"Well! suppose I do offer you twenty-five for it, Mis" Harrison?"
exclaimed Spink, evidently greatly spurred by desire, yet curbed by his own natural penuriousness.
"Take my advice and bid him up, Mrs. Harrison," said Harris, with a wink.
"He knows more about this old desk than he ought to, it seems to me."
"For the land"s sake----" began the widow; but Spink burst forth in a rage:
"I"ll make ye a last offer for it--you can take it or leave it." He drew forth a wad of bills and peeled off several into the widow"s hand.
"There"s fifty dollars. Is the desk mine?" he fairly yelled.
The vociferous speech of the professor drew people from the auction. They gathered around. Harris nodded to the old lady, and her hand clamped upon the bills.
"Remember, this is Mrs. Harrison"s own money," said young Colesworth, evenly. "The desk was bought at auction for two dollars."
"Well, is it mine?" demanded Spink.
"It is yours, Jud Spink," replied the old lady, stuffing the money into her handbag.
"Gimme that hatchet!" cried the professor, seizing the implement from a man who stood by. He attacked the old desk in a fury.
"Oh! that"s too bad!" gasped Mrs. Harrison. "I _did_ want the old thing."
Spink grinned at them. "I"ll make you both sicker than you be!" he snarled. "Out o" the way!"
He banged the desk two or three more clips--and out fell a secret panel in the back of it.
"By cracky! money--real money!" yelled Lucas Pritchett. "Oh, Mr. Harris!
we done it now!"
For from the shallow opening behind the panel there were scattered upon the ground several packets of apparently brand-new, if somewhat discolored banknotes.
Professor Spink dropped the axe and picked up the packages eagerly. Others crowded around. They ran them over quickly.
"Five thousand dollars--if there"s a cent!" gasped somebody, in an awed whisper.
"An" she sold it for fifty dollars," said Lucas, almost in tears.
CHAPTER XXIV
PROFESSOR SPINK"S BOTTLES
But Professor Lemuel Judson Spink did not look happy--not at all!
While the neighbors were crowding around, emitting "ohs" and "ahs" over his find in the broken old desk, the proprietor of "the breakfast for the million" began to look pretty sick.
"Five thousand dollars! My mercy!" gasped the Widow Harrison. "Then Bob _didn"t_ lie about bringing home that fortune when he came from the army."
"It"s a shame, Widder!" cried one man. "That five thousand ought to belong to you."
"Dad got it right; didn"t he?" said Lucas, shaking his head sadly. "He allus said Harrison was trying to tell him where it was hid when he had his last stroke."
Harris Colesworth spoke for the first time since the packages of notes were discovered:
"Mr. Harrison told Cyrus Pritchett that he had hid away "that that would be wuth five thousand." It"s plain what he had in his mind--and a whole lot of other foolish people had it in their minds just after the Civil War."
"What do you mean, Mr. Colesworth?" cried Lyddy, who was clinging to the widow"s hand and patting it soothingly.
"Why," chuckled Harris, "there were folks who believed--and they believed it for years after the Civil War--that some day the Federal Government was going to redeem all the paper money printed by the Confederate States----"
"_What?_" bawled Lucas, fairly springing off the ground.
"Confederate money?" repeated the crowd in chorus.
No wonder Professor Spink looked sick. He broke through the group, flinging the neat packages of bills behind him as he strode away.
"How about the desk, Professor?" shouted Harris; "don"t you want it?"
"Give it to the old woman--you swindler!" snarled Spink.
And then the crowd roared! The humor of the thing struck them and it was half an hour before the auctioneer could go on with the sale.
"No; I did not know the bills were there," Harris avowed. "But I thought the professor was so avaricious that he could be made to bid up the old desk. Had he bid on it when it was put up by the auctioneer, however, Mrs.
Harrison would not have benefited. You see, the best the auctioneer can do, what he gets from the sale will not entirely satisfy Spink"s claim.
But the money-grabber can"t touch that fifty dollars in good money he paid over to Mrs. Harrison with his own hands."
"Oh, it was splendid, Harris!" gasped Lyddy, seizing both his hands. Then she retired suddenly to Mrs. Harrison"s side and never said another word to the young man.
"Gee, cracky!" said Lucas, with a sigh. "I was scairt stiff when I seen them bills fall out of the old desk. I thought sure they were good."
"I confess I knew what they were immediately--and so did Spink," replied Harris.
The young folks had got enough of the vendue now, and so had Mrs.
Pritchett. Lucas agreed to come up with the farm wagon for the pieces of furniture with which Harris had presented the Widow Harrison--including the broken desk--and transport them and the widow herself to Hillcrest before night.
Mrs. Pritchett was enthusiastic over the girls taking Mrs. Harrison to the farm, and she could not say enough in praise of it. So Lyddy was glad to get out of the buckboard with Harris Colesworth at the bottom of the lane.
"You all talk too much about it, Mrs. Pritchett!" she cried, when bidding the farmer"s wife good-bye. "But I"d be glad to have you come up here as often as you can--and talk on any other subject!" and she ran laughing into the house.
Lyddy feared that Professor Spink would make trouble. At least, he and Harris Colesworth must be at swords" point. And she was sorry now that she had so impulsively given the young chemist her commendation for what he had done for the Widow Harrison.
However, Harris went off at noon, walking to town to take the afternoon train to the city; and as the professor did not show up again until nightfall there was no friction that day at Hillcrest--nor for the rest of the week.
Mrs. Harrison came and got into the work "two-fisted," as she said herself. She was a strong old woman, and had been brought up to work.
Lyddy and "Phemie were at once relieved of many hard jobs--and none too quickly, for the girls were growing thin under the burden they had a.s.sumed.