"Be that as it may, before you lend the money to Mr. Bennington, or give any to Leopold, you had better see your mother. I will go to the house with you, for I am really quite interested in this matter."
"Thank you, sir; you are very kind, and I am ever so much obliged to you," answered Stumpy. "But I shouldn't feel right—administrator or not—if Le's father wasn't helped out of trouble."
"I was not aware that Mr. Bennington was in difficulty."
"He is—up to his eyes; and I know very well that my grandfather—that's Squire Moses—means to get the Sea Cliff House away from him, if he can, and let Ethan Wormbury have it. This money must save him. He's been a good friend to me, and I should be a hog if I didn't help him out. Mother will do it, too, I know; for if it hadn't been for Le, we shouldn't have seen this money."
"We will talk with your mother about it," replied Mr. Hamilton, as he put the gold back into the shot-bag, and asked the watch-maker to keep it in the safe till the next day, when he intended to dispose of it in Rockland.
Stumpy placed the twelve hundred dollars in bills in his wallet, and put it in his pocket; but he did not remove his hand from it till he reached his mother's house. If the widow's son was almost crazy in the whirl of remarkable events which so suddenly altered the fortunes of the family, it was hardly to be wondered at; and doubtless the ardor and fury with which he rushed into the house, with his hand still clutching the wallet in his pocket, would have startled his mother, if she had not been sadly occupied with an affair of her own. Squire Moses, Ethan, and the village lawyer were with her, and were about to give the legal notice of the foreclosure of the mortgage. The old man was afraid that he should be cheated out of his prey if he waited any longer. Stumpy rushed into the house, followed by Mr. Hamilton and Leopold.
"O, my son," exclaimed Mrs. Wormbury, "the house is to be taken from us!"
"Not now," interposed Squire Moses. "I told you that you might stay here till the first of August. I'm not a hard man, to turn you out without any notice. I always mean to do what is just right."
"Of course. I have been expecting it, after what you said; but it comes very hard to be turned out of house and home," sobbed Mrs. Wormbury.
"You shall not be turned out, mother," cried Stumpy, blubbered himself, when he saw the tears in his mother's eyes; "neither now nor on the first of August."