At noon next day, as I was waiting on customers in the front of the store, I saw a rider with full saddlebags pass, on a great black horse, and shortly afterwards I heard one of the customers remark that the horse was standing at the inn. Glancing out of the window, I saw that the rider had dismounted and was talking with Cornelius Gleazen; though the distance was considerable, Gleazen's bearing and the forward tilt of his beaver were unmistakable. When next I passed the window, I saw that Gleazen was posting down the road toward the store, with his beaver tipped even farther over his right eye, his cane swinging, and a bundle under his arm.
As I bowed the customers out, Gleazen entered the store, brushing past me with a nod, and loudly called, "Seth Upham! Seth Upham! Where are you?"
"Here I am. What's wanted?" my uncle testily retorted, as he emerged from a bin into which he had thrust his head and shoulders in his efforts to fill a peck measure.
"Come, come," cried Gleazen in his great, gruff voice. "Here's news!"
"News," returned my uncle, sharply; "news is no reason to scare a man out of a year's growth."
Neil Gleazen laughed loudly and gave my uncle a resounding slap on the back that made him writhe. "News, Seth, news is the key to fortune. Come, man, come, lay by your pettifogging. Here's papers just in by the post. You ain't going to let 'em lie no more than I am."
To my amazement,—I could never get used to it,—my uncle's resentment seemed to go like mist before the sun, and he said not a word against the boisterous roughness of the friend of his youth, although I almost believe that, if anyone else had dared to treat him so, he would have grained the man with a hayfork. Instead, he wiped his hands on his coarse apron and followed Gleazen to the desk, where they sat down in the two chairs that now were always behind it.
For a time they talked in voices so low that I heard nothing of their conversation; but after a while, as they became more and more absorbed in their business, their voices rose, and I perceived that Gleazen was reading aloud from the papers some advertisements in which he seemed especially interested.
"Here's this," he would cry. "Listen to this. If this ain't a good one, I'll miss my guess. 'Executor's sale, Ship Congress: on Saturday the 15th, at twelve o'clock, at the wharf of the late William Gray, Lynn Street, will be sold at public auction the ship Congress, built at Mattapoisett near New Bedford in the year 1823 and designed for the whale fishery. Measures 349 tons, is copper fastened and was copper sheathed over felt in London on the first voyage, and is in every respect a first-rate vessel. She has two suits of sails, chain and hemp cables, and is well found in the usual appurtenances. By order of the executors of the late William Gray, Whitewell, Bond and Company, Auctioneers.' There, Seth, there's a vessel for you, I'll warrant you."
My uncle murmured something that I could not hear; then Gleazen tipped his beaver back on his head—for once he had neglected to set it on the cracker-box—and hoarsely laughed. "Well, I'll be shot!" he roared. "How's a man to better himself, if he's so confounded cautious? Well, then, how's this: 'Marshal's Sale. United States of America, District of Massachusetts, Boston, August 31, 1826. Pursuant to a warrant from the Honorable John Davis, Judge of the District Court for the District aforesaid, I hereby give public notice that I shall sell at public auction on Wednesday the 8th day of September, at 12 o'clock noon, at Long Wharf, the schooner Caroline and Clara, libelled for wages by William Shipley, and the money arising from the sale to be paid into court. Samuel D. Hains, Marshal.' That'll come cheap, if cheap you'll have. But mark what I tell you, Seth, that what comes cheap, goes cheap. There's no good in it. It ain't as if you hadn't the money. The plan's mine, and I tell you, it's a good one, with three merry men waiting for us over yonder. Half's for you, a whole half, mind you; and half's to be divided amongst the rest of us. It don't pay to try to do things cheap. What with gear carried away and goods damaged, it don't pay."