As the surprised Twiggs turned from one to the other, Rice continued, “Ez far as we kin understand this little game, it’s the just punishment of a high-flying girl as breaks her pore old father’s heart, and the re-ward of a young feller ez has bin to our knowledge ez devoted a nephew as they make ’em.  Time and time again, sittin’ around our camp fire at night, we’ve heard Jacksey say,—­kinder to himself, and kinder to us, ‘Now I wonder what’s gone o’ old uncle Quincy;’ and he never sat down to a square meal, or ever rose from a square game, but what he allus said, ’If old uncle Quince was only here now, boys, I’d die happy.’  I leave it to you, gentlemen, if that wasn’t Jackson Wells’s gait all the time?”

There was a prolonged murmur of assent, and an affecting corroboration from Ned Wyngate of “That was him; that was Jacksey all the time!”

“Indeed, indeed,” said the lawyer nervously.  “I had quite the idea that there was very little fondness”—­

“Not on your side—­not on your side,” said Rice quickly.  “Uncle Quincy may not have anted up in this matter o’ feelin’, nor seen his nephew’s rise.  You know how it is yourself in these things—­being a lawyer and a fa’r-minded man—­it’s all on one side, ginerally!  There’s always one who loves and sacrifices, and all that, and there’s always one who rakes in the pot!  That’s the way o’ the world; and that’s why,” continued Rice, abandoning his slightly philosophical attitude, and laying his hand tenderly, and yet with a singularly significant grip, on Wells’s arm, “we say to him, ‘Hang on to that will, and uncle Quincy’s memory.’  And we hev to say it.  For he’s that tender-hearted and keerless of money—­having his own share in this Ledge—­that ef that girl came whimperin’ to him he’d let her take the ‘prop’ and let the hull thing slide!  And then he’d remember that he had rewarded that gal that broke the old man’s heart, and that would upset him again in his work.  And there, you see, is just where we come in!  And we say, ’Hang on to that will like grim death!’”

The lawyer looked curiously at Rice and his companions, and then turned to Wells:  “Nevertheless, I must look to you for instructions,” he said dryly.

But by this time Jackson Wells, although really dubious about supplanting the orphan, had gathered the sense of his partners, and said with a frank show of decision, “I think I must stand by the will.”

“Then I’ll have it proved,” said Twiggs, rising.  “In the meantime, if there is any talk of contesting”—­

“If there is, you might say,” suggested Wyngate, who felt he had not had a fair show in the little comedy,—­“ye might say to that old skeesicks of a wife’s brother, if he wants to nipple in, that there are four men on the Ledge—­and four revolvers!  We are gin’rally fa’r-minded, peaceful men, but when an old man’s heart is broken, and his gray hairs brought down in sorrow to the grave, so to speak, we’re bound to attend the funeral—­sabe?”