The Just and the Unjust | Page 9

moment he returned to the desk with a roll of bills in his hands which he counted lovingly, placing them, one by one, in a neat pile before him.
"You're still in the humor to go away?" he asked, when he had finished counting the money.
"Never more so!" said North briefly.
"What do you think of young Langham, John? Will he ever be as sharp a lawyer as the judge?"
"He's counted very brilliant," evaded North.
He rather dreaded the old merchant when his love of gossip got the better of his usual reserve.
"I hadn't seen the fellow in months to speak to until to-day. He's a clever talker and has a taking way with him, but if the half I hear is true, he's going the devil's own gait. He's a pretty good friend to Andy Gilmore, ain't he--that horse-racing, card-playing neighbor of yours?" He pushed the bills toward North. "Run them over, John, and see if I have made any mistake." He slipped off his glasses again and fell to polishing them with his handkerchief. "It's all right, John?" he asked at length.
"Yes, quite right, thank you." And North produced the bonds from an inner pocket of his coat and handed them to McBride.
"So you are going to get out of this place, John? You're going West, you say. What will you do there?" asked the old merchant as he carefully examined the bonds.
"I don't know yet."
"I'm trusting you're through with your folly, John; that your crop of wild oats is in the ground. You've made a grand sowing!"
"I have," answered North, laughing in spite of himself.
"You'll be empty-handed I'm thinking, but for the money you take from here."'
"Very nearly so."
"How much have you gone through with, John, do you mind rightly?"
"Fifteen or twenty thousand dollars."
"A nice bit of money!" He shook his head and chuckled dryly. "It's enough to make your father turn in his grave. He's said to me many a time when he was a bit close in his dealings with me, 'I'm, saving for my boy, Archie.' Eh? But it ain't always three generations from shirt-sleeves to shirt-sleeves; you've made a short cut of it! But you're going to do the wise thing, John; you've been a fool here, now go away and be a man! Let all devilishness alone and work hard; that's the antidote for idleness, and it's overmuch of idleness that's been your ruin."
"I imagine it is," said North cheerfully.
"You'll be making a clever man out of yourself, John," McBride continued graciously. "Not a flash in the pan like your friend Marshall Langham yonder. It's drink will do for him the same as it did for his grandfather, it's in the blood; but that was before your time."
"I've heard of him; a remarkably able lawyer, wasn't he?"
"Pooh! You'll hear a plenty of nonsense talked, and by very sensible people, too, about most drunken fools! He was a spender and a profligate, was old Marshall Langham; a tavern loafer, but a man of parts. Yes, he had a bit of a brain, when he was sober and of a mind to use it."
One would scarcely have supposed that Archibald McBride, silent, taciturn, money-loving, possessed the taste for scandal that North knew he did possess. The old merchant continued garrulously.
"They are a bad lot, John, those Langhams, but it took the smartest one of the whole tribe to get the better of me. I never told you that before, did I? It was old Marshall himself, and he flattered me into loaning him a matter of a hundred dollars once; I guess I have his note somewhere yet. But I swore then I'd have no more dealings with any of them, and I'm likely to keep my word as long as I keep my senses. It's the little things that prick the skin; that make a man bitter. I suppose the judge's boy has had his hand in your pocket? He looks like a man who'd be free enough with another's purse."
But North shook his head.
"No, no, I have only myself to blame," he said.
"What do you hear of his wife? How's the marriage turning out?" and he shot the young fellow a shrewd questioning glance.
"I know nothing about it," replied North, coloring slightly.
"She'll hardly be publishing to the world that she's married a drunken profligate--"
This did not seem to North to call for an answer, and he attempted none. He turned and moved toward the front of the store, followed by the old merchant. At the door he paused.
"Thank you for your kindness, Mr. McBride!"
"It was no kindness, just a matter of business" said McBride hastily. "I'm no philanthropist, John, but just a plain man of business who'll drive a close bargain if he can."
"At any rate, I'm going to thank you," insisted North, smiling pleasantly.