He smiled. "Are you surprised? A man does not tell all he knows."
As I looked him in the face, I wondered at him. Uncle Seth had come to rely upon him implicitly for far more than you can get from any ordinary clerk. Yet we really knew nothing at all about him. "A man does not tell all he knows"—He had held his tongue without a slip for all those years.
I saw him now in a new light. His face was keen, but more than keen. There was real wisdom in it. The quiet, confident dignity with which he always bore himself seemed suddenly to assume a new, deeper, more mysterious significance. Whatever the man might be, it was certain that he was no mere shopkeeper's clerk.
That afternoon Uncle Seth and Gleazen, the one strangely elated, the other more pompous and grand than ever, returned in the carriage. Of their errand, for the time being they said nothing.
Uncle Seth merely asked about Abe Guptil's note; and, when I answered him, impatiently grunted.
Poor Abe, I thought, and wondered what had come over my uncle.
In the evening, as we were finishing supper, Uncle Seth leaned back with a broad smile. "Joe, my lad," he said, "our fortunes are making. Great days are ahead. I can buy and sell the town of Topham now, but before we are through, Joe, I—or you with the money I shall leave you—can buy and sell the city of Boston—aye, or the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. There are great days ahead, Joe."
"But what," I asked, with fear at my heart, "but what is this great venture?"
Uncle Seth looked at me with a smile that expressed whatever power of affection was left in his hard old shell of a heart,—a meagre affection, yet, as far as it went, all centred upon me,—and revealed a great conceit of his own wisdom.