“So it is, sir,” Ham assured me. “So it is. And nobody believes it—nobody that’s got anything inside their heads but sawdust.”
I started and grasped him by the arm. “Do you mean,” I said, “that there was any such story told when my father was lost at sea?”
“Well, sir, you know that an oak-ball will smoke when you bust it atwixt your fingers—but there ain’t no fire in it,” grunted Ham, philosophically. “Folk says that there can’t be smoke without some fire. The oak-ball disproves it. And it’s so with gossip. Gossip is the only thing that don’t really need a beginning. It’s hatched without the sign of an egg——”
“Oh, hang your platitudes, Ham!” I cried. “Do you mean that there ever was such a story circulated?”
“Well, sir——”
“There was!” I cried, horrified.
“It come about in this way,” began Ham, calmly and quietly. And his speaking so soon brought me to a calmer mind. “It was your grandfather’s will. I don’t wish to say aught against the dead, sir,” said Ham, “but if ever there was a cantankerous old curmudgeon on the face of this footstool, it was Simon Darringford! That was your grandfather.”
“I know,” said I, nodding. “He did not like my father.”
“He hated him. He made his will so that your mother, his only living child, should not enjoy the property as long as your father lived—nor you, either. That’s a fact, Master Clint. Ye see, he put the money jest beyond your mother’s reach, and beyond your reach. He done it very skillfully. He had the best attorneys in Massachusetts draw the will. The courts wouldn’t break it. You and your mother was doomed to poverty as long as your father lived.”
“But Ham!” I cried in amazement and pain, “couldn’t my father earn money enough to support us?”