“Maybe somebody merely ran across to look at the blaze. But it's strange I did not see him,” thought Hiram.
He could not help being suspicious, however, and he prowled about the stacks and the barns more than ever at night. He could not shake off the feeling that the enemy in the dark was at work again.
January passed, and the fatal day—the tenth of February—drew nearer and nearer. If Pepper proposed to exercise his option he must do it on or before that date.
Neither Hiram nor Mrs. Atterson had seen the real estate man of late; but they had seen Mr. Strickland, and on the final day they drove to town to meet Pepper—if the man was going to show up—in the lawyer's office.
“I wouldn't trouble him, if I were you,” advised the lawyer. “But if you insist, I'll send over for him.”
“I want to know what he means by all this,” declared Mrs. Atterson, angrily. “He's kept me on tenter-hooks for ten months, and there ought to be some punishment for the crime.”
“I am afraid he has been within his rights,” said the lawyer, smiling; but he sent his clerk for the real estate man, probably being very well convinced of the outcome of the affair.
In came the snaky Mr. Pepper. The moment he saw Mrs. Atterson and Hiram he began to cackle.
“Ye don't mean to say you come clean in here this stormy day to try and sell that farm to me?” asked the real estate man. “No, ma'am! Not for no sixteen hundred dollars. If you'll take twelve——”
Mrs. Atterson could not find words to reply to him; and Hiram felt like seizing the scoundrel by the scruff of his neck and throwing him down to the street. But it was Mr. Strickland who interposed: