“Say Pop, where do you get this gold, anyhow?” asked a tobacco-chewing gamin at the railroad station one day.
“Dat's my business,” replied Thornberry, with some dignity.
“Oh,” said his questioner, “I know. Tobe McStenger followed you out the other day and saw where you got it. He'd a brung some in hisself, but it wasn't on his property.”
“Yes, Pop, you better look out,” put in a telegraph operator, “or you'll be taken up for trespassing. 'Tisn't your land, you know, where you find your gold.”
There was no truth in the assertion of the gamin. No one had taken the trouble to follow Pop in his semiweekly excursions to the barren field. But the old man knew that the field was not his. A ludicrous expression of overwhelming fright came over his face.
Three days afterward, the farmer who owned the worthless field was astonished when Pop offered to buy it.
“But what on earth do you want that land fer?” asked the farmer, sitting on his barnyard fence.
Pop made a guilty attempt to appear guileless, and told the farmer that he wished to build a shanty and raise potatoes. He was tired of living in town and sought the quietude of the hills.
“Bein' as dat ere fiel' ain't good foh much, I thought you might be willin' to paht with it,” explained Pop.
The farmer eventually agreed to build a shanty on the field and sell it to Pop for $180. Pop desired immediate occupancy. There was a legal hitch, owing to the badness of the land and the questionable condition of Pop's mind. But the transfer of the property was finally recorded.