"What did you tell him?"
"That to lift the mortgage now was out of the question."
"Won't he be troublesome? You remember how he acted towards poor old
Mr. Peabody."
"I know he's a hard-hearted, selfish man. I don't believe that there is a spark of humanity about him. But he'll scarcely go to extremities with me. I don't fear that."
"Did he threaten?"
"Yes. But I hardly think that he was in earnest."
How far this last remark of old Mr. Bacon was correct, the following brief conversation will show. It took place between Dyer and a miserable pettyfogging lawyer, in Brookville, named Grant.
"I've got a mortgage on old Bacon's farm that I wish entered up," said the tavern-keeper, on calling at the lawyer's office.
"Can't he pay it off?" inquired Grant.
"Of course not. He's being running down for the last six or seven years, and is now on his last legs."