Reaching Sebastian in the evening, he was going to the livery-stable to hire a team when he met an acquaintance who offered to drive him home. As the man would pass within a mile or two of Wandle’s homestead and there was a farm in the neighborhood where he might borrow a horse, Prescott agreed. His companion found him preoccupied during the journey. He put him down at a fork of the trail, and Prescott, walking on quickly through the darkness, saw Wandle’s team standing harnessed when he reached the house. This was a sign that their owner had recently come home, and Prescott, opening the door without knocking, abruptly entered the kitchen. The lamp was lighted and Wandle, standing near it with his fur-coat still on, looked startled. Prescott was sensible of a burning desire to grapple with him and extort a confession by force, but there was a risk of the crude method defeating its object, and with strong self-denial he determined to set to work prudently.
“I see you have just come in, and I’m anxious to get home, so I won’t keep you more than a few minutes,” he said.
“How did you come?” Wandle asked. “I didn’t hear a team.”
“Harper drove me out. I walked up the cross trail; but that doesn’t matter. The last time we had a talk we fell out over the straightening up of Jernyngham’s affairs.”
“That’s so; you still owe me a hundred dollars.”
“I don’t admit it,” said Prescott, who had laid his plans on the expectation of this claim being made. “Anyhow, the dispute has been dragging on and it’s time we put an end to it. It was the small items you wanted to charge Jernyngham with that I objected to, and I may have cut some of them down too hard. Suppose you write me out a list.”
“I can tell you them right away.”
“Put them down on paper; then we can figure them out more easily.”
“Don’t know if I’ve any ink,” said Wandle. “Haven’t you a notebook in your wallet? You used to carry one.”
Prescott made a mistake in putting his hand into his pocket, which showed that he had the book, but he remembered that it would not suit his purpose to produce it.