The doctor sneered.
“Well, I should like to talk to him and convince him of his mistake. He must be crazy, I think, setting such an undue value on these rocky acres!”
“He’s not in the neighborhood now. I don’t know where he went to when he left here,” returned the ferryman, going out abruptly to answer a call for a boat.
“Some ignorant tramp likely, that did not know what he was talking about,” the doctor sneered to the ferryman’s wife, venting his spite on the absent offender for spoiling a good trade.
“No, I don’t think he were a tramp. He were dressed in fine new clothes, though soakin’ wet with the snow the night we found him lyin’ like a dead man out in the back yard, the time o’ the turble storm,” she replied coldly.
“Drunk, maybe,” sniffed the resentful doctor.
“No, nor drunk, neither, I don’t believe. He were sick and wounded, with a shot through his breast. A long time he laid here sick, and me and my ole man nussed him like our own son, and said nothing to nobuddy, acause the young feller ast us not. He didn’t want folks to know as he had been in that scrimmage! My, what am I blabbing about now?” cried the woman, suddenly cutting herself short.
“No harm talking to me, a stranger without any interest in it,” Doctor St. Clair said reassuringly, with a bland smile. “I hope the young fellow compensated you well for your trouble?”
“Oh, yes, sir; yes. Since he went away he paid up liberal. Sent my ole man fifty dollars and me a gold watch. Think o’ that, now!”
“Very clever!” exclaimed the doctor. “What did you say his name was, madam?”