This caused me to lose almost as much ground as I had just gained, though, being the literal truth, I was resolved neither to conceal, nor to attempt to evade it.
"Good land!" murmured Lowiny. "Why couldn't the man say nothin' about all that?"
A reproving look from Prudence, rebuked the girl, and she remained silent afterward, for sometime.
"A power of attorney, is it!" rejoined the squatter. "Wa-a-l, that's not much better than being a downright lawyer. It's having the power of an attorney, I s'pose, and without their accursed power it's little I should kear for any of the breed. Then you're the son of that Gin'ral Littlepage, which is next thing to being the man himself. I should expect if Tobit, my oldest b'y, was to fall into the hands of some that might be named, it would go hard with him, all the same as if t'was myself. I know that some make a difference atween parents and children, but other some doesn't. What's that you said about this gin'ral's only being a common tenant of this land? How dares he to call himself it's owner, if he's only a common tenant?"
The reader is not to be surprised at Thousandacre's trifling blunders of this sort; for, those whose rule of right is present interest, frequently, in the eagerness of rapacity, fall into this very kind of error; holding that cheap at one moment, which they affect to deem sacred at the next. I dare say, if the old squatter had held a lease of the spot he occupied, he would at once have viewed the character and rights of a "common tenant," as connected with two of the most important interests of the country. It happened now, however, that it was "his bull that was goring our ox."
"How dares he to call himself the owner of the sile, when he's only a common tenant, I say?" repeated Thousandacres, with increasing energy, when he found I did not answer immediately.
"You have misunderstood my meaning. I did not say that my father was only a 'common tenant' of this property, but that he and Colonel Follock own it absolutely in common, each having his right in every acre, and not one owning one half while the other owns the other; which is what the law terms being 'tenants in common,' though strictly owners in fee."
"I shouldn't wonder, Tobit, if he turns out to be an attorney, in our meaning, a'ter all!"
"It looks desp'rately like it, father," answered the eldest born, who might have been well termed the heir at law of all his progenitor's squatting and fierce propensities. "If he isn't a downright lawyer, he looks more like one than any man I ever seed out of court, in my whull life."
"He'll find his match! Law and I have been at loggerheads ever sin' the day I first went into Varmount, or them plaguy Hampshire Grants. When law gets me in its clutches, it's no wonder if it gets the best on't; but, when I get law in mine, or one of its sarvants, it shall be my fault if law doesn't come out second best. Wa-a-l, we've heerd the young man's story, Tobit. I've asked him what he had to say for himself, and he has g'in us his tell—tell'd us how he's his own father's son, and that the gin'ral is some sort of a big tenant, instead of being a landlord, and isn't much better than we are ourselves; and it's high time I permitted him to custody. You had writin's for what they did to you, I dares to say, Tobit?"