“Of course it’s the sheriff, or some of them,” he said. “I supposed they’d come along to-day. Mr. Harrison told me that old Touron had given orders to foreclose immediately.”
“What do they do?” asked Chap, a little nervously. “Do they turn you right out, neck and heels?”
“All I know about it,” said Phil, “is that when a place has been mortgaged, and the money that ought to have been paid hasn’t been paid, the people that hold the mortgage have the matter closed up, and the sheriff sells you out. Then, if these money-lenders want your property, they buy it themselves; and after the sheriff takes out what is due to them, and all other expenses, he gives you what’s left. But as things sell awfully cheap at sheriff’s sales, there generally isn’t anything left. Uncle told me about these things, and that’s what I remember of it.”
Phil made this rather long speech as he was walking nervously about in the dining-room, waiting till the visitors should get out of the buggy and come to the house.
He did not feel at all like going out to meet them. Very soon there were steps on the porch, and then a knock on the door. In a few moments Susan came to Phil, and told him that two gentlemen wanted to see him in the parlor.
“Shall I come with you?” whispered Chap.
“No,” said Phil. “Perhaps you’d better not.”
He felt that he could better bear it alone, and resolutely, but with a fast-beating heart, he entered the parlor.
In five minutes more he rushed back into the dining-room, his eyes sparkling, his face glowing. Seizing Chap by the arm, he exclaimed,—
“It isn’t the sheriff at all! It’s two of the steamboat men from the city. They’ve come to pay us for running the Thomas Wistar ashore. What they say we have earned will more than pay the Tourons’ interest.”