I knew that the end of the business had arrived. He seized the will and the envelope that Gaul had brought from his secretary and held them out before him.

"You tell me," he said, "that these papers were written at one sitting! Look! The hand that wrote that envelope was calm and steady, but the hand that wrote this will shook. See how the letters wave and jerk! I will explain it. You have kept that envelope from some old letter; but this paper was written in this house—in fear! And it was 38