"Yes, I own the brig."
"You lie!"
That he merely laughed, enraged me more than if he had hit me.
"You lie!" I repeated.
"Next," said he, "you'll be telling me that Seth Upham owned her."
"That I will, indeed, and it is a small part of what I'll be telling you."
"Well, he didn't."
The man's effrontery left me without words to retort.
"He didn't," Gleazen said again. "Him and I went into this deal share alike. Half to him and half to me and my partners. Ain't he dead? Well, then I keep my half and Molly, here, who is all the partner I've got left now, gets the other half. Ain't that plain? Of course it is. It would be plain enough if we'd got clear with the fortune that was ours by rights. And because we lost the fortune, it's all the plainer that we ought to get something for our trouble."
"But, Mr. Gleazen," Arnold interposed, "supposing there were a grain of truth in what you say,—which there isn't,—the rest of us, Joe and Abe and I, still have a sixth part in it all."