There was a shrewd twinkle in his
eyes, as he fixed them on Slade, that gave added force to the
peculiar tone in which his brief but telling sentence was uttered.
I noticed a slight contraction on the landlord's ample forehead,
the first evidence I had yet seen of ruffled feelings. The remark,
thrown in so untimely (or timely, some will say), and with a kind
of prophetic malice, produced a temporary pause in the
conversation. No one answered or questioned the intruder, who, I
could perceive, silently enjoyed the effect of his words. But soon
the obstructed current ran on again.
"If our excellent friend, Mr. Slade," said Harvey Green, "is not
the richest man in Cedarville at the end of ten years, he will at
least enjoy the satisfaction of having made his town richer."
"A true word that," replied Judge Lyman--"as true a word as ever
was spoken. What a dead-and-alive place this has been until within
the last few months. All vigorous growth had stopped, and we were
actually going to seed."
"And the graveyard, too," muttered the individual who had before
disturbed the self-satisfied harmony of the company, remarking
upon the closing sentence of Harvey Green. "Come, landlord," he
added, as he strode across to the bar, speaking in a changed,
reckless sort of a way, "fix me up a good hot whisky-punch, and do
it right; and here's another sixpence toward the fortune you are
bound to make. It's the last one left--not a copper more in my
pockets," and he turned them inside-out, with a half-solemn, half-
ludicrous air.
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