"Make it fifteen hundred. Oh! fifteen hundred to clear off all scores, and then you can go away out of the place; I could borrow fifteen hundred."
"Two thousand," Harry repeated. "Of course, besides the houses, which are mine."
"Besides the houses? Never. You may do your worst. You may drag your poor old uncle, now sixty years of age, before the courts, but two thousand besides the houses? Never!"
He banged the floor with his stick, but his agitation was betrayed by the nervous tapping of the end upon the oil-cloth which followed the first hasty bang.
"No bounce, if you please." Harry took out his watch. "I will give you five minutes to decide; or, if your mind is already made up, I will go and ask advice of a lawyer at once."
"I cannot give you that sum of money," Bunker declared; "it is not that I would not; I would if I could. Business has been bad; sometimes I've spent more than I've made; and what little I've saved I meant always for you—I did, indeed. I said, 'I will make it up to him. He shall have it back with——'"
"One minute gone," said Harry, relentlessly.
"Oh! this is dreadful. Why, to get even fifteen hundred I should have to sell all my little property at a loss; and what a dreadful thing it is to sell property at a loss! Give me more time to consider, only a week or so, just to look round."
"Three minutes left," said Harry the hardened.
"Oh! oh! oh!" He burst into tears and weeping of genuine grief, and shame, and rage. "Oh, that a nephew should be found to persecute his uncle in such a way! Where is your Christian charity? Where is forgiving and remitting?"