"I tell you, Nipper, if you will only give me half a chance I will make the matter all right. What do you get by pushing me so? The plain facts are that if you have me arrested, you get nothing; whereas if you let me alone I will do as I have promised, and you shall not only have the full value of the notes, but the bonus besides."
Ben listened intently for the answer. It was in the dusk of evening, and he was sauntering up from a view of one of the most picturesque bridges in the world—and the only one of its kind in the United States; there being only one duplicate in existence, and that in Europe. It is of iron and spans the Monongahela (Oh gloriously suggestive name! Whose delightfully realistic anatomy is so pregnant with remembrances of the liquid destruction our grandsires admired!) immediately at the point of land formed by the wedding of that stream with the Alleghany; the two thereafter journeying through life as one under the name of Ohio.
As Ben was turning the angle of a low wooden shed, the voices of persons in conversation struck upon his ear, and the familiar tones of one of them caused him to take to the shade of the building and play the not very honorable part of eavesdropper. Charles Lever, in that picturesque, but highly improbable "Boy of Norcotes," allows the boy to state in a priggish manner, that eavesdropping is reprehensible on account of the impossibility of a gentleman using the information so obtained, and immediately thereafter causes the boy to tell all he overhears. Ben had not read the book referred to, and did not feel ashamed of himself. Nor having listened was there a dull, dead feeling of lost self-respect that urged him to go and throw himself into the river, and seek at its bottom oblivion offering a rest from remorse that this life could never offer. Nothing of the sort. He listened because he wanted to hear, and was glad of the opportunity. For the voice belonged to the man whom he had had the encounter with in Jersey City, when he first felt the influence of the grey eyes.
It was the tall dark escort, whom she had called "Arthur," and he was talking to a thick-necked, thick-shouldered, thick-faced, and—possibly—thick-headed individual, who appeared—if Ben could judge from what passed,—to hold Arthur in no very high repute.
"I tell you, Blackoat," said the thick man, "I am in need of the money, and the matter's run long enough. You have been promising, and promising, and promising, until I am tired of promises and want something more substantial, or you "go up" so sure as my name is Jonah!" And the namesake of the ancient mariner who "beat" the whale out of forty days board and lodgings, brought one hand down on the other decisively.
"See here, Nipper," said Blackoat, "don't make a fool of yourself. It might afford you a high moral satisfaction to know that I was working for the state, but it would be no money in your pocket. Wait. Be patient. I can not compel her to marry me, and in another month, if she continues to refuse me, I will have the money any way—and the whole of it."
"Three hundred thousand dollars?" asked Jonah.
"Three hundred thousand dollars," replied Blackoat. "I do not ask you to believe me; go ask old Braster if such is not the will."
"Yes, yes, that's all right enough, but you are not keeping up to our agreement, Blackoat," replied Jonah. "You told me you'd marry and settle with me before August, and here it is September. It won't do. I'm getting no interest on my money," and this modern Jonah, whom Mr. Blackoat would have been so pleased to throw overboard and have a whale swallow, even if it did set wise theologians by the ears for the next three thousand years, stamped his foot.
"How much interest do you want?" asked the other.