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Prindle bowed, and passed his hand across his mouth to hide a smile. Prindle was secretly amused to think that a working man had anything to leave worth the trouble of making a Will at all. Mr. Owlett dipped a pen in ink, and handed it to his client. Whereat, Helmsley wrote his signature in a clear, bold, unfaltering hand. Mr. Owlett appended his own name, and then Prindle stepped up to sign.
However, after a moment's hesitation, they prepared to start anew, except three, whose power of smell had quite succumbed under the excessive wear and tear of the day. By this time not a male villager was to be seen in the parish. Owlett was not at his mill, the farmers were not in their fields, the parson was not in his garden, the smith had left his forge, and the wheelwright's shop was silent.
Both she and he went mechanically about their employments, and his depression was marked in the village by more than one of his denomination with whom he came in contact. But Lizzy, who passed her days indoors, was unsuspected of being the cause: for it was generally understood that a quiet engagement to marry existed between her and her cousin Owlett, and had existed for some time.
Owlett briefly responded, sweeping the money his client had paid him off his desk, and pocketing the same with that resigned air of injured virtue which was his natural expression whenever he thought of how little good hard cash a country solicitor could make in the space of twenty-four hours.
'From Cherbourg, I suppose? 'Yes, 'a b'lieve. 'But it don't all belong to Owlett? 'O no. He's only got a share. There's another or two in it a farmer and such like, but the names I don't know. The voices died away, and the heads and shoulders of the men diminished towards the cliff, and dropped out of sight.
You wish us to witness your signature?" "If you please, sir." And he advanced to the bureau ready to sign. Mr. Owlett rang a bell sharply twice. An angular man with a youngish face and a very elderly manner answered the summons. "My confidential clerk," said Owlett, briefly introducing him. "Here, Prindle! I want you to be witness with me to this gentleman's Will."
Owlett was taking his after-dinner snooze, but he's jumped up at once, and he's washed his hands and face, so he's quite ready for business. This way, please!" He beckoned with a rather dirty finger, and Helmsley followed him into a small apartment where Mr. Owlett, a comfortably stout, middle-aged gentleman, sat at a large bureau covered with papers, pretending to read.
'My darling has been tempted to buy a share by that unbeliever Owlett, groaned the minister, his honest affection for Lizzy having quickened to its intensest point during these moments of risk to her person and name. 'That's why she's here, he said to himself. 'O, it will be the ruin of her!
'Well the only talk between a young woman and man that is likely to amuse an eavesdropper. 'Ah yes, she said, smiling in spite of her preoccupation. 'Well, my cousin Owlett has spoken to me about matrimony, every now and then, that's true; but he was not speaking of it then. I wish he had been speaking of it, with all my heart. It would have been much less serious for me. 'O Mrs. Newberry!
The smuggled tubs were soon packed into the vehicles, and Latimer, with three of his assistants, drove slowly out of the village in the direction of the port of Budmouth, some considerable number of miles distant, the other excisemen being left to watch for the remainder of the cargo, which they knew to have been sunk somewhere between Ringsworth and Lulstead Cove, and to unearth Owlett, the only person clearly implicated by the discovery of the cave.
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