But the elder man sat for some minutes apparently in a brown study, and occasionally a smile of sardonic cunning wrinkled his face.  At last he said:  “I’ve told ye so much that I may as well tell ye how I come by that morgidge.  ‘Twont take but a minute, an’ then you can run an’ play,” he added with a chuckle.

“I trust I have not betrayed any impatience,” said John, and instantly conscious of his infelicitous expression, added hastily, “I have really been very much interested.”

“Oh, no,” was the reply, “you hain’t betrayed none, but I know old fellers like me gen’rally tell a thing twice over while they’re at it.  Wa’al,” he went on, “it was like this.  After Charley Cullom got to be some grown he helped to keep the pot a-bilin’, ’n they got on some better.  ‘Bout seven year ago, though, he up an’ got married, an’ then the fat ketched fire.  Finally he allowed that if he had some money he’d go West ’n take up some land, ’n git along like pussly ’n a flower gard’n.  He ambitioned that if his mother ‘d raise a thousan’ dollars on her place he’d be sure to take care of the int’rist, an’ prob’ly pay off the princ’ple in almost no time.  Wa’al, she done it, an’ off he went.  She didn’t come to me fer the money, because—­I dunno—­at any rate she didn’t, but got it of ’Zeke Swinney.

“Wa’al, it turned out jest ’s any fool might ’ve predilictid, fer after the first year, when I reckon he paid it out of the thousan’, Charley never paid no int’rist.  The second year he was jest gettin’ goin’, an’ the next year he lost a hoss jest as he was cal’latin’ to pay, an’ the next year the grasshoppers smote him, ‘n so on; an’ the outcome was that at the end of five years, when the morgidge had one year to run, Charley’d paid one year, an’ she’d paid one, an’ she stood to owe three years’ int’rist.  How old Swinney come to hold off so was that she used to pay the cuss ten dollars or so ev’ry six months ’n git no credit fer it, an’ no receipt an’ no witniss, ’n he knowed the prop’ty was improving all the time.  He may have had another reason, but at any rate he let her run, and got the shave reg’lar.  But at the time I’m tellin’ you about he’d begun to cut up, an’ allowed that if she didn’t settle up the int’rist he’d foreclose, an’ I got wind on’t an’ I run across her one day an’ got to talkin’ with her, an’ she gin me the hull narration.  ‘How much do you owe the old critter?’ I says.  ‘A hunderd an’ eighty dollars,’ she says, ‘an’ where I’m goin’ to git it,’ she says, ’the Lord only knows.’  ‘An’ He won’t tell ye, I reckon,’ I says.  Wa’al, of course I’d known that Swinney had a morgidge because it was a matter of record, an’ I knowed him well enough to give a guess what his game was goin’ to be, an’ more’n that I’d had my eye on that piece an’ parcel an’ I figured that he wa’n’t any likelier a citizen ’n I was.” ("Yes,” said John to himself, “where the carcase is the vultures are gathered together.”)