Tom Bigden (for it was he) paused when he heard himself addressed so familiarly, and sat in his canoe with his double paddle suspended in the air. He gave a quick glance at the tattered, unkempt figure on the beach, and with an exclamation of disgust went on his way again.
“Say,” shouted Matt, in peremptory tones. “Hold on a minute. I want to talk to you.”
“Well, I don’t want to talk to you,” was Tom’s reply. “Mind your own business and let your betters alone.”
If Tom had tried for a week he could not have said any thing that was better calculated to make Matt Coyle angry. The latter never acknowledged that there was any body in the world better than himself. Lazy, shiftless vagabond and thief that he was, he considered himself the equal of any industrious, saving and honest guide in the country.
“Who’s my betters?” Matt almost yelled. “Not you, I’d have you know. I can have you ’rested before this time to-morrer, if I feel like it, an’ I will, too, if you throw on any more of your ’ristocratic airs with me. Mind that, while you’re talkin’ about bein’ ‘my betters.’”
“Why, you—you villain,” exclaimed Tom, who could not find words strong enough to express his surprise and indignation. “How dare you talk to me in that way?”
“No more villain than yourself,” retorted Matt, hotly, “an’ I dare talk to you in any way I please. You don’t like it ’cause a man who ain’t got no good clothes to wear has the upper hand of you an’ can send you to jail any day he feels in the humor for it, do you? Well, that’s the way the thing stands, an’ if you want to keep friends with me, you had better do as I tell you.”
Tom Bigden was utterly confounded. Never in his life before had he been so shamefully insulted. Do as that blear-eyed ragamuffin told him! He would cut off his right hand first. Almost ready to boil over with rage, Tom dipped his paddle into the water and set his canoe in motion again.
“Well, go on if you want to,” yelled Matt. “But bear one thing in mind: I’ll leave word at the hatchery this very night, an’ to-morrer there’ll be a constable lookin’ for you. You forget that you told me to steal Joe Wayring’s boat down there to Sherwin’s Pond last summer, don’t you? You knowed I was goin’ to take it, you never said or done a thing to hender me, an’ that makes you a ’cessory before the fact,” added Matt glibly, and with a ring of triumph in his voice. “Now, will you stop an’ talk to me, or go to jail?”