"You may ask me why you should be less proud to-day than ever, Mr. Leslie," he said, with a malicious grin. "Shall I tell you why? Because the tables are turned since the day when you passed Silas Craig in the streets of New Orleans, as if he had been one of the slaves on your plantation; when you spurned him as if he had been the dirt beneath your feet. I know what you said of me in those days; I came by my money by crooked ways; I was a rogue; an usurer; my ill-gotten wealth would bring me to the gallows some day. These are the sort of things you said, and I took them quietly enough; for I am of a patient disposition, and I knew my turn would come. It has come. The times are changed since then. My wealth was ill-gotten, was it? You were glad enough to borrow a hundred thousand dollars of it, ill-gotten as it was; and now when I come to-day to ask you for the payment of that money, you take such a high tone that I can only believe you have it ready for me in your cash-box yonder?"
It was with a malicious chuckle that he uttered those concluding words; for the crafty wretch well knew the nature of Gerald Leslie, and he had suspected from the first that the money was not forthcoming.
"Not one penny of it!" cried the planter; "not one penny of it, Mr. Craig."
"Indeed!" said Silas. "Then I'm extremely sorry to hear it; as, of course, under those circumstances, I can no longer delay putting an execution upon your property, and sending the Leslie plantation and your valuable lot of niggers to the auctioneer's hammer."
Having uttered this threat, he sat for some little time with his hands on his knees, and a smile of triumph upon his face, watching the countenance of the planter.
Gerald Leslie's was a gloomy face to look upon in that moment; but it neither expressed grief nor humiliation, and his enemy was disappointed.
It was not enough to ruin the man he hated. Silas Craig would have given half his fortune to see that haughty spirit lowered in the dust.
The planter sat for some minutes in perfect silence, as if he were revolving some plan in his mind. Presently he looked up, and, without any alteration of his former manner, addressed the usurer thus:
"Silas Craig, sooner than ask a favor of you, I would see every scrap of property I possess sold in the public sale-room, and would leave my native land a beggar. I do not ask you a favor, then; I offer you a bargain. If my property is sold to-day, it will be sold at a loss. You will be paid, it is true, but others, for whom (pardon me) I feel a great deal more concern, will lose. Two months hence that same property will, for certain commercial reasons known as well to you as to me, realize a much larger amount. Besides which, I have friends in the North who may come forward in the meantime to save me from ruin. Renew your bill at two months from to-day, and for those two months I will give you double the enormous interest I have been already paying—a ruinous bargain for me, and as valuable a one for you. But no favor; remember that! Do you accept?"
"I do," said Silas, after a few moments' deliberation. "The interest ought to be trebled, though."