"It's true all the same. I'll take my oath on the biggest Bible you can find in town."
"Your oath? Pshaw!"
"Well, I always said my word was better," observed Wherry, without the slightest appearance of offence. He wore a pink shirt which set off his fine colouring to advantage, and as he turned aside to pour out a second drink of whiskey, Ordway noticed that his fair hair was brushed carefully across the bald spot in the centre of his head.
"Whether they are dead or alive," responded Ordway, "I want you to understand plainly that you are to give up your designs upon Milly Trend or her money."
"So you've had your eye on her yourself?" exclaimed Wherry. "I declare I'm deuced sorry. Why, in thunder, didn't you tell me so last June?"
A mental nausea that was almost like a physical spasm seized Ordway suddenly, and crossing to the window, he stood looking through the half-closed shutters down into the street below, where a covered wagon rolled slowly downhill, the driver following on foot as he offered a bunch of fowls to the shop-keepers upon the sidewalk. Then the hot, stale, tobacco impregnated air came up to his nostrils, and he turned away with a sensation of disgust.
"If you'd only warned me in time—hang it—I'd have cut out and given you the field," declared Wherry in such apparent sincerity that Ordway resisted an impulse to kick him out into the hall. "That's my way. I always like to play fair and square when I get the chance."
"Well, you've got the chance now, and what's more you've got to make it good."
"And leave you the open?"
"And leave me Tappahannock—yes."