These, However, Were Succeeded By Plans For
The Future, And I Lay Awake The Greater Part Of The Night, Indulging
The Poetical Anticipation, How Soon I Would Make These Old Walls Ring
With Cheerful Life, And Restore The Hospitality Of My Mother's
Ancestors.
My uncle's funeral was decent, but private, I knew there was nobody
That respected his memory; and I was
Determined that none should be
summoned to sneer over his funeral wines, and make merry at his grave.
He was buried in the church of the neighboring village, though it was
not the burying place of his race; but he had expressly enjoined that
he should not be buried with his family; he had quarrelled with the
most of them when living, and he carried his resentments even into the
grave.
I defrayed the expenses of the funeral out of my own purse, that I
might have done with the undertakers at once, and clear the ill-omened
birds from the premises. I invited the parson of the parish, and the
lawyer from the village to attend at the house the next morning and
hear the reading of the will. I treated them to an excellent breakfast,
a profusion that had not been seen at the house for many a year. As
soon as the breakfast things were removed, I summoned Iron John, the
woman, and the boy, for I was particular of having every one present
and proceeding regularly. The box was placed on the table. All was
silence. I broke the seal; raised the lid; and beheld - not the will,
but my accursed poem of Doubting Castle and Giant Despair!
Could any mortal have conceived that this old withered man; so
taciturn, and apparently lost to feeling, could have treasured up for
years the thoughtless pleasantry of a boy, to punish him with such
cruel ingenuity? I could now account for his dying smile, the only one
he had ever given me. He had been a grave man all his life; it was
strange that he should die in the enjoyment of a joke; and it was hard
that that joke should be at my expense.
The lawyer and the parson seemed at a loss to comprehend the matter.
"Here must be some mistake," said the lawyer, "there is no will here."
"Oh," said Iron John, creaking forth his rusty jaws, "if it is a will
you are looking for, I believe I can find one."
He retired with the same singular smile with which he had greeted me on
my arrival, and which I now apprehended boded me no good. In a little
while he returned with a will perfect at all points, properly signed
and sealed and witnessed; worded with horrible correctness; in which he
left large legacies to Iron John and his daughter, and the residue of
his fortune to the foxy-headed boy; who, to my utter astonishment, was
his son by this very woman; he having married her privately; and, as I
verily believe, for no other purpose than to have an heir, and so baulk
my father and his issue of the inheritance.
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