“‘Wa’al,’ I says to her, after we’d had a little more talk, ’s’posen you come ‘round to my place to-morro’ ’bout ‘leven o’clock, an’ mebbe we c’n cipher this thing out.  I don’t say positive that we kin,’ I says, ’but mebbe, mebbe.’  So that afternoon I sent over to the county seat an’ got a description an’ had a second morgidge drawed up fer two hundred dollars, an’ Mis’ Cullom signed it mighty quick.  I had the morgidge made one day after date, ’cause, as I said to her, it was in the nature of a temp’rary loan, but she was so tickled she’d have signed most anythin’ at that pertic’ler time.  ‘Now,’ I says to her, ‘you go an’ settle with old Step-an’-fetch-it, but don’t you say a word where you got the money,’ I says.  ‘Don’t ye let on nothin’—­stretch that conscience o’ your’n if nes’sary,’ I says, ‘an’ be pertic’ler if he asks you if Dave Harum give ye the money you jest say, “No, he didn’t.”  That wont be no lie,’ I says, ‘because I aint givin’ it to ye,’ I says.  Wa’al, she done as I told her.  Of course Swinney suspicioned fust off that I was mixed up in it, but she stood him off so fair an’ square that he didn’t know jest what to think, but his claws was cut fer a spell, anyway.

“Wa’al, things went on fer a while, till I made up my mind that I ought to relieve Swinney of some of his anxieties about worldly bus’nis, an’ I dropped in on him one mornin’ an’ passed the time o’ day, an’ after we’d eased up our minds on the subjects of each other’s health an’ such like I says, ’You hold a morgidge on the Widder Cullom’s place, don’t ye?’ Of course he couldn’t say nothin’ but ‘yes.’  ’Does she keep up the int’rist all right?’ I says.  ‘I don’t want to be pokin’ my nose into your bus’nis,’ I says, ‘an’ don’t tell me nothin’ you don’t want to.’  Wa’al, he knowed Dave Harum was Dave Harum, an’ that he might ’s well spit it out, an’ he says, ‘Wa’al, she didn’t pay nothin’ fer a good while, but last time she forked over the hull amount.  ’But I hain’t no notion,’ he says, ‘that she’ll come to time agin.’  ‘An’ s’posin’ she don’t,’ I says, ‘you’ll take the prop’ty, won’t ye?’ ’Don’t see no other way,’ he says, an’ lookin’ up quick, ‘unless you over-bid me,’ he says.  ‘No,’ I says, ‘I ain’t buyin’ no real estate jest now, but the thing I come in fer,’ I says, ‘leavin’ out the pleasure of havin’ a talk with you, was to say that I’d take that morgidge off’m your hands.’

“Wa’al, sir, he, he, he, he!  Scat my ——!  At that he looked at me fer a minute with his jaw on his neck, an’ then he hunched himself, ’n drawed in his neck like a mud turtle.  ‘No,’ he says, ‘I ain’t sufferin’ fer the money, an’ I guess I’ll keep the morgidge.  It’s putty near due now, but mebbe I’ll let it run a spell.  I guess the secur’ty’s good fer it.’  ‘Yes,’ I says, ’I reckon you’ll let it run long enough fer the widder to pay the taxes on’t once more anyhow; I guess the secur’ty’s good enough to take that resk; but how ‘bout my secur’ty?’