“Do?—nothin'. What could I do? I jest grinned an' acknowledged the corn. The joke was agin me. An' the funny part of it was the feller was so dead in earnest he didn't see anything to laugh at. Ef I'd a-been in his place I'd 'a' hollered.”
“Did you give Uncle Ab his cigar?” the shoemaker asked.
“I offered it to 'im, Jim, but he wouldn't take it. I axed 'im why. 'Beca'se,' said he, 'I was bettin' on a certainty.' 'How's that?' said I. 'Why,' said he, 'I seed Alf Bowen buy a cloak fer that gal at the fire sale over at Darley two weeks ago. He was just lookin' around to see ef he'd got bit.'”
Pole saw Floyd coming out of the court-house and went to him. “I understand you an' Price are on a deal,” he said.
“Yes, but we are far apart,” Floyd answered, pleasantly. “He offers me his entire two thousand acres and furnished house for twenty-five thousand. As I told him, Pole, I could draw the money out of other investments an' take the property, but I couldn't see profit in it above twenty thousand.”
“It's wuth all he asks fer it,” Pole said, wisely.
“I know it is, to any man who wants to live on it, but if I buy it, I'd have to hire a good man to manage it, and, altogether, I can't see my way to put more than twenty thousand in it. He's anxious to sell. He and his wife want to move to Atlanta, to be with their married daughter.”
They were walking towards Floyd's store, and Pole paused in the street. “Are you busy right now, Nelson?” he asked, his face wearing a serious look.
“Not at all, Pole.”
“Well, I've got some'n' to say to you, Nelson. I'm goin' to acknowledge that thar's one thing I've wanted to do fer you more, by hunkey, than anything in the world. Nelson, I've always hoped that I'd run across some clew that 'ud eventually lead to you findin' out who yore kin are.”