“Well, it happens that Shoal stock is jest the same on the market as ready money, up a little to-day an' down to-morrow, but never varyin' more'n a fraction of a cent on the dollar, an' so the Tompkins heirs say they'd jest as lieve have it, an' as I'm itchin' to relieve them of the'r land, it didn't take us long to come together.”
If he had struck the woman squarely in the face, she could not have shown more surprise. She became white to the lips, and with a low cry turned to her son. “Oh, Alan, don't—don't let 'im do it, it's all we have left that we can depend on! It will ruin us!”
“Why, father, surely,” protested Alan, as he put his arm around his mother, “surely you can't mean to let go your mill investment which is paying fifteen per cent, to put the money into lands that may never advance in value and always be a dead weight on your hands! Think of the loss of interest and the taxes to be kept up. Father, you must listen to—”
“Listen to nothin',” thundered Bishop, half rising from his chair. “Nobody axed you two to put in. It's my business an' I'm a-goin' to attend to it. I believe I'm doin' the right thing, an' that settles it.”
“The right thing,” moaned the old woman, as she sank into a chair and covered her face with her hands. “Mr. Trabue,” she went on, fiercely, “when that factory stock leaves our hands we won't have a single thing to our names that will bring in a cent of income. You kin see how bad it is on a woman who has worked as hard to do fer her children as I have. Mr. Bishop always said Adele, who is visitin' her uncle's family in Atlanta, should have that stock for a weddin'-gift, ef she ever married, an' Alan was to have the lower half of this farm. Now what would we have to give the girl—nothin' but thousands o' acres o' hills, mountains an' gulches full o' bear, wild-cats, and catamounts—land that it ud break any young couple to hold on to—much less put to any use. Oh, I feel perfectly sick over it.”
There was a heavy, dragging step in the hall, and a long, lank man of sixty or sixty-five years of age paused in the doorway. He had no beard except a tuft of gray hair on his chin, and his teeth, being few and far between, gave to his cheeks a hollow appearance. He was Abner Daniel, Mrs. Bishop's bachelor brother, who lived in the family.
“Hello!” he exclaimed, shifting a big quid of tobacco from one cheek to the other; “plottin' agin the whites? Ef you are, I 'll decamp, as the feller said when the bull yeerlin' butted 'im in the small o' the back. How are you, Mr. Trabue? Have they run you out o' town fer some o' yore legal rascality?”
“I reckon your sister thinks it's rascality that's brought me out to-day,” laughed the lawyer. “We are on a little land deal.”
“Oh, well, I 'll move on,” said Abner Daniel. “I jest wanted to tell Alan that Rigg's hogs got into his young corn in the bottom jest now an' rooted up about as many acres as Pole Baker's ploughed all day. Ef they'd a-rooted in straight rows an' not gone too nigh the stalks they mought 'a' done the crap more good than harm, but the'r aim or intention, one or t'other, was bad. Folks is that away; mighty few of 'em root—when they root at all—fer anybody but the'rse'ves. Well, I 'll git along to my room.”
“Don't go, brother Ab,” pleaded his sister. “I want you to he'p me stand up fer my rights. Alfred is about to swap our cotton-mill stock fer some more wild mountain-land.”