“Granfer, what sort of hold was it that Mr. Brunsen had over you, that you didn’t come back to the Lone House that time, but left me to get on as best I could with that horrid Mrs. Gunnage?” asked Nell.
The old man winced visibly, stirring uneasily on his hard shelf.
“That’s an old story now, and too long for the telling, seeing that I’m tired,” he answered.
But Nell meant to know if possible. “Was it anything about that old business between you and Logan and Mr. Brunsen?” she asked.
He gave a little start of surprise, and wriggled again.
“How did you know about that?” he demanded.
“Some one told me, and then I found a letter in your pocket from Mr. Brunsen, ordering you to pay him some money or he would expose you,” she said, not choosing to tell him that she had found some of Brunsen’s writing in her mother’s box also.
Doss Umpey wriggled, and his voice took on a protesting whine.
“The fact is, Brunsen thought I knew where Logan’s hoard was, but I didn’t, though I guessed it should be on Blue Bird Ridge somewhere, because his old mother lived there so long. I used to pay Brunsen money to keep quiet, because he’d got black-and-white evidence against me over a bit of business what happened a good few years before you were born. I’d got no money to pay, and I was obliged to raise a few dollars on the bits of things in your mother’s box. After that I couldn’t pay interest on the mortgage Joe Gunnage held on the Lone House, so he foreclosed, and I went to Brunsen to explain matters a bit, only to find that he’d just been made a fraudulent bankrupt, and had got to clear in a hurry. So we went together.”
“Leaving me to manage as best I could,” said Nell, bitterly.