“Why, he simply didn't feel like accepting it from a—a stranger and a man he had treated coldly, and perhaps too severely, on a former meeting. You see, he felt unworthy—”
“Unworthy hell! That ain't it—you kin bet yore socks that ain't it! That sort o' man, in the hole he's in, ain't a-goin' to split hairs like that, when he's on the brink o' ruin an' ready to commit suicide. No, siree, you'll have to delve deeper into human nature than that. Looky' here, Nelson. I'm on to a certain thing to-night fer the fust time. Why didn't you tell me before this that Henry A. Floyd got his start in life by a plantation left him by his daddy?”
“Why, I thought you knew it!” Floyd said, sleepily. “But what's that got to do with his not wanting to take the money?”
“I don't know,” Pole said. “I'll have to study on it. You turn over an' git that nap out. Yo're a-yawnin' fit to bust that night-shirt.”
XXXIX
IT was about eight o'clock the next morning when Floyd waked. The first thing he saw was Pole seated in the window chewing tobacco. He was fully dressed, had shaved, and wore a new white shirt and collar that glistened like porcelain in the morning sun; he had on also a new black cravat which he had tied very clumsily.
“Good gracious, have you been waiting for me?” Floyd cried, as he sprang out of bed and looked at his watch.
“Not much I hain't,” the mountaineer smiled. “I was up at my usual time, at sunrise. I struck a restaurant and got me some fried eggs an' coffee, an' then walked half over this dern town.”