“Well, now,” said the squire, “supposing I pay you ten dollars for her, just for four days. I’ll take—”
“No, sorry to refuse,” said Henry Burns, “but I don’t see how we can do it. Besides, we’ve got lots of money, ourselves, you know. We’ve been mackereling.”
The squire continued his urging, but Henry Burns was obdurate. The Viking couldn’t be hired—by Squire Brackett, at least. He went home, fuming inwardly.
“If I only had the rest of that letter,” he kept repeating. “I don’t dare to offer them very much, on a mere chance. It might turn out like that land I bought of Billy Cook.”
The squire, having his mind thus tantalized, began to worry over the mystery and even to dream of it. One night he dreamed that he had hired the yacht, and that he had found a bag filled with twenty dollar gold pieces in it; and, when he woke up, he was so angry to find it was only a dream that he scandalized poor Mrs. Brackett with his exclamations.
Young Harry Brackett was made to feel the effects of his father’s mental disturbance. The squire assailed him with questions about Mr. Carleton, which puzzled the son exceedingly. Finally the squire demanded, point-blank, to know what Mr. Carleton had said to him when he commissioned him to buy the yacht.
“And you needn’t deny that he did get you to try to buy it, either,” he exclaimed, warmly, “because I know all about that.”
Harry Brackett, taken aback, but concluding that Mr. Carleton had told his father about it, admitted the commission, but could not recall anything in particular that Mr. Carleton had said at that time.
“Didn’t he want to know something about the yacht that he was intending to buy?” demanded the squire. “Now just wake those sleepy wits of yours up and try to think.”
Harry Brackett, much confused, endeavoured to obey.