“Let thy teeth keep better guard over thy red rag, Zerubbabel,” rebuked Joe Bagby, warningly. “We want no rattlepates to tell us—or others—what ’s needed or doing.”
“This Meredith ’s a man of property, eh?” asked Evatt.
“He ’s been so since he married Patty Byllynge,” replied the publican. “Afore then he war n’t nothin’ but a poor young lawyer over tew Trenton.”
“And who was Patty Byllynge?”
“You don’t know much ’bout West Jersey, or I guess you ’d have heard of her,” surmised Bagby. “’T is n’t every girl brings her husband a pot of money and nigh thirty thousand acres of land. Folks tell that before the squire got her, the men was about her like—” the speaker used a simile too coarse for repetition.
“So ho!” said the traveller. “Byllynge, heigh? Now I begin to understand. A daughter—or granddaughter—of one of the patentees?”
“Just so. In the old man’s day they held the lands all along this side of the Raritan, nigh up to Baskinridge, but they sold a lot in the forties.”
“Then perhaps this is the place to bargain about a bit? The land looked rich and warm as I rode along this afternoon.”
“’T ain’t no use tryin’ ter buy of the new squire,” remarked one man. “He won’t do nothin’ but lease. He don’t want no freemen ’bout here.”
“Yer might buy o’ Squire Hennion. He sells now an’ agin,” suggested the innkeeper.”