"I've kept a pretty close run of it," said Tom shortly, "and I guess seventy-five cents will foot the bill. These weeds are three for a quarter, I suppose?"
"That's the price; but you owed me just four times seventy-five cents before you got these last three. There's your bill!"
Tom opened his eyes when he heard this. He picked up the paper that Prime tossed upon the show-case before him, and saw that, if the figures on it told the truth, he had smoked much oftener than he supposed.
"George," said he, as soon as he could speak, "I don't owe you three dollars."
"You owe me three dollars and a quarter, counting in the three you just got," was Prime's reply.
"I say I don't; and what's more to the point, I won't pay it. If you want to impose upon somebody and make him pay for cigars that you have smoked yourself, try some one else. You can't come it over me."
"You mean to repudiate your honest debts, do you?" said Prime hotly. "Well, I don't know that I ought to have expected anything else of you. A fellow who will associate with tramps and thieves, as you have done ever since you poked your meddlesome nose into Mount Airy, is capable of anything."
"Look here," said Tom, his face growing red and pale by turns. "Step out from behind the counter and say that again, will you?"
"I can talk just as well from where I stand," was Prime's answer; and then he clenched one of his hands and pounded lightly upon the top of the show-case while he looked fixedly at Tom. "Perhaps you think because you were in the woods when these things happened that the folks in Mount Airy don't know all about them," he went on.