“Now, Alfred,” she said, “what are you goin' to tell us about the railroad? Is it as bad as brother Ab thought it would be?”
Bishop hesitated. It seemed as if he had even then to tear himself from the clutch of his natural stubbornness. He looked into all the anxious, waiting faces before he spoke, and then he gave in.
“Ab made a good guess. Ef I'd 'a' had his sense, or Alan' s, I'd 'a' made a better trader. It's like Ab said it was, only a sight wuss—a powerful sight wuss!”
“Wuss?” gasped his wife, In fresh alarm. “How could it be wuss? Why, brother Ab said—”
“I never have told you the extent o' my draim's,” went on Bishop in the current of confession. “I never even told Perkins yesterday. Fust an' last I've managed to rake in fully twenty thousand acres o' mountain-land. I was goin' on what I'lowed was a dead-shore thing. I secured all I could lay my hands on, an' I did it in secret. I was afeerd even to tell you about what Perkins said, thinkin' it mought leak out an' sp'ile my chances.”
“But, father,” said Alan, “you didn't have enough money to buy all that land.”
“I got it up”—Bishop's face was doggedly pale, almost defiant of his overwhelming disaster—“I mortgaged this farm to get money to buy Maybry and Morton's four thousand acres.”
“The farm you was going to deed to Alan?” gasped his wife. “You didn't include that?”
“Not in that deal,” groaned Bishop. “I swapped that to Phil Parsons fer his poplar an' cypress belt.” The words seemed to cut raspingly into the silence of the big room. Abner Daniel was the only one who seemed unmoved by the confession. He filled his pipe from the bowl on the mantel-piece and pressed the tobacco down with his forefinger; then he kicked the ashes in the chimney till he uncovered a small five coal. He eyed it for a moment, then dipped it up in the shovel, rolled it into his pipe, and began to smoke.
“So I ain't a-goin' to git no yeerly pass over the new road,” he said, his object being to draw his brother-in-law back to Perkins's action in the matter.