CHAPTER VIII

JACK AND THE SQUIRE.

FEARING a raid upon his melon-patch, which bad boys in the neighborhood were beginning to molest, the squire had stayed at home to watch it that Sunday afternoon. He had seen Jack with his dog and basket cross the fields, go to Aunt Patsy’s house, and afterwards enter the woods; and, feeling the interest of a stern moral censor in the conduct of all Sabbath-breaking boys, he had followed him to the hollow log. Lion’s indiscreet barking had at first served to guide him to the spot; and afterwards his equally unfortunate silence, in consequence of the punishment he had suffered for that offence, favored the old man’s stealthy approach.

To have the faintest idea of the emotions that agitated the squire at sight of Jack and the shoes full of coin,—the wrath, the surprise, the avarice,—one must have seen him as he stood there, or have heard Jack (as I have heard him many times) describe the grim and frowning figure that met his eyes.

“What’s this, what’s this, eh?” cried Peternot, taking a stride forwards. “Money! on my land!” and the gray eyes glittered. “Ha! ha! This, then, is the meaning of all that talk about _treasure-trove_ the other day!”

Jack felt so stunned for the moment that he did not attempt to speak, or even to rise. He sat on the ground, guarding his shoes, keeping one hand on the rim of the basket and looking up steadily at the squire with eyes full of mingled fear and defiance.

“So, so! What have you got in your basket?” And the stiff-jointed old man stooped to remove the coat which Jack had taken the precaution to spread over it each time when he entered the log.

“Here! you just leave that alone!” exclaimed Jack, while Lion gave a fierce growl. The squire dropped the garment instantly, but he had pulled it far enough from the basket to expose its surprising contents.

“Boy!” said he, in still greater amazement, “are you a robber?”

“Like enough I am,” muttered Jack, quite willing that he should take that view of the case.

“Boy!” repeated Peternot, with awful severity, “you’ve stolen this money, and it’s my duty to have you arrested. I am a justice of the peace.” Jack changed countenance at that.

“I’ve stolen it about as much as I stole Mr. Chatford’s horse and buggy once, which you were so sure of, when they were all the while standing under the shed at the Basin, just where Mr. Chatford left them.”

“Then how did you come by so much money?”

“If you must know, I found it in this log,” said Jack, with a sudden determination to tell the plain truth, and stand or fall by it.

“How do I know but what you stole it and hid it here, so you could pretend you’d found it?”

Jack was glad now that he had not removed the trunk.

“If you can’t see by the look of this silver that it’s been hid away here longer than I’ve been in the town,” he replied, “you can just go into the log and find the trunk, that you’ll say has been there about as many years as I am old, that’s all!”

“Is there any more money in there?”

Jack was willing the squire should think there might be, nor was he sure there were not a few pieces in the rubbish about the trunk; so he said, “It belongs to me, if there is.”

“Belongs to you? You little scapegrace! By what right?”

“It belongs to me,—that is,” added Jack, “if the real owner doesn’t turn up,—because I found it.”

“Found it, on my land! You haven’t got it off from my land yet, and I forbid your taking it off. What’s left in the log you haven’t even had in your possession. I want nothing but what’s my own by a plain interpretation of law; but the law’s with me in this. If you had once fairly got the coin away without my knowledge, there might have been some question about it; but that you’ve been caught trespassing, and that you’ve no right to take anything from my premises in my presence and against my express orders, is common sense as well as common law.”

Fire and tears rushed into poor Jack’s eyes.

“And do you mean to say you’ll take all this money away from me?”

“Sartin, I do, since it don’t belong to you, not a dollar on ’t. I’ll make ye a reasonable reward, however, if you give it up without making me any unnecessary trouble.”

“What do you call a reasonable reward? Half?”

“Half! of all that money!” exclaimed the squire, in huge astonishment. “Preposterous! I’ll give ye more than liberal pay for your trouble. I’ll give ye five dollars.”

Thereupon grief and fury and fierce contempt burst from the soul of Jack. All the softening influences which had been at work upon him for the past few months were forgotten in a moment; he was the vicious, desperate, profane little canal-driver once more. Looking up through tears of rage at the startled squire, he shouted, “Go to thunder, you hoary old villain!” and followed up this charge with a volley of blasphemy and abuse, which lasted for at least a minute. By that time the squire had recovered his self-possession; so, in a measure, had Jack; and the hurricane of passion that had swept everything before it was followed by a lull of sullen hate and despair.

“That’s the kind of boy you are, is it? after all your living among Christian people!” said the old man, with a sort of grim satisfaction.

“It’s the kind of boy I was, and it’s the kind of boy such Christians as you are will make me again, if I let you!” said Jack, kindling once more. “I didn’t mean to swear, but I forgot myself. I haven’t before, since the first Sunday after I came off from the canal. That’s because I _have_ been living among Christians,—people who try to encourage a fellow and help him, by bringing out the good that’s in him, instead of grinding him down, and keeping him down, by telling him how bad he’s always been and always will be,—like the kind of Christian _you_ are!”

“Talk to me about being a Christian, you profane Sabbath-breaker!” said Peternot, choking with indignation.

“A Sabbath-breaker, am I? And what are you? I own up to what brought me here to-day, but what brought _you_ here? What keeps you here? Why ain’t you at church? Guess you consider your worldly interests worth looking after a little, if _’tis_ Sunday,—don’t you?”

“Come, come, boy! that kind of talk won’t help matters.”

“Then le’s stop it,” said Jack. “But if you come here on Sunday and try to get my money away from me, and accuse me of Sabbath-breaking because I mean to keep it, I shall have just a word to say back, you better believe!” And, still sitting on the ground, Jack held his shoes between his legs, and guarded one side of the basket, while Lion guarded the other.

“What do you want of so much money,—a boy like you?” said the squire, adopting a more conciliatory tone.

“What do you want of it,—a man like you? without a child in the world, since you drove your only son away from home by your hard treatment, and he died a drunkard and a gambler!”

The old man fairly staggered backward at this cruel blow, and uttered a suppressed groan.

“It was mean in me to say that,” added Jack, relenting; “I didn’t mean to; but you drove me to it. What do you want of more money than you’ve got already?—that’s what I meant to ask. You’re a rich man now. You’ve ten times as much as you need; what do you want of more? To carry into the next world with ye? one would think so,—an old man like you!”

“Boy!” said the trembling Peternot, “you don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Yes, I do; I’m talking just what a good many other folks talk, only not to your face. They say, ‘There’s old Squire Peternot, seventy years old, with one foot almost in the grave,—rich enough in all conscience,—don’t use even the interest on what money he has, but lays it up, lays it up,—lives meanly as the poorest farmer in town,—never gives a dollar, except when he can’t help it, and then you’d think it hurt him like pulling his teeth,—and yet there he is, trying to get Aunt Patsy’s little house and lot away from her,—making tight bargains, screwing his workmen’s wages down to the lowest notch’; that’s what I’ve heard, every word of it, and you know that every word of it is true!”

“I have my own ideas about property,” said the squire; “and no man—no prudent man—likes to squander what’s his own.”

“And so you, with all your wealth, come and grab this money, which is all I have in the world, and offer me five dollars to give it up to you! You _are_ a prudent man! I say squander!”

“I’ll give you twenty dollars of it,—and that’s liberal, I’m sure,” said Peternot, a good deal shaken by what Jack had said, but unable, from long habit, to take his hand from any worldly goods that it chanced to cover.

“Twenty dollars!” laughed Jack, with scornful defiance. “_I_ don’t make bargains on Sunday.”

This cool sarcasm caused the worthy Peternot to wince as at the taste of some bitter medicine. “I don’t bargain on the Lord’s day, neither. But I see the necessity of coming to some sort of terms with you.”

“Very well; then you just walk off and leave me and my dog to take care of this money; those are the only terms you can come to with me.”

“But what do you propose to do, if I don’t walk off?”

“Stay here,—Lion and I,—and hang on to our _treasure-trove_. Your nephew, who knows so much about law, advised me to keep possession,—to fight for it,—and I will.”

“And do you think I’m going to give up to you, you renegade?” cried the squire. He moved to lay his hand on the basket; but there was something in Lion’s growl he didn’t like. “I’ll beat that beast’s brains out, if he offers to touch me!” he exclaimed, grasping his cane menacingly.

“I advise you not to try that little thing,” said Jack. “If you should miss your stroke, where would you be the next minute?”

The squire thought of that. His tone changed slightly.

“I don’t leave this spot till I git possession of that money!”

“All right, Squire. Sit down,—you’d better. You’ll have some time to stop, I guess. Have a peach?” And the audacious little wretch took one out of his coat-pocket. “We shall need refreshments before we get through!” As Peternot indignantly declined the proffered fruit, Jack quietly broke it open, and ate, with a relish, the rich yellow pulp. The old man accepted the invitation to sit down, however, and reposed his stiff old limbs on the end of the hollow log, not clearly foreseeing how this little adventure was to end.