"Catch him and make him shet his chops about this, if I have to spike his old jaws together."
"It ain't no use," said Hiram, gloomily, setting his shoulders against the door. "You'd only be makin' a show and spectacle in front of the wimmen. And after that they'd squat the whole thing out of him, the same as you'd squat stewed punkin through a sieve." He bored the Cap'n with inquiring eye. "You wasn't tellin' me that you held a morgidge on that tavern real estate." There was reproach in his tones.
"No, and you wasn't tellin' me that you had a bill of sale of the fixin's and furniture," replied the Cap'n with acerbity. "How much did you let him have?"
"Fifteen hunderd," said Hiram, rather shamefacedly, but he perked up a bit when he added: "There's three pretty fair hoss-kind."
"If there's anything about that place that's spavined any worse'n them hosses it's the bedsteads," snorted the other capitalist. "He's beat you by five hundred dollars. If you should pile that furniture in the yard and hang up a sign, 'Help yourself,' folks wouldn't haul it off without pay for truckin'."
"Le's see!" said Hiram, fingering his nose, "was it real money or Confederate scrip that you let him have on your morgidge?"
"Thutty-five hunderd ain't much on the most central piece of real estate in this village," declared the Cap'n, in stout defence.
"It's central, all right, but so is the stomach-ache," remarked Hiram, calmly. "What good is that land when there ain't been a buildin' built in this town for fifteen years, and no call for any? As for the house, I'll bet ye a ten-cent cigar I can go over there and push it down—and I ain't braggin' of my strength none, either."
The Cap'n did not venture to defend his investment further. He stared despondently through the window at the seamed roof and weather-worn walls that looked particularly forlorn and dilapidated on that gray March day.
"I let him have money on it when the trees was leaved out, and things look different then," he sighed.