“He 'ain't got no property, he 'ain't, hi!” shouted the boys on the outskirts, with peals of goblin merriment.
“I tell ye I 'ain't got more'n five thousand dollars to my name!”
“You 'ain't, eh? Where's all your land, you old liar?” asked the young man, who seemed spokesman for the crowd.
“It ain't wuth nothin'. I couldn't sell it to-day if I wanted to.”
“Gimme the land, then, an' we'll take the risk,” was the cry. “J'rome and the doctor have shelled out; now it's your turn, or you'll hev the officers after ye.”
Jerome pushed his way through the crowd. “What are you scaring him for?” he demanded. “He's an old man, and you ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”
“He ain't more'n seventy,” replied the young man, “an' he's smart as a cricket—he's smart enough to gouge the whole town, old 's he is.”
“That's so, Eph!” chorused his supporters.
Jerome grasped Basset by the shoulder. “Don't you know you are not obliged to give a dollar, if you don't want to?” he asked. “That paper wasn't legal.”
The old man shrank before him with craven terror, and yet with the look of a dog which will snap when he sees an unwary hand. “Ye don't git me into none of yer traps,” he snarled. “What made Doctor Prescott give anythin'?”