“Give it to ’em, ol’ Dick,” said Uncle Peabody with a clap of his hands.  “Tell ’em what ye think of ’em.”

At last the Dunkelbergs had fallen—­the legendary, incomparable Dunkelbergs!

“Wal, I’m surprised at Mr. Horace Dunkelberg tryin’ to come it over us like that—­ayes!  I be,” said Aunt Deel.

“Wal, I ain’t,” said Uncle Peabody.  “Ol’ Grimshaw has got him under his thumb—­that’s what’s the matter.  You’ll find he’s up to his ears in debt to Grimshaw—­prob’ly.”

As we followed him toward the house, he pushing the wheelbarrow loaded with sacks of nuts, he added: 

“At last Grimshaw has found somethin’ that he can’t buy an’ he’s awful surprised.  Too bad he didn’t learn that lesson long ago.”

He stopped his wheelbarrow by the steps and we sat down together on the edge of the stoop as he added: 

“I got mad—­they kep’ pickin’ on me so—­I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help it.  We’ll start up ag’in somewheres if we have to.  There’s a good many days’ work in me yet.”

As we carried the bags to the attic room I thought of the lodestone and the compass and knew that Mr. Wright had foreseen what was likely to happen.  When we came down Uncle Peabody said to me: 

“Do you remember what you read out of a book one night about a man sellin’ his honor?”

“Yes,” I answered.  “It’s one o’ the books that Mr. Wright gave us.”

“It’s somethin’ purty common sense,” he remarked, “an’ we stopped and talked it over.  I wish you’d git the book an’ read it now.”

I found the book and read aloud the following passage: 

“Honor is a strange commodity.  It can not be divided and sold in part.  All or none is the rule of the market.  While it can be sold in a way, it can not be truly bought.  It vanishes in the transfer of its title and is no more.  Who seeks to buy it gains only loss.  It is the one thing which distinguishes manhood from property.  Who sells his honor sells his manhood and becomes simply a thing of meat and blood and bones—­a thing to be watched and driven and cudgelled like the ox—­for he has sold that he can not buy, not if all the riches in the world were his.”

A little silence followed the words.  Then Uncle Peabody said: 

“That’s the kind o’ stuff in our granary.  We’ve been reapin’ it out o’ the books Mr. Grimshaw scolded about, a little here an’ a little there for years, an’ we knew it was good wheat.  If he had books like that in his house mebbe Amos would ‘a’ been different.  An’ he’d ‘a’ been different.  He wouldn’t ‘a’ had to come here tryin’ to buy our honor like you’d buy a hoss.”

“Oh, dear!” Aunt Deel exclaimed wearily, with her hands over her eyes; “a boy has to have somethin’ besides pigs an’ cattle an’ threats an’ stones an’ hoss dung an’ cow manure to take up his mind.”

Uncle Peabody voiced my own feeling when he said: 

“I feel sorry, awful sorry, for that boy.”