ROSSING the street diagonally, Henley came to a little two-story frame building near the post-office. Pausing before the door, he looked in and saw old Welborne seated at his desk near an open window. The money-lender was thin, had parchment-like skin, massive eyebrows, and long, gray hair, which never seemed to have been trimmed, and was massed on the greasy collar of his faded black alpaca coat. He was past seventy years of age, and the hand which held his pen shook visibly. Henley went in, and as he did so old Welborne laid down his pen and turned round in his revolving-chair. He nodded and grunted, and motioned to a three-legged stool near the desk.
Henley sat down on it, and as he did so he drew out a couple of cigars, and, holding them in the shape of a letter V, he extended them toward the old man. "I'm advertising a new brand," he said, cordially. "Take one, and whenever you want a good smoke drop in. You'll find 'em as free from cabbage-leaves as any in this town. One thing certain, you don't have to bore a hole through 'em to start circulation."
"Drumming up trade, eh?" The money-lender smiled as he took the cigar, and, pinching off the tip with his long thumb-nail, he thrust it between his gashed and stained teeth. "Well, I don't blame any man for trying to turn a penny during hard times like these. But, Lord, Alf, you'd make a living if you was on a bare rock in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. I take off my hat to any man that could handle a busted circus like you did. I wouldn't have touched that pile of junk at your figure if it had been given to me, and yet—well, every man to his line."
Henley scratched a match on the sole of his shoe and lighted his cigar. "I've been just a little afraid that your nephew—that Hank Bradley may have told you about the little spat me and him had at the store the other day—"
"I heard it," Welborne broke in, with an indifferent smile. "I was standing in the door; he was full; he ought to have been kicked out; you done right; he's a lazy, good-for-nothing scamp, but don't talk to me about him. I pay him what is coming to him, board him for next to nothing, and there my responsibility ends. I'm not fighting his battles—huh, I guess not! How's trade over your way?"
"N. G." Henley puffed, squinting his right eye to avoid the smoke which curled up from the end of his cigar, as he looked absently at the dingy window-panes and the cobwebs hanging from the cracked and bulging plastering overhead. "We can sell plenty on tick, but getting paid is the devil. Jim Cahews is a good man, but he can't say no—to a petticoat, anyway. While I was away he went it rather reckless. Why, he let one little woman that has heretofore been the brag of the county get in clean up to her neck."
Old Welborne ceased smoking; his dim, blue eyes twinkled. "I'll bet a dollar to a ginger-cake I know who you mean," he said, eagerly.
"Well, maybe you do and maybe you don't," Henley said. "But I've had enough of her foolishness and promising and never coming to time. I'm not in business for my health. She's a neighbor of mine, and I always admired her plucky fight, but charity begins at home. I'm not running an orphan asylum, nor an old woman's home. Jim misunderstood me, anyway. I told 'im her account was all right, and for him not to bear down too hard on her, and I went to Texas and forgot all about it. But, holy smoke! when I got home and looked at the books I was fairly staggered at the figures. She's over there at the store now, and I had to talk to her straight, and she won't get a bit deeper in my debt. I've got to call a halt."
"I think I might set your mind at rest on what she owes you," Welborne said, with an unctuous smile. "There is no use beating about the bush, Henley, you know she's in debt to me, and you've come over to see if I can help you out. Well, I can. I am in the shape to do it. Me 'n you have clashed several times in our deals and had hard feelings, but there is no use keeping up strife. We can work together now. Me and her own that farm in partnership, and I've had enough of it. I've made a fair give-or-take offer, and nothing is to prevent her from closing out and paying you what she owes you. I've got eight hundred dollars in cash ready to hand her at any minute."
"You don't say!" Henley's look of gratified surprise was perfect. "Well, she's in a better fix than I thought. She ain't much of a hand to tell her business, and I thought she had—well, about run through her pile."