“Pshaw! Let go those reins,” said Ratcliff, cutting the vagabond over his face with the but-end of a riding-whip.
The crowd laughed, and the loafer, astonished and sobered, dropped the reins, and put his hand to his eye, which had been badly hit. Ratcliff rode on, but a muttered curse went after him.
Seeing the loafer stand feeling of his eye as if had been hurt, Vance said to him from the window: “Go to the apothecary’s, and tell him to give you something to bathe it in.”
“Go ter the ’pothecary’s! With nary a red in my pocket! Strannger, don’t try to fool this child.”
“Here’s money, if you want it.”
“Money? I should like ter see the color of it, strannger.”
“Hold your hat, then.”
And Vance dropped into the hat something wrapped in a newspaper which the loafer incredulously unfolded. Finding in it a five-dollar gold-piece, he stared first at the money, then at Vance, and said: “Strannger, I’d say, God bless yer, if I didn’t think, what a poor cuss like I could say would rayther harm than help. Haven’t no influence with God A’mighty, strannger. But you’re a man,—you air,—not a sneakin’ ’ristocrat as despises a poor white feller more ’n he does a nigger. I’ve seen yer somewhar afore, but can’t say whar.”
“Go and attend to your eye, my friend,” said Vance.
“I will. An’ if ever I kun do yer a good turn, jes call on——”