"What's the trouble?"
"Oh, a sort of summer, fall, spring and winter complaint." He took out a note book, turned over the leaves, returned it to his pocket and said: "I lack just sixty-five, this time."
"Dollars?" Lyman asked.
Warren gave him a quick, reproachful look. "Now, Judge, what airs have I ever put on to cause you to size me up that way? Have I ever shown any tax receipts? Have I ever given any swell dinners? Sixty-five cents is the amount I am short, Judge, and where I am to get it, the Lord only knows. My paper is lying over yonder in the express office, doing no good to anybody, but they won't let me take it out and stamp intelligence upon it. The town sits gaping for the news, with a bad eye on me; but what can I do with a great corporation arrayed against me? For sixty-five cents I could get the paper out, and it's full of bright things. The account of your defense of the sheep thief is about as amusing a thing as I ever read, and it will be copied all over the country; it would put a nation in a good humor irrespective of party affiliations, but sixty-five millions of people are to be cheated, and all on account of sixty-five cents, one cent to the million."
"Things are down to a low mark when you have to make your estimates on that basis. One cent to the million," said Lyman with a quiet laugh.
"Distressful," Warren replied. "The country was never in such a fix before. Why, last year about this time I raised eighty cents without any trouble at all."
"Yes," said Lyman, "you raised it of me."
"That's a fact," Warren admitted. "But do you think the country is as well off now as it was then?"
"Not financially, but it may be wiser."
"Now, look here, Judge, am I to accept this as an insinuation?"