When Scattergood returned and was visible again on the piazza of his hardware store, it was not long before the village financiers came to him boasting of their achievement.  He, Scattergood, was not the only man in town with the ability to make money.  No, indeed, and for proof of it here were the stock certificates, purchased from a deluded young man for a few cents a share, when common sense told you they were worth many, many dollars.  Scattergood listened to two or three without a word.  Finally he asked: 

“How many folks went into this here thing?”

“Sev’ral.  Sev’ral.  Near’s I kin figger, folks here bought nigh five thousand dollars’ wuth of stock off’n Baxter.  Must ‘a’ been fifty or sixty went into the deal.”

“Dum fools,” said Scattergood, with sudden wrath.  “Has it got so’s I don’t dast to leave town without you folks messin’ things up?  Can’t I leave overnight and find things safe in the mornin’?...  You hain’t got the sense Gawd give field mice—­the whole kit and b’ilin’ of you.  Serves you dum well right, tryin’ to git somethin’ f’r nothin’.  Now git away fr’m here.  Don’t pester me....  You’ve been swindled, that’s what, and it serves you doggone well right.  Now git.”

It was one of the few times that Coldriver saw Scattergood in a rage.  The rage convinced them.  Scattergood said they were swindled and he was in a rage.  Therefore he must be right.  The news spread, and knots of citizens with lowered heads and anxious eyes gathered on street corners and whispered and nodded toward Scattergood, who sat heavily on his piazza, speaking to nobody.  It was Grandmother Penny who dared accost him.  She crept up to his place and said, tremulously: 

“Be you sure, Scattergood, about that feller bein’ a swindler?”

Scattergood looked down at her fiercely.  Then his eyes softened and he leaned forward and scrutinized her face.

“Did you git into this mess, too, Grandmother Penny?”

“Both me ‘n’ James,” she said.  “You let on that folks got rich quick by investin’.  Me ‘n’ James was powerful anxious to git money so’s—­so’s we could git married on it.  So we drawed out our money and—­and invested it.”

“Come here, Grandmother,” said Scattergood, and she stood just before his chair, her head coming very little higher than his own as he sat there, big and ominous.  “So the skunk took your money, too.  I hain’t carin’ a whoop for them others.  They got what was comin’ to ’em, and I didn’t calculate to do nothin’.  But you!  By crimminy!...  Wa-al, Grandmother, you go off home and knit.  I’ll look into things.  It’s on your account, and not on theirs.”  He shook his head fiercely toward the town.  “But I calculate I’ll have to git theirn back, too....  And, Grandmother—­you and James kin rest easy.  Hain’t sayin’ no more.  Jest wait, and don’t worry, and don’t say nothin’ to nobody....  G’-by, Grandmother Penny.  G’-by.”

That evening Scattergood drove out of Coldriver in his rickety buggy.  Nobody had dared to speak to him, but, nevertheless, he carried in his pocket a list of the town’s investors in mining stock, together with the amounts of their investments.  He was not seen again for several days.