“I can never tell your mother my gratitude,” said he. “With her there my anxiety will be more than half gone.”
“I’m so glad muzz thought of it!” said Will. “I’m sure it would never have entered my heedless head. And yet it is just the thing for us to do.”
Another subject of their excited colloquy was the disposal of those old coins. If deposited at the Barchester Bank they would certainly arouse comment and set all sorts of romantic stories going. But presently Will thought of his friend Mr. Hand, to whom all things in the way of financial management seemed possible. It was decided that on the very next day Will should take the whole store to him and get him to send it away for conversion into modern currency.
“And he’ll be able to see that we don’t get cheated,” added Will. “I fancy some of those coins will be wanted by collectors, and so be worth a lot more than their face value.”
“I tell you, Will,” exclaimed Reube, “I can’t even yet quite get over my astonishment at the way you swear by old Hand; or, perhaps I should rather say, at the way the old fellow seems to be developing qualities of which he was never suspected until you begun to thaw him out.”
“Indeed,” said Will, warmly, “Mr. Hand is fine stuff. He was like a piece of gold hidden in a mass of very refractory ore. But Toddles melted him down all right.”
In a short time conversation flagged, and then, listening to the lip-lip-lipping of the softly falling tide and the mellow far-off roar of the waters pouring through an aboideau, both the watchers grew drowsy. At last Will was asleep. Even Reube’s brain was getting entangled with confused and fleeting visions when he was brought sharply to himself by the queer sucking sound of footsteps in the mud.
He raised his head and peered over the gunwale. There was Mart Gandy within ten paces of the net reel. He had come by way of the dike. In his hand gleamed the polished curve of the sickle with which he was accustomed to reap his buckwheat, and Reube’s blood boiled at the thought of that long, keen blade working havoc in the meshes of his cherished nets. Gandy marched straight up to the reel, raised the sickle, and slashed viciously at the mass of woven twine.
Ere he could repeat the stroke a yell of wrath rang in his ear and Reube was upon him, hurling him to the ground. His deadly weapon flew from his grasp, and he was too startled to make much resistance. The weight of Reube’s knee on his chest, the clutch of Reube’s strong fingers at his throat, took all the fight out of him. He looked up with angry and frightened eyes and saw Will standing by, a meaning smile on his lips and a heavy tarred rope’s end in his hand.
Reube rubbed the culprit’s head rudely in the mud, and then relaxed the grip upon his gasping throat.