“Walk into the house.”

“No, I won’t come in, as long as I’ve met you.  I have company at home.  I haven’t much to say—­” The Squire stopped.  Jake Noyes was coming from the barn, swinging a lantern; he waited until he had led the horse away, then continued.  “It is just as well to have no witnesses,” he said, laughing.  “It is about that affair of the Edwards mortgage.”

“Ah!” said the doctor, with a fencing wariness of intonation.

“I would like to inquire what you’re going to do about it, if you have no objection.  I have reasons.”

The doctor gave a keen look at him.  His face, as he stood on the steps, was on a level with the Squire’s.  “I am going to take the house, of course,” he said, calmly.

“It will be a blow to Mrs. Edwards and the boy.”

“It will be the best thing that could happen to him,” said the doctor, with the same clear evenness.  “That sick woman and boy are not fit to have the care of a place.  I shall own it, and rent it to them.”

Heat in controversy is sometimes needful to convince one’s self as well as one’s adversary.  Doctor Prescott needed no increase of warmth to further his own arguments, so conclusive they were to his own mind.

“For how much, if I may ask?  I am interested for certain reasons.”

“Seventy dollars.  That will amount to the interest money they pay now and ten dollars over.  The extra ten will be much less than repairs and taxes.  They will be gainers.”

“What will you take for that mortgage?”

“Take for the mortgage?”

The Squire nodded.

The doctor gave another of his keen glances at him.  “I don’t know that I want to take anything for it,” he said.

“Suppose it were made worth your while?”

“Nobody would be willing to make it enough worth my while to influence me,” said the doctor.  “My price for the transfer of a good investment is what it is worth to me.”

“Well, doctor, what is it worth to you?” Squire Eben said, smiling.

“Fifteen hundred dollars,” said the doctor.

The Squire whistled.

“I am quite aware that the mortgage is for a thousand only,” the doctor said, and yet without the slightest meaning of apology, “but I consider when it comes to relinquishing it that it is worth the additional five hundred.  I must be just to myself.  Then, too, Mr. Edwards owed me a half-year’s interest.  The fifteen hundred would cover that, of course.”

“You won’t take any less?”

“Not a dollar.”

Squire Eben hesitated a second.  “You know, I own that strip of land on the Dale road, on the other side of the brook,” he said.

The doctor nodded, still with his eyes keenly intent.

“There are three good house-lots; that house of the Edwardses is old and out of repair.  You’ll have to spend considerable on it to rent it.  My three lots are equal to that one house, and suppose we exchange.  You take that land, and I take the mortgage on the Edwards place.”