“A body should be curful, as you say, sir,” returned the Widow Martin; “and for that reason I should like to know if there isn’t a will.  I know the deacon set store by me, and I can hardly think he has departed for another world without bethinking him of his cousin Jenny, and of her widowhood.”

“I’m afraid he has, Mrs. Martin—­really afraid he has.  I can hear of no will.  The doctor says he doubts if the deacon could ever muster courage to write anything about his own death, and that he has never heard of any will.  I understand Mary, that she has no knowledge of any will; and I do not know where else to turn, in order to inquire.  Rev. Mr. Whittle thinks there is a will, I ought to say.”

“There must be a will,” returned the parson, who was on the ground again early, and on this very errand; “I feel certain of that from the many conversations I have held with the deceased.  It is not a month since I spoke to him of divers repairs that were necessary to each and all of the parish buildings, including the parsonage.  He agreed to every word I said—­admitted that we could not get on another winter without a new horse-shed; and that the east end of the parsonage ought to be shingled this coming summer.”

“All of which may be; very true, parson, without the deacon’s making a will,” quietly, and we may now add patiently, observed Mr. Job.

“I don’t think so,” returned the minister, with a warmth that might have been deemed indiscreet, did it not relate to the horse-shed, the parsonage, and the meeting-house, all of which were public property, rather than to anything in which he had a more direct legal interest.  “A pious member of the church would hardly hold out the hopes that Deacon Pratt has held out to me, for more than two years without meaning to make his words good in the end.  I think all will agree with me in that opinion.”

“Did the deacon, then, go so far as to promise to do any thing?” asked Mr. Job, a little timidly; for he was by no means sure the answer might not be in the affirmative, in which case he anticipated the worst.

“Perhaps not,” answered Minister Whittle, too conscientious to tell a Downright lie, though sorely tempted so to do.  “But a man may promise indirectly, as well as directly.  When I have a thing much at heart, and converse often about it with a person who can grant all I wish, and that person, listens as attentively as I could wish him to do, I regard that as a promise; and, in church matters, one of a very solemn nature.”

All the Jesuits in the world do not get their educations at Rome, or acknowledge Ignatius Loyola as the great founder of their order.  Some are to be found who have never made a public profession of their faith and zeal, have naver assumed the tonsure, or taken the vows.

“That’s as folks think,” quietly returned Mr. Job Pratt, though he smiled in a manner so significant as to cause Mrs. Martin a new qualm, as she grew more and more apprehensive that the property was, after all, to go by the distribution law.  “Some folks think a promise ought to be expressed, while others think it may be understood.  The law, I believe, commonly looks for the direct expression of any binding promise; and, in matters of this sort, one made in writing, too, and that under a seal, and before three responsible witnesses.”