"Well, I should think the store would be worth very nearly that, from what I know of it. It may not be so bad, after all."
But, when I told him that I had also given Jim a note for $3500.00 he persuaded me to go to see a lawyer in the morning, and promised that he would telephone to Boston to arrange with a jobber whom he knew and from whom I knew Jim Simpson bought goods, to send some one over to help me take an inventory.
CHAPTER IV.
IN TROUBLE
I spent a wretched night wondering if Jim, after all, would play such a dirty trick as to rob an old schoolmate.
Fellows telephoned me from his office and said that if I would come there, the lawyer was there and we could all talk the matter over together.
In ten minutes I knew the truth, I learned that the transfer was made properly to me and that I was responsible for that $3500.00, and, according to the deed of transfer which Jim gave me, the note for $3500.00 was payable on demand.
I told Barrington, the lawyer, that I'd swear the note was payable one year after date. He asked me, "Are you sure?"—and if he hadn't asked me that I would have been, but as it was I was wondering which it was. He asked me again, "Are you sure it isn't a payable-on-demand note?" I didn't know, and I didn't know Jim's address!
Barrington then said that the best thing to do was to get an inventory made as quickly as possible, and then try to get hold of Simpson and see if we couldn't adjust it with him.
"But," he said—and he looked at me very sternly—"if anything is done it will be purely because of his generosity or because of the fear we can instill into him. You are legally responsible for the $3500.00 and apparently it is payable on demand. How much is the farm worth on which you gave him a mortgage?"