I was still knocked silly.
"But, Doc," I says, "you can't have enough to pay your passage."
Then he laughs.
"A hundred and seventy-five ain't much out of two thousand," he says.
"Two thousand?" I says, more mystified than ever.
"Yes," he answers, facing me square. "The two thousand that you owe me, Mr. Ben."
I was just going to answer I didn't owe him nothing when the words stopped midway on my tongue. I began to tremble instead—tremble till my hands could hardly hold to my chair, till I couldn't keep my mouth from dribbling.
"It's a debt of honor," he went on. "You can repudiate it if you want to, and snap your fingers in my face, but I trusted you, I got you out of your mess, and now I ask you for my money."
I couldn't answer anything, but looked at him speechless while he goes to the door, peeks outside of it very careful lest any one might be listening, and then comes tiptoeing back. It was so plain what he meant to tell me that I managed to cry out, "No, no," and shook worse nor ever.
"You're a straight man, Ben," he says. "What you owe, you pay. I wouldn't have risked it if I had had any doubt about that."