“No; he only wants to get him into our school next winter.”
“Ho! a schoolmaster!” whispered Phin, jeering at the new-comer. “Say, Jack! I bet we can lick him!”
“Don’t look as if he had any more backbone ’n a spring chicken,” was Mr. Pipkin’s unfavorable criticism, as the gaunt and limping squire came to the door with his young relative.
“Good afternoon, neighbor,” said the deacon, shaking hands first with the uncle, then with the nephew. “You’ve come just at the right time. We’ve a legal question to settle. Suppose Jack, here, finds a purse of money on my place; no owner turns up; now whose purse is it, Jack’s or mine?”
“Your land—your hired boy—I should say, your purse,” said the squire, emphatically.
“But suppose you find such a purse on my land?”
“H’m! that alters the case. How is it, Byron? My nephew is studying law; he can tell you better than I can about it.”
Peternot thought this a good chance to bring the candidate for the winter’s school into favorable notice; and the candidate for the winter’s school made the most of his opportunity. He was a slender young man with a sallow complexion, a greenish eye, a pimpled forehead, and a rather awkward and studied manner of speaking. In rendering his opinion he was as prolix as any judge on the bench. He began with a disquisition on the nature of law, and finally, coming down to the case in point, said it would be considered a case of treasure-trove.
“What’s that?” Jack eagerly interrupted him.
“Treasure-trove is treasure found.”