Hazen laughed scornfully.

“You aim to pay!  Damn you, Marshey, if your old farm was worth taking I’d have you out in this snow, you old scamp!”

Doan pleaded dully:  “Don’t you do that, Mr Kinch!  I aim to pay.”

Hazen clapped his hands on the table.

“Rats!  Come!  Give me what you’ve got!  And Marshey, you’ll have to get the rest.  I’m sick of waiting on you.”

Marshey came shuffling toward the table.  Hazen was sitting with the table between him and the man and I was a little behind Hazen at one side.  Marshey blinked as he came nearer, and his weak nearsighted eyes turned from Hazen to me.  I could see that the man was stiff with the cold.

When he came to the table in front of Hazen he took off his thick gloves.  His hands were blue.  He laid the gloves on the table and reached into an inner pocket of his torn coat and drew out a little cloth pouch and he fumbled into this and I heard the clink of coins.  He drew out two quarters and laid them on the table before Hazen, and Hazen picked them up.  I saw that Marshey’s fingers moved stiffly; I could almost hear them creak with the cold.  Then he reached into the pouch again.

Something dropped out of the mouth of the little cloth bag and fell soundlessly on the table.  It looked to me like a bill, a piece of paper currency.  I was about to speak, but Hazen, without an instant’s hesitation, had dropped his hand on the thing and drawn it unostentatiously toward him.  When he lifted his hand the money—­if it was money—­was gone.

Marshey drew out a little roll of worn bills.  Hazen took them out of his hand and counted them swiftly.

“All right.” he said.  “Eleven-fifty.  I’ll give you a receipt.  But you mind me, Doan Marshey, you get the rest before the month’s out.  I’ve been too slack with you.”

Marshey, his dull eyes watching Hazen write the receipt, was folding the little pouch and putting it away.  Hazen tore off the bit of paper and gave it to him.  Doan took it and he said humbly:  “Thank’e, sir.”

Hazen nodded.

“Mind now,” he exclaimed, and Marshey said:  “I’ll do my best, Mr. Kinch.”

Then he turned and shuffled across the room and out into the hall and we heard him descending the stairs.

When he was gone I asked Hazen casually:  “What was it that he dropped upon the table?”

“A dollar,” said Hazen promptly.  “A dollar bill.  The miserable fool!”

Hazen’s mental processes were always of interest to me.

“You mean to give it back to him?” I asked.

He stared at me and he laughed.  “No!  If he can’t take care of his own money—­that’s why he is what he is.”

“Still it is his money.”

“He owes me more than that.”

“Going to give him credit for it?”

“Am I a fool?” Hazen asked me.  “Do I look like so much of a fool?”

“He may charge you with finding it.”