“Touch a match to them, sir,” he told me. “You are entitled to do it. We will watch them burn. I signed them as town treasurer. One of them would put me into prison. Hurry! Set the match to them!” And I obeyed.
Then, almost before the red embers were dark, he dove his hands into the ashes of the papers and scrufled them about and out of him came the most dreadful cackle of laughter I ever heard.
I was anxious to end that scene as quickly as I could. I pulled a packet from my coat and laid it on the table; I tapped my finger on it to get his attention.
“Here is something I have held out, Judge Kingsley,”
I informed him. “There’s a thousand dollars tied up in this paper. Five hundred of it I accepted from Dodo-vah Vose, agreeing to put him in right in our speculation. I took it when I started West.”
In spite of his emotion the old judge’s business sense flared just as the fire had flared in the tray a moment before.
“But there was no speculation—there was no business deal! Why did you take money in that way?”
“I had special reasons of my own, sir.”
“But you had no right—it was a private affair—it—”
“And I also had reasons of your own to consider, sir,” I broke in. “Mr. Vose asked me to invest for him. I wanted your name to stand well after we were gone. I was under obligations to Mr. Vose and when I told him we had a big deal on I could give him no good reason why I would not turn a little profit his way. That’s why the man Bailey is so sure that your credit is now good. You’ll find that the news has gone all about the section—”