I will state right here that the decision I had come to about the money did not rasp my feelings in the slightest. I had read quite a few story-books in my time. If there was ever a case in the whole realm of fact and fiction where the final scene would show loving daughter clasped in adoring lover’s arms, and a benignant father raising his hands over them with “Bless-you-my-children” sentiment, my affair seemed to be triumphantly of that sort. Time, effort, and money—it all belonged in the family!
My heart glowed and my eyes grew moist and it was a wonder that I did not blurt out the whole thing to the judge—I felt so sure of him!
However, he had his own troubles to take up his mind pretty completely, I realized. There was no telling what might be happening back home, with my uncle Deck stirring things. If I had timed trains right, and nothing tipped upside down, we didn’t have much more than twenty-four hours’ leeway in Levant ahead of that town meeting. I asked the judge if the town notes were very widely scattered, and he told me they were not. He had picked special parties whom he could depend on to keep their mouths shut about their investment, and he felt pretty sure that they would hand back the notes in exchange for cash and would ask no questions and would keep still in the future.
“But I can’t eat and I can’t sleep,” he mourned, “not till I have those papers in my two hands!” He put up his crooked claws and worked them. “In my hands—all torn into ribbons—and then into the fire! Just think of it!” He croaked the words and shivered. “Papers—only a few papers! Scattered around town. Papers with ink-marks! Yet they can send me to State prison!”
No, that wasn’t the time to talk with the judge about being his partner or his son-in-law. But I did talk more with him in regard to plans for gathering in the notes quietly and quickly the moment we struck town. I had him give me the names so that I could help plan the campaign.
I knew them, of course. They were old tight-wads of farmers in the back districts who would endure lighted candles at their feet for a long time before they would leak any information about their money matters; there were some widows and old maids who didn’t know anything about money matters, anyway. The judge had picked well, I had to admit to myself. But there was a lot to do, a mighty short time to do it in, and it had got to be done with the delicate touch a bashful chap would use in picking a rose-leaf off a sleeping schoolmarm’s cheek.
Therefore, this was my suggestion to the judge: we’d slip off the train a station below Levant Comers, hire a hitch, and make our rounds of the town’s creditors in the back-lots before we showed up in Levant village.
That’s what we did.
The lengthened days of April gave us a full hour and a half of sunlight for our ride on our quest. Out of cupboards and long wallets and rosewood boxes the farmers and the old maids dutifully produced their town notes—“for the judge had called on.” They seemed to believe that his wish to call in the notes settled the matter beyond all question.
He became once more his dignified, calm, self-contained self, though I could see that it was only by exercise of all his will power.