“I reckon I could make you change your mind in just two minutes, if I should set about it,” said Sam, looking at Arthur in a way that made him shiver all over.
“How much do you want?”
“Well, five thousand dollars will do to start on!”
“Five thousand dollars!” gasped Arthur, who thought he would surely have fallen to the ground, if he had not placed his hand against the nearest tree to steady himself. “Why, I haven’t got five thousand cents to my name.”
“No, I suppose not,” replied Sam, indifferently. “Clerks, who sport such dry goods as you had on your back when you first came here, don’t generally have any loose change laying around. But your father’s got it. He must have twenty or thirty thousand dollars in that safe of his.”
“But he wouldn’t give any of it to me,” said Arthur, who was every moment growing more astonished and alarmed.
“Oh, I guess he would, if he knew all the circumstances,” answered the herdsman, significantly.
“But I don’t want him to know all the circumstances,” protested Arthur, quickly. “And what excuse can I make to him for demanding so large a sum of money?”
“That is a matter in which I am not at all interested. I don’t care how you get it, so long as you get it; and I fancy you will make up your mind to do it after you’ve had time to think the matter over.”
“No, I won’t,” said Arthur, his fears giving away to anger. “You had no right to ask it of me, and I shall make no effort to get it. I shouldn’t succeed if I did. You proposed this thing yourself, and did the work alone and unaided, and I—”