She added those last words in a soothing tone, for she saw that Noel Vanstone’s indignation was fast merging into alarm.  The coachman’s outburst of exhortation seemed to have inspired him with fear, as well as disgust.

He dipped the pen in the ink, and signed the Will without uttering a word.  The coachman (descending instantly from Theology to Business) watched the signature with the most scrupulous attention; and signed his own name as witness, with an implied commentary on the proceeding, in the form of another puff of whisky, exhaled through the medium of a heavy sigh.  The cook looked away from Mrs. Lecount with an effort—­signed her name in a violent hurry—­and looked back again with a start, as if she expected to see a loaded pistol (produced in the interval) in the housekeeper’s hands.  “Thank you,” said Mrs. Lecount, in her friendliest manner.  The cook shut up her lips aggressively and looked at her master.  “You may go!” said her master.  The cook coughed contemptuously, and went.

“We shan’t keep you long,” said Mrs. Lecount, dismissing the coachman.  “In half an hour, or less, we shall be ready for the journey back.”

The coachman’s austere countenance relaxed for the first time.  He smiled mysteriously, and approached Mrs. Lecount on tiptoe.

“Ye’ll no forget one thing, my leddy,” he said, with the most ingratiating politeness.  “Ye’ll no forget the witnessing as weel as the driving, when ye pay me for my day’s wark!” He laughed with guttural gravity; and, leaving his atmosphere behind him, stalked out of the room.

“Lecount,” said Noel Vanstone, as soon as the coachman closed the door, “did I hear you tell that man we should be ready in half an hour?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Are you blind?”

He asked the question with an angry stamp of his foot.  Mrs. Lecount looked at him in astonishment.

“Can’t you see the brute is drunk?” he went on, more and more irritably. 
“Is my life nothing?  Am I to be left at the mercy of a drunken coachman? 
I won’t trust that man to drive me, for any consideration under heaven! 
I’m surprised you could think of it, Lecount.”

“The man has been drinking, sir,” said Mrs. Lecount.  “It is easy to see and to smell that.  But he is evidently used to drinking.  If he is sober enough to walk quite straight—­which he certainly does—­and to sign his name in an excellent handwriting—­which you may see for yourself on the Will—­I venture to think he is sober enough to drive us to Dumfries.”

“Nothing of the sort!  You’re a foreigner, Lecount; you don’t understand these people.  They drink whisky from morning to night.  Whisky is the strongest spirit that’s made; whisky is notorious for its effect on the brain.  I tell you, I won’t run the risk.  I never was driven, and I never will be driven, by anybody but a sober man.”

“Must I go back to Dumfries by myself, sir?”