Mr. Hitt sat down in the darkest corner of the room, and glared at his embarrassed host. He was a huge old man, bent, heavily-built, with grizzled dark hair, black eyes, skin tanned to a mahogany brown, a heavy square under-jaw, and big leathery dew-laps on each side of it that looked as hard as the jaw itself. Brother Joash had been all things in his long life—sea-captain, commission merchant, speculator, slave-dealer even, people said—and all things to his profit. Of late years he had turned over his capital in money-lending, and people said that his great claw-like fingers had grown crooked with holding the tails of his mortgages.
A silence ensued. The pastor looked up and saw that Brother Joash had no intention of breaking it.
“Can I do any thing for you, Mr. Hitt?” inquired Mr. Pursly.
“Ya-as,” said the old man. “Ye kin. I b’leeve you gin’lly git sump’n’ over ’n’ above your sellery when you preach a fun’l sermon?”
“Well, Mr. Hitt, it—yes—it is customary.”
“How much?”
“The usual honorarium is—h’m—ten dollars.”
“The—whut?”
“The—the fee.”
“Will you write me one for ten dollars?”