"

"Henry," pleaded Jerome, "just listen to me." But it was of no
avail. His cousin turned his blind face sternly away from his
pleading voice, and went out of the yard, still seeming to strive
against his mother's leading hand.

Jerome followed them, still arguing with them; he even walked with
them a little, after the turn of the road. Then he gave it up, and
went on to the store, where he had an errand. He resolved to see
Adoniram, and try to influence him to take the money for his blind
son. He could not believe that he would not do so. Long before he
reached the store he could hear the gabble of excited voices, and
loud peals of rough laughter. "What's going on?" he thought. When he
entered, he saw Simon Basset backed up against a counter, at bay, as
it were, before a great throng of village men and boys. Basset was
deathly white through his grime and beard-stubble, his gaunt jaws
snapping like a wolf's, his eyes fierce with terror.

"Shell out, Simon," shouted a young man, with a butting motion of a
shock head towards the old man. "Shell out, I tell ye, or ye'll have
a writ served on ye."

"I tell ye I won't; ye don't know nothin' about it; I 'ain't got no
property!" shrieked Simon Basset, amidst a wild burst of laughter.

"He 'ain't got no property, he 'ain't, hi!" shouted the boys on the
outskirts, with peals of goblin merriment.

"I tell ye I 'ain't got more'n five thousand dollars to my name!"

"You 'ain't, eh? Where's all your land, you old liar?" asked the
young man, who seemed spokesman for the crowd.

"It ain't wuth nothin'. I couldn't sell it to-day if I wanted to."

"Gimme the land, then, an' we'll take the risk," was the cry. "J'rome
and the doctor have shelled out; now it's your turn, or you'll hev
the officers after ye."

Jerome pushed his way through the crowd. "What are you scaring him
for?" he demanded. "He's an old man, and you ought to be ashamed of
yourselves."

"He ain't more'n seventy," replied the young man, "an' he's smart as
a cricket--he's smart enough to gouge the whole town, old 's he is."

"That's so, Eph!" chorused his supporters.

Jerome grasped Basset by the shoulder. "Don't you know you are not
obliged to give a dollar, if you don't want to?" he asked. "That
paper wasn't legal."

The old man shrank before him with craven terror, and yet with the
look of a dog which will snap when he sees an unwary hand. "Ye don't
git me into none of yer traps," he snarled. "What m