“Ah!” Valentine Simmons exclaimed pleasantly; “our link with the outer world, our faithful messenger.... I wanted to see you; ah, yes.” He turned over the pages of a second, heavier ledger at his hand. “Here it is—Gordon Makimmon, good Scotch Presbyterian name. Five hundred and thirty dollars,” he said suddenly, unexpectedly.
Gordon was unable to credit his senses, the fact that this was the sum of his indebtedness; it was an absurd mistake, and he said so.
“Everything listed against its date,” the other returned imperturbably, “down to a pair of white buck shoes for a lady to-day—a generous present for some enslaver.”
“My sister,” Gordon muttered ineptly. Five hundred and thirty dollars, he repeated incredulously to himself. Five hundred.... “How long has it been standing?” he asked.
The other consulted the book. “Two years, a month and four days,” he returned exactly.
“But no notice was served on me; nothing was said about my bill.”
“Ah, we don’t like to annoy old friends; just a little word at necessary intervals.”
Old rumors, stories, came to Gordon’s memory in regard to the long credit extended by Simmons to “old friends,” the absence of any rendered accounts; and, in that connection, the thought of the number of homesteads throughout the county that had come, through forced sales, into the storekeeper’s hands. The circumstantial details of these events had been bitten by impassioned oaths into his mind, together with the memory of the dreary ruin that had settled upon the evicted.
“I can give you something day after to-morrow, when I am paid.”
“Entirely satisfactory; three hundred—no, for you two hundred and fifty dollars will be sufficient; the rest another time ... whenever you are able.”