FOR GOOD AND ALL
Now study the ways of the world, my son; oh, study the ways of life!
It’s the hustling chap that gets the cash or the girl he wants for his
wife;
It’s the fellow that spots the place to grab, as Chance goes swinging
by,
Who gets his dab in the juiciest place and the biggest plum in the
pie.
--Philosophy of S. Peak.
It was almost the first of the warming days of April. Muddy little
brooks ran beside the highway, robins bounced along the turf, the waves
in the Cove sparkled in the mellow sunshine, and the silver poplars in
the Look dooryard bristled with catkins as long as one’s finger. One of
them dropped lightly upon the knee of the abstracted Hiram Look, sitting
in his chair on the porch, and he jumped and cuffed it, thinking it was
a green worm.
“First spring I’ve seen them things for a good many years,” he growled,
squinting up into the branches. “For that matter, it’s the first spring
I’ve seen a good many things,” he added bitterly. He slouched down in
his chair, his hat-brim low over his eyes, smoked his long cigar and
watched the approach of Simon Peak, who was picking his way up the muddy
road.
“There’s thirty-seven of ’em to-day, Hime,” said Simon, tossing a
packet of letters into the showman’s lap. “Some of ’em’s fat, and
there ought to be con-sid’able good readin’ for us.” He licked his lips
expectantly.
Hiram joggled down the contents of an envelope and nipped off the edge
with broad nails. He passed the contents over to Peak, who fixed his
spectacles on his nose and promptly began to read aloud, his general air
showing that this was a regular daily programme.
****
“‘Look & Peak--Gents: Seeing your ad. respecting show you are going to
start out with in near future, I would like side-show privilege for my
wife, who is the celebrated Fat Emma, with beard two feet long. She----
“Nothing to it!” growled Hiram, breaking in with disgust. “Tear it up.”
“But there’s some kind of funny stuff about her here,” appealed Simon,
running his eye down the page. “It makes good readin’.”
“Frame it, then, if you want to,” retorted the showman gruffly. “I don’t
want to listen to no such sculch.” He was nipping at the edge of another
envelope.
Simon took advantage of the pause.
“I see your brother steppin’ into Judge Willard’s office same as usual
this noon,” he said.
“He can step into Tophet three times a day and fry steak if he wants
to,” snapped Hiram ungraciously.
“Well, you asked me to keep tabs on him when I see him go in there, and
I’m doin’ it, ain’t I? I don’t see no need of yappin’ my head off when
I’m tellin’ you what you wanted me to tell you.” Simon was plainly
indignant.
“You show altogether too much relish for stickin’ your nose into other
folks’ bus’ness,” said Hiram, still in bad temper.
“You’re gittin’ to be wusser’n a quill-pig to live with,” Simon flung
back. “I don’t git more’n two decent words out of you from one day’s end
to another. I ain’t no husk door-mat for you to wipe your feet on, even
if I am poor and you’ve got your old forty thousand in the bank.”
“You go ahead with your readin’,” barked Hiram, slapping open a letter.
“You want to get so that you can unpin that mouth o’ your’n without
saying forty thousand dollars ev’ry time, or I may stick my fist down
your gullet some day.”
The giant read on sullenly.
“‘Messers. Look & Peak---------’”
“‘Gentlemen Sirs!’” thundered Hiram. “Ain’t I told you more’n five
hundred times how to read that? We ain’t ‘_Messers_.’”
Peak surveyed the tyrant with baleful gaze and started to read again.
While they were absorbed in their quarrel a woman had come tip-toeing
up the street past the muddy spots, and now she stood in front of the
porch--a thin, wiry, alert woman. Her voice startled them. She tripped
a few steps nearer and curtsied with extravagant politeness. Both arose
and doffed their plug hats before they saw her face. She tossed her head
to throw back a draggly plume that rested against her rouged cheek and
stared at them.
“You don’t hold your ages as well as I do, boys,” she commented
flippantly.
“It’s the old army game, gents,” squalled the parrot from his cage
overhead, excited by this new arrival, gay in colours and ribbons.
“It’s _her!_” gasped Hiram.
“It’s Signory Rosy-elly!” choked the giant.
She came up and sat down beside them sociably in one of the porch
chairs.
“Honest, boys, it was some time before I could place those names,” she
chattered. “‘Look & Peak’s Consolidated Aggregation,’ says I to myself.
‘Look & Peak,’ I says. And, thinks I, them two old codgers must have
gone to Kingdom Come. ‘Look & Peak,’ says I,” she went on cheerfully,
oblivious of the grim stares. “It’s their sons, I says, and so I come
right along, for I need the job.”
“Didn’t that ad. say,” demanded Hiram, “that there wa’n’t goin’ to be no
personal interviews till later arranged for?”
She poked each in turn with her parasol, “Oh, I knew if it was their
boys I’d be taken on after I’d explained the romantic part, which I
couldn’t do in a letter. But I don’t have to tell _you_, boys.” She
poked them jocosely again.
“A little old, you say?”
They had not spoken.
“Why, not a bit of it for a jay-town circuit. Of course, it isn’t
a three-ringer job for me any more, or else I wouldn’t be down here
talking to Look & Peak. But I’m still good for it all--rings, banners,
hurdles, rump-cling gallop, and the blazing hoop for the wind-up. You
know what I can do, boys. Remember old times. Take me on for old times’
sake.” She gave each one the leer of the faded coquette.
Hiram was the first to recover, for the edge of his regret had been
dulled by the long course of treatment he had received from Simon. This
worn-out creature completed the job.
“Ain’t you ashamed to face us two?” he rasped. “You that run away from
_me_ and ruined _him?_”
“My sakes!” she cried. “You ain’t so unprofessional as to remember all
that silliness against me, are you? I was only a girl then, and you
couldn’t expect me to love you--either of you. I’m a poor widow now,”
she sighed, “and I need work. You don’t mean to say that you’ve been
layin’ up grudges against me all these years--the two of you? What would
your wives have said?”
“We never got married,” returned Look and Peak in mournful duet.
“You’re lucky!” she snapped. “I married a cheap, worthless renegade,
and he stole my money and ran away. He fell off a trapeze and broke his
neck, and I was glad of it.”
“So’m I,” grunted Hiram, casting a soulful glance at Simon. “No, I
ain’t, either,” he corrected himself hastily. “I’m sorry he didn’t live
to torment you. No,” he roared, “I ain’t sorry for anything, except it
was poor Sime Peak’s money the two of you got away with.”
Peak sighed.
“But I want to say to you, Signory Rosy-elly,” went on Hiram, tipping
his hat to one side and hooking his thumb into the armhole of his vest,
“it wa’n’t _my_ money you got, and it never will be my money you’ll get.
You just made the mistake of your life when you run away from me, and
you can chew that cud for the rest of your life.”
“He’s got forty thousand dollars in the bank,” hoarsely whispered Simon
behind his hand, willing to add his mite to her discomfiture.
“Correct!” agreed Hiram. It was really a moment worth waiting for
through the years, he reflected.
“Twenty can play as well as one,” croaked the parrot, his beady eye
pressed between the bars of his cage.
The signora glanced up at this new speaker, eyed Absalom with a sage
look that he seemed to return, and, after a moment of thought, said:
“Thanks for the suggestion, old chap! Three can play as well as two.
Now, Look, you know that I’m always outspoken and straight to the point.
No tinderhanded bluff for me. I’m going to sue you for ten thousand!”
“Crack ’em down, gents!” remarked Absalom with grim patness.
Hiram could not resist casting a malevolent stare at the unconscious
humourist in the cage.
For one startled moment he stared at the woman in fear, and then,
recovering composure, tilted his cigar in the corner of his mouth with
cocky assurance.
“I want to know,” he blurted sarcastically. “Breach of promise, I
_per_-sume?”
“Good aim! You’ve rung the bell!” replied the lady coolly.
The impudence of the bare suggestion fetched a gasp from both men.
Hiram was striving to be haughtily indifferent and disdainful. But this
thrust was too much for his composure. He felt one of those old-time
fits of rage come bristling up the back of his head, the fury of old,
when he had tried to wither that same giddy creature in his spasms of
jealousy.
But she broke in on him with the same icy assurance that used to put him
out of countenance.
“I know all that, Look. But how are you going to prove that I’ve been
married? Where are you going to hunt for witnesses? Professional people
are like wild geese--roosting on air and moulting their names like
feathers. You two are going to seem like a couple of old frauds standing
up in court against me! You haven’t got the first elements of acting to
you! Observe how I take my cue! Jury a-listening! I’ve been hunting the
world over for you. You hid here. Here I find you--I, a poor, deserted
woman, whose life has been wrecked by your faithlessness. Me with a
crape veil, a sniff in my nose, crushed-creature face make-up and a
smart lawyer, such as I have in mind this very minute. And the jury
knowing that you’ve got the money! Why, Look, you can save thousands by
handing me your bankbook!”
In his fury Hiram grabbed her chair and tipped it forward violently in
order to dump her off his sacred porch. She flew out into space with
a flutter of skirts, landed as lightly as a cat, and pirouetted on one
toe, crooking her arms in the professional pose that invites applause.
“This is the first time Signora Rosyelli, champion bareback rider, ever
tried to ride a mule,” she chirped, “but you see she can do it and make
her graceful dismount to the music of the band. I’ll be at the tavern
down here two days, ready to listen to any kind of talk that combines
pleasure and profit. After that you take your own chances.”
She tossed to each of them a kiss from her finger-tips and went
switching jauntily down the road.
“That beats Tophet and repeat!” remarked Simon after a time. He had
watched her nearly out of sight.
Hiram held his peace.
“What are you goin’ to do?” his friend inquired falteringly at last.
“Fight her!” roared Hiram, leaping to his feet and striding up and down
the porch. “Fight her clear’n to the high, consolidated Supreme Court
aggregation of the United States, or whatever they call it!”
“Nobody has ever beat her out yit, except Delly-bunko, and we ain’t in
his class,” sighed Simon, with much despondency.
“You don’t think, do you, that I’m goin’ to set down and lap my thumb
and finger and peel her off ten thousand dollars?’”
“Well, it’s lucky that you’ve got a brother that’s the smartest lawyer
in the county,” said Peak, with an attempt at consolation. “He has
showed that much out pretty plain, even to me. I never see him manage
anywhere, except in town meetin’, but I----”
Hiram had been sunk in reverie, but this unfortunate remark brought him
out of it.
“Hain’t I told you never to mention my brother to me except when I ask
you to?” he demanded fiercely. “I don’t want any man that I ain’t spoke
to for four weeks slung into my face. Hain’t I goin’ to take to the ro’d
again to get rid of him? If he was the last lawyer on God’s footstool he
couldn’t take a case for me.”
He resumed his striding.
“Why don’t you and she git married, and we’ll all live here happy ever
after?” suggested Peak, wistfully, following a period of pondering. “If
it was in a book it would end off like that--sure pop!”
“Well, there ain’t no book to this, not by a dum-sight!” replied Hiram
tartly.
“But it would settle one thing, and you ain’t hitched up in any other
direction,” persisted Simon stubbornly, yet warily. Hiram’s renewed
visits up country since he had so definitely and precipitately retired
from town affairs in Palermo had again been stirring the jealous fears
of the anxious old “grafter.” He feared the widow Abilene Snell with the
fear of the bird that sees the hunter approaching its nest.
“I thought I told you never to twit me on that point again,” snarled
Hiram, trying to be calm.
“I ain’t twittin’,” expostulated Simon. “If you hadn’t got so touchy
lately you would see that I ain’t twittin’. But if you ain’t no idee of
gittin’ married up country, why, you----”
“You--shet--up!” shouted Hiram, with a wag of his head for each word.
Long silence followed.
“So you’re bound to go to court?” asked Peak, recovering courage when he
saw Hiram peering at him wistfully, as though seeking encouragement.
“Low court--high court--clear’n to the ridge-pole---clear’n to the
cupoly, and then I’ll shin the weather-vane with the Star-Spangled
Banner of justice between my teeth.” He slapped his hand on his knee.
“I heard a breach of promise trial once, a long time ago,” related
Simon, half closing his eyes in reminiscence. “Of course this ain’t
nothin’ to do with you and your case, but I can’t help sayin’ that that
trial was the funniest thing I ever heard. I never laughed so hard in my
life. It beat a show, that trial did. ’Twas all of twenty years ago,
and I’ll bet the people down there laugh yet when they see that feller
walk along the street. Them letters he wrote was----Is there letters in
your case, Hiram?”
He turned an innocent gaze on the showman.
Hiram mopped his face.
“I--I b’lieve there was,” he faltered. “She flung out somethin’ about
havin’ ’em now. Mebbe she has. A cussed woman never loses anything
that you want her to.”
“Oh, prob’ly your letters ain’t like his letters,” continued Simon,
trying to console. “You’ve got sense about such things.
“But I remember that them letters that that feller wrote was certainly
the squashiest--why, ev’ry one of ‘em seemed to woggle jest like a
tumbler of jelly--sweet and sloppy, as you might say. It bein’ so long
ago when you wrote to her, I don’t suppose you remember just what you
wrote, do you?”
His stare was still full of innocence.
Hiram was sitting looking down into a knot-hole, a hot flush crawling
up from under his collar. He took off his plug hat and scuffed his wrist
across his steaming forehead.
“But prob’ly yours was all good sense,” Simon went on. “Why, there was
men lugged right out of that court-room in hysterics, and had to be
pounded on the back by dep’ty sheriffs to bring ’em to. I remember
one letter called her ‘Ittikins, Pittikins, Popsy Sweet,’ and she was
settin’ there in the court-room with a face on her sourer’n a dill
pickle. Thought I’d die a-laughin’! Of course you didn’t git no such
sculch as that into your letters, and so the trial won’t be funny. But
you bein’ so prominunt now and havin’ forty thousand in the bank, and
bein’ known to a good many people ’round up country since Imogene’s
scrape there took you out amongst folks----”
Hiram couldn’t detect any hidden meaning in Simon’s guileless mien
and reference to “up country,” and though he stared hard, he did not
interrupt. “As I say, bein’ now, as you might call it, a solid citizen,
it will certainly tickle folks somethin’ tremendous if there is any such
mushiness in your trial.”
A student in physiognomy might have read that memory was playing havoc
with Hiram Look’s resolution.
“I was tryin’ to think,” went on Peak, knuckling his forehead, “what it
was that the signory was tellin’ me that time when she rode away with
me. She’s such a liar that there ain’t no tellin’ nothin’ by what she
says, but it seems to me she told me that you called her something like
‘Sweety-tweety’ or ‘Tweeny-weeny girlikins’--somethin’ like that. She
lied, prob’ly, and of course you’d never put anything like that into a
letter. How them newspapers do like to string out things--funny kind
of things--when a man is prominunt and has got money in the bank! Folks
can’t help laughin’--they jest nat’rally can’t, Hime! There you’ll be
settin’ in that court-room lookin’ ugly as a gibcat, and her lawyer’ll
be readin’ them letters with that kind of sassy----”
Hiram got up, kicked his chair off the porch, and in rage that he
couldn’t control he shook his fist under Peak’s nose.
“Twit me another word--just one other word--and I’ll drive that old nose
of your’n clear’n up into the roof of your head!”
He stumped away around the corner of the house and disappeared in the
barn.
“If the Court ain’t mistook,” soliloquised Simon, settling himself into
a more comfortable position in his chair, “Hime Look has got at least
three elephants on his hands now. He’s got one out there in the barn
with him that eats hay, one down to the tavern that eats money, and one
up country that will eat him, if he don’t look out.” Then he spread his
handkerchief over his face and went to sleep.
Hiram waked him up an hour or so later.
“Sime,” he said humbly, “I’ve been out there set-tin’ down on the hay
and rememberin’ back about what I wrote to her--and it’s all of it
pretty clear in my mind, ’cause I never wrote love letters to any one
else. And I can’t face it. I can’t set in court and hear it. I couldn’t
ever face any one that knowed me here or elsewhere.
“I couldn’t start on the ro’d with a circus and have the nerve to stand
in front of the big tent after it and bark like I used to. There’d be
somebody there a-knowin’ to it, and they’d grin me out of bus’ness. I’d
be backed into the stall. No, I can’t do it. If I git to talkin’ with
her again there’ll be murder done. It can’t be known that I’m havin’ any
truck with her. I can’t ever see her again. You got to go down, Sime,
and see what she’ll compromise for.”
“It has got to be compromised, has it?” asked the other earnestly. A
little gleam in his eye showed that he had something on his mind--a
doubt that he wanted to satisfy at last.
“Now the only way for us to go into this thing, Hime,” he said, “is
for both of us to be square and open. Don’t you yap out at me that I’m
nosin’ into your bus’ness or tryin’ to twit. But if you want this whole
thing fixed up secret, so that--so that--” he gulped--“so that your
widder up country won’t get track of it, then it’s only right for you to
tell me whuther your intentions up that way is serious.”
For a little while Hiram scowled at his companion in perfectly fiendish
manner.
“You talk about bein’ persistent!” he growled. “Talk about a bull-dog
hangin’ to a tramp’s leg! For four months conversation between us ain’t
ever took a turn but what you’ve tried to get your little gimlet into
me. Now ’cause you’ve got me into a corner you’re out with an auger.
Well, I’ll tell you, dum blast ye! I’m courtin’ Mis’ Snell, and I’m
goin’ to have her if she’ll have me. There! Chaw on that gumdrop a
while!”
The showman glared at Peak and the latter shifted his gaze.
“Much obliged,” he said. “There’s nothin’ like having straight facts to
go on.”
He clapped his hat hard onto his head with a hollow tunk.
“What’s the final instructions?” he inquired.
“Nothin’ but to settle it as cheap as you can and shet her blasted
mouth,” returned Hiram, setting his elbows on his knees and looking
again into the knot-hole.
If he had changed his steady gaze from the knothole two hours later, it
was not apparent to Simon Peak when he returned.
“I wrassled with her, Hime, just as tough and tight as though it was
my own money that I was handlin’. If I done it right or not I donno. I
ain’t ever been used to talkin’ about so much money before. But I’ve got
her beat down to,” he drew a long breath, “sixty-six hundred, and
she swears she won’t take a cent less. You know how set she gits on a
thing!”
Hiram bored him suspiciously with his eye for a moment and snarled:
“It sounds to me as though she was goin’ to get five thousand and you
was pers’nally lookin’ after your little old sixteen hundred.”
A couple of tears squeezed out and down over the giant’s flabby cheeks.
“There ain’t a day passed since you got back from up country, Hime, but
what you’ve misjudged me some way, somehow. You misjudged me years ago.
You’re doin’ it this minit. And it’s all on account of some missabul
woman that I’m misjudged. I wish they was all in----”
His voice broke here and he turned away.
Sudden contrition, and as sudden fear that Peak, offended, might desert
him in his need, assailed Hiram.
“I ain’t responsible for what I’m sayin’ to-day, Sime,” he pleaded. “You
know what has happened to stir me up. I’ve been stirred up all my life,
somehow. You’ll have to overlook it in me. There ain’t nobody I ever
got along with better’n I have with you--when all is said. I’ll show
you later that I appreciate it, too. We’ll get along together all right
after this. All is, you must see me through and keep her mouth plugged.”
Then the two tall hats bent together in earnest conference.
That evening one of Hiram Look’s horses, hitched to Hiram’s best
carriage, pranced up to the door of Fyles’ tavern, and the thin woman
hopped in lightly, snuggled herself down beside Simon Peak, and away
they went.
In Simon’s inside pocket was one of Hiram’s bankbooks showing deposits
of a generous amount in one of the savings banks at the county shire.
Between its leaves was tucked an order signed by Hiram Look, and
directing that money should be paid over to Simon Peak, who would be
identified by one of the showman’s friends in the city. There were
blank spaces in the order for the insertion of the amount of money to be
drawn.
“I’m going to show you what I think of you, Sime,” Hiram had declared in
a burst of enthusiasm. “You said I misjudged you. Well, here’s showin’
you that I ain’t. I’m goin’ to leave that order blank ’cause I believe
in you. I’ll bet you’re friend enough of mine to beat her down another
notch. I’ll bet you can do it. Fill in the amount and draw when it’s
settled. Stay till you get them letters, put her on a train and come
back, and I’ll show ye that Hime Look appreciates a friend in need.”
It was a piece of impulsiveness that worried the showman considerably
during the next day or two, as he sat watching for the head of the gray
horse to come bobbing around the alders. His hard life had taught him to
distrust men’s honesty and faith. He wondered as he sat there what had
influenced him to put so much trust in Peak on the spur of the moment.
“It’s on account of gittin’ softened up by women, that’s what it is,”
he grunted in soliloquy. “There I was with a tin can tied to my tail and
runnin’ around in a circle and afraid of the two of ’em. No, I ain’t
afraid of Abby Snell! But it’s wuth more than one five thousand dollars
to keep it away from her that I ever fell in love with a circus woman
and wrote such letters as----”
Again the red flush came up from under his collar.
“Yes, I have trusted Sime,” he would mumble aloud, after he had stared
at the corner of the alders until his eye ached. “I’ve trusted him, I
say! But when your old neighbours and your own brother skins you, then
it’s time to turn to strangers and get used white. It’s your own folks
that do you the wust--it allus has been so, it prob’ly allus will be
so. But---I could go to the shire and ’tend to that bus’ness and crawl
back on my hands and knees before this. She was a-goin’ to telegraft for
them letters, cuss her!”
On the third day, when “Figger-Four” Avery bobbed back from the
post-office with the mail, there was a thick packet among the letters
that Hiram opened first with trembling fingers, for he had recognised
Simon Peak’s handwriting.
It was the letter wrapped around the bankbook that Hiram tackled first.
He skimmed it with his one eye bulging like a rabbit’s. It was in a way
an apologetic letter, and yet it was flavoured with a note of complaint.
Simon Peak went on to state that he had thought it all over prayerfully.
Each time that a woman had come into their affairs he had been
misjudged. Now that his suspicions as to the up-country widow had
been confirmed, he could plainly see that he would sooner or later be
misjudged again and, being old, he could not endure any more griefs of
the sort, seeing that Hiram was his best and his only friend. He was too
tender-hearted to stand it--and, besides, he had heard that the
widow was neater than wax and smarter than a hornet, and under her
administration spittoons and general freedom would have to be abandoned.
Moreover, he believed that the conscience of Signora Rosyelli had
troubled her ever since the episode of the sixteen hundred dollars.
Furthermore, letting her have all that money to go away with and do with
as she liked wouldn’t be the retribution that she deserved. It was too
much money for a woman to handle----
Hiram yanked open the bankbook and glared at the balance. There had been
a withdrawal of ten thousand dollars.
In the more crucial moments of his life Hiram Look had frequently
refrained from anathema. Some situations were made too matter-of-fact by
cursing. Now he stood up, shoved his arms above his head, gulped a half
a dozen times, blew out his breath with a “Poof!” and sat down again.
After wiping his forehead with the flat of his hand he went on with the
letter.
Simon apologised for having overstepped the first estimates, but
explained that he had acted thus for reasons that must appeal to Hiram.
The sum was sufficient to make the signora want to stick to him, and
that would keep her away from Hiram. He had destroyed the letters and
buttoned the money into his inside pocket, and told her if she wanted
to enjoy any of it she must marry him. He said that as her husband he
should control affairs absolutely. The writer pointed out that this was
real retribution to such a woman, and he assured Hiram that he would
always strive to make her realise her position daily and hourly. Under
such circumstances the small extra amount that he had taken was moderate
salary indeed for the services he was rendering an old friend, and he
trusted that Hiram would hereafter enjoy life, knowing that a woman who
had betrayed him was getting punished for her infidelity.
The postscript stated that he had kept the team as a wedding present,
and they were going to do the gift-sale graft at fairs from the
carriage--having now the necessary capital. With deep regard for him and
all inquiring friends, they were, etc.
Hiram’s eye at last found the knot-hole in the platform, and he sat with
his elbows on his knees and regarded it for a long time. At first his
face was ridged and knotted with fury that his moving lips could not
express. Then there came grief in the puckers around his mouth--the
grief of a man who felt that the whole world was against him.
He, sitting there--he who had not dared to meet the grinning voters
of Palermo since that town meeting, the man who now held this riddled
bankbook and that unspeakable letter crumpled in his grasp was the same
man who had boasted that no one had ever “done” him!
He pulled off his tall hat in order to wipe his damp forehead.
He regarded its fuzzy nap with growing malevolence. Somehow, it seemed
to suggest the braggart, the showman, grafting women, Simon Peaks and
the atmosphere of tricksters. He set it upon the platform, stamped it
into shapelessness, and then kicked it with all his might. It landed in
the top of the lilac bush.
“Crack ’em down, gents!” squalled the parrot excitedly. He had been
watching his master with solicitude for many hours, and this sudden
activity reassured him.
Hiram glanced up at Absalom with a vindictiveness that should have
warned the bird, and then sat down in his chair. He turned over Simon’s
letter, flattened it on his bankbook, and began to write on the surface
with a stubby lead pencil that he had licked carefully:
“For Sale--One band waggon, one swan chariot, three lion cages, one
round-top----”
He was interrupted.
Squire Phin came up the little path from the road and took a seat on the
porch.
Hiram bent his brows in a scowl and looked at him, pencil poised above
the paper.
“I’ll make my business brief, brother,” said the lawyer, with a wistful
humility that pricked Hiram a bit, despite his rancour. “I realise how
you feel toward me, and I have not come upon your porch without good
reason. You may not have noticed that I have been away for a day or two,
for you haven’t been very much interested in my movements for some time.
But I have been absent. I’ve been at the shire on some law business.
“One of my friends who is a trustee in the Union Savings Bank mentioned
to me that one Simon Peak, accompanied by a strange woman, had drawn ten
thousand dollars on your order, after having been identified by one
of the traders near by. I was inter-: ested enough to want to see that
order, and----”
“Say, ain’t I got any bus’ness of any kind that I can ’tend to myself
without some one pokin’ in their nose?” demanded Hiram with fury.
“I plead guilty to being a meddler, Hiram,” returned the Squire calmly.
“But I’ve taken the chances. I figured you could not dislike me any more
for doing this than you did before. And whatever else we are, you are my
brother, and Simon Peak is a man of whom I have always been distrustful.
I saw that the amount in the order had been filled in by some one else
than yourself. I didn’t know then what deal you could have with Peak. I
don’t know now, for I didn’t believe a word of the yarn he told me---but
the amount of the matter is, Hiram, I took measures to have Peak and his
companion followed and apprehended. I interviewed them privately; I made
them disgorge, and here is your money--all except a couple of hundred
dollars. I gave them that much and the team so that they could get out
of the State and not annoy you any more. You’ll not see them again. I
told them that I’d put the two of them into State prison as blackmailers
if they showed up here.”
He laid a thick wallet upon his brother’s lap.
“If I have meddled in your affairs, brother, forgive me. But I couldn’t
stand by and see two thieves run away with what you have worked so hard
to earn.”
Hiram fumbled at the package a moment and then banged it down on the
platform, his face working with emotion whose nature was not easily to
be determined.
“Just one moment, Hiram, before you reproach me,” said the Squire
hastily. “Wait! Not a word’ from you now! I’m going to take advantage of
this opportunity and be honest with you. You were right that day in town
meeting, brother. If in everything in this world we must hew to the line
of justice, you were right that day. But I tell you, Hiram, you and I
both have seen that it isn’t always safe to hew to the line. I stood
there fighting for the financial peace and confidence of our little
town, but most of all for the woman I love, and when you got in the way
I struck you. That’s the truth of it, brother. And I’m afraid I’d do it
again, Hiram, for you can’t expect the perfect man to come out of the
Look family. The only thing I can promise you, brother, is to be honest
with you, and I am that--square with you through thick and thin, and I
will always be that. But you have got to keep your hands off my
treasures---and you know what they are!”
He held out his open palm and smiled.
“Can’t you take my hand on that, brother Hiram?”
“I’ve got just a little favour to ask of you, Phin,” said Hiram, his
hands still at his side. “I want you to leave me here on this porch ten
minutes so that I can get fit to grip your hand. I can do a good deal
of helpful thinkin’ in ten minutes, Phin. And when I come ’round the
corner of that house, boy, it will be the differentest man you ever see.
And I want you to put out your hand and shake just as if I was home for
the first time after all those years--and I guess that’s the fact of the
case, brother.”
When the Squire, with head bowed and with a smile on his lips, reached
the corner of the house Hiram hailed him. There was such a queer note in
his brother’s voice that the lawyer whirled in some astonishment.
Hiram stood, the points of his long moustache tightly gripped in one
hand under his chin, as though he were trying to pull down the corners
of his lips that were spreading into a broader and rather foolish smile.
“I just wanted to warn you, Phin,” he chuckled, “that I’ve got a little
something in the way of--of---well, as you said, ‘treasures’ to talk
about.”
“Treasures!” repeated the lawyer, wonderingly.
“Well, that’s what she is!” blurted Hiram. “And you don’t ever have to
apologise for what you did to me. I know how it is. I’ve got a critter
to walk over in the same way.” And with this enigmatic statement he
waved a hand at his brother and went back to his chair.
He began to frown again as he wrote.
“It’s goin’ to be a clean sale,” he muttered. “I don’t never in all my
life want to see a circus, hear of a circus, talk with a circus man----”
The parrot hooked his beak around a wire and rattled away jovially:
“Crack ’em down, gents!” he shrieked.
Hiram shot an angry glance and an oath at the cage.
“No, sir, never! They may molasses ye over at first, but it’s only to
make ye easier to swaller. Own folks don’t do that. You know just where
to find ’em, there’s that much about ’em. It’s goin’ to be a clean
sale. Think of it--me a man that has been through it all from A to Z
being held up by----”
“Twenty can play it as well as one!” remarked the parrot.
It was a hideous scowl that Hiram flashed up.
“Not only trimmin’ me, but makin’ me run the risk of goin’ to court and
havin’ it trailed out from Clew to Erie!”
“It’s the old army game, gents!” the parrot squalled. His tone was
nerve-racking.
Hiram rose, yanked the bottom out of the cage, caught the squawking bird
after considerable damage to a forefinger, wrung his neck, walked down
to the road, and flung him far over the opposite stone wall. When he
came back he caught the battered hat from the top of the lilac bush and
sent it after the deceased Absalom.
Then, sucking his bleeding finger at intervals, he went on writing his
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