"Mean to say you've been half an hour in the place, and nobody's told you how the squire says he'll give old Timothy one hundred pounds for the bit of ground he owns on the top of the cliff? Which sum he'll pay in solid gold the day the old man quits the house. They say he's wild to pull down the whole place seeing as how it spoils the view from his grand windows."
Ben whistled.
"I've not been up to see my father yet, but I warrant you, he'll not stay much longer in yonder cottage if that's the way the wind blows. One hundred pounds in solid gold! What can the old chap be dreaming of? Why on earth didn't he move the same hour as the offer came?"
"Says he'll never budge till he's carried out feet foremost," replied another of the company.
"There's no use argufying with him. He's wonderful firm."
"It's not argument I'll use," answered Ben. "It's common sense first, and then force, if need be. You tell me the house may fall on to the beach any day now, and if that happens Mr. Field may cancel his bid for the land. Of course one might draw him again by threatening to build another house a little further back, but that's a risk. If the offer is in writing it would be safer to hold him to it now, so long as the walls are there. Catch me losing a hundred pounds for the sake of an old man's fads. I'll go up to-night, and we'll soon see who's got the strongest will!"
It was a strangely assorted pair that sat opposite each other in the little cottage on the cliff that evening.
Ben's countenance was dark with passion, and his eyes were fixed with a vicious scowl upon his father's frail shrinking form.
"You say you'll not move," he shouted. "You dare tell me that, and a hundred pounds at stake."
"I dare," was the answer, and the quavering voice seemed to take on a new strength as he said the words. "Never will I sleep under any roof but this. Here was I born, and here will I die, and no man has a right to say me nay. Many a time have I prayed for thee, Ben, and longed to see thee again, my only child, but for such a home-coming as this did I never reckon. It had been better that you had never returned at all. Go now, and leave your old father to die in peace, alone with God."