Judge Fulsom frowned and pursed his lips thoughtfully.

“The proceedings has not yet reached the point you mention, Henry,” he said.  “You’re going a little too fast.”

Nobody spoke, but the growing excitement took the form of a shuffling of feet.  The Judge deliberately lighted his pipe, a token of mental relaxation.  Then from out the haze of blue smoke, like the voice of an oracle from the seclusion of a shrine, issued the familiar recitative tone for which everybody had been waiting.

“Well, boys, I’ll tell you how ’twas:  Along about ten minutes of twelve I had my hat on my head, and was just drawing on my linen duster with the idea of going home to dinner, when I happened to look out of my office window, and there was Deacon Whittle—­and the girl, just coming up th’ steps.  In five minutes more I’d have been gone, most likely for the day.”

“Gosh!” breathed the excitable young farmer.

The middle-aged man sternly motioned him to keep silence.

“I s’pose most of you boys saw her at the fair last night,” proceeded the Judge, ignoring the interruption.  “She’s a nice appearing young female; but nobody’d think to look at her—­”

He paused to ram down the tobacco in the glowing bowl of his pipe.

“Well, as I was saying, she’d been over to the Bolton house with the Deacon.  Guess we’ll have to set the Deacon down for a right smart real-estate boomer.  We didn’t none of us give him credit for it.  He’d got the girl all worked up to th’ point of bein’ afraid another party’d be right along to buy the place.  She wanted an option on it.”

“Shucks!” again interrupted the young farmer disgustedly.  “Them options ain’t no good.  I had one once on five acres of timber, and—­”

“Shut up, Lute!” came in low chorus from the spell-bound audience.

“Wanted an option,” repeated Judge Fulsom loudly, “just till I could fix up the paper.  ‘And, if you please,’ said she, ‘I’d like t’ pay five thousand dollars for the option, then I’d feel more sure.’  And before I had a chance to open my mouth, she whips out a check-book.”

“Gr-reat jumping Judas!” cried the irrepressible Lute, whose other name was Parsons.  “Five thousand dollars!  Why, the old place ain’t worth no five thousand dollars!”

Judge Fulsom removed his pipe from his mouth, knocked out the half-burned tobacco, blew through the stem, then proceeded to fill and light it again.  From the resultant haze issued his voice once more, bland, authoritative, reminiscent.

“Well, now, son, that depends on how you look at it.  Time was when Andrew Bolton wouldn’t have parted with the place for three times that amount.  It was rated, I remember, at eighteen thousand, including live stock, conveyances an’ furniture, when it was deeded over to the assignees.  We sold out the furniture and stock at auction for about half what they were worth.  But there weren’t any bidders worth mentioning for the house and land.  So it was held by the assignees—­Cephas Dix, Deacon Whittle and myself—­for private sale.  We could have sold it on easy terms the next year for six thousand; but in process of trying to jack up our customer to seven, we lost out on the deal.  But now—­”