“In the store? Where? To buy suthin’?”
“Back of the counter, where uncle keeps those books—that Bible, you know, and so on. He went out from the store into the sitting–room, and then through the window undoubtedly.” Walter told the story of the strange appearance in the store, the first morning of his clerkship. While Aunt Lydia was expressing her amazement, exclaiming, “Oh dear!” “Did you ever!” “Pizen!” the door into the store from the sitting–room opened, and there was the driver of the sleigh that Walter had so particularly noticed that morning, Squire Tuck. His sharp, keen eyes searched the store rapidly, and he said, “Ah, Mrs. Blake, you here? I wanted to see you one moment and ask you about a matter. Won’t you walk in, please?”
Aunt Lydia stepped toward the opened door, and with one hand that she held behind her back, she beckoned to Walter to follow. Walter did not wait for a second flourish from that mute object, but walked after Aunt Lydia and stood silently behind her, as if a special bodyguard to attend her and see that she suffered no harm.
It was an unusual scene witnessed that morning in the old–fashioned sitting–room. There on one side of a large square table in the center of the room, sat Baggs. He was very smiling, and when Aunt Lydia entered he very politely said, “Good mornin’, Miss Blake.” Near him sat his lawyer, who looked somewhat like Baggs, a stout individual with crafty eyes, who signed himself “P. Allston Varney.” If the middle name had been “All–stone,” somebody once said, it would have been an appropriate title. Opposite Baggs was his victim, Uncle Boardman, and he sat there with an astonished air. The vacant chair near Uncle Boardman had been occupied by Squire Tuck. After calling Aunt Lydia, he did not resume his seat, but remained standing, and proceeded to address the lady he had admitted.
“Mrs. Blake,” he said courteously—Squire Tuck always had a dignified, stately way of addressing the ladies, bowing slightly as he spoke,—“I wish to ask you about this note.”
P. Allston Varney closely watched Squire Tuck as he picked up a document lying before Baggs. It was a piece of paper in the form of a money–note, long and narrow. Walter’s attention was arrested immediately by the discovery of a blot in the corner of the note, and it made him think of the document he saw in the store the morning of Baggs’ visit, carrying in one corner a blot like a pig.
“There’s that pig again,” he was saying to himself, when Squire Tuck remarked, “Before asking the question I have in mind, let me make an explanation. Your husband, Mrs. Blake, gave Mr. Baggs a note for five hundred dollars in return for money lent him that he might build the saw–mill. That is all he had against—I mean all that Mr. Baggs had against your husband, so the latter asserts. It became due the other day, and your husband went to pay it. I suppose you know this, and that it was paid also.”
Aunt Lydia nodded assent.
“And you know that Baggs presented another note—this one for fifteen hundred dollars, which indeed is in your husband’s handwriting, he allows, but says he never gave it, and can’t explain it. This you know?”