The other consulted the book. "Two years, a
month and four days," he returned exactly.

"But no notice was served on me; nothing was
said about my bill."

"Ah, we don't like to annoy old friends; just a
little word at necessary intervals."

Old rumors, stories, came to Gordon's memory
in regard to the long credit extended by Simmons to
"old friends," the absence of any rendered accounts;
and, in that connection, the thought of the
number of homesteads throughout the county that
had come, through forced sales, into the storekeeper's
hands. The circumstantial details of these
events had been bitten by impassioned oaths into
his mind, together with the memory of the dreary
ruin that had settled upon the evicted.

"I can give you something day after tomorrow,
when I am paid."

"Entirely satisfactory; three hundred -- no, for
you two hundred and fifty dollars will be sufficient;
the rest another time... whenever you are able."

"I get two dollars and fifty cents a day," Gordon
reminded him, with a dry and bitter humor, "and I
have a month's pay coming."

Valentine Simmons had not, apparently, heard
him. "Two hundred and fifty only," he repeated;
"we always like to accommodate old friends, especially
Presbyterian friends."

[[42]]

p041 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p042w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p043

v?