“It is work I would give much to see cleared up, before I die,” I said. Warrick and I were walking up and down the hurricane-deck.
“Would you?” he said, slowly, chewing and glancing up at me,--“would you? There’s a way. But no matter--” stopping short and looking ashamed.
I said nothing. I never urge a man to speak, if he has ever so little mind to hold his tongue quiet. But Warrick had some notion that troubled him. He walked nearer at each turn to the place where a stout, short young woman was sitting, dressed in brown linsey. There was nothing remarkable about her face, which was heavy and dull, if we except a pair of thick, dead, fishy gray eyes.
“Do you see that girl?” he jerked out. “Many of the men aboard would say that she could tell you anything you want to know; the dead are about her all the time, they say. _I_ don’t say it, Captain, mind; I’m not such a fool.”
“I should hope not, Warrick,” I said, gravely, and began to talk of something else. But somehow the matter stuck in my mind. The next day we stopped for freight at Natchez. I went up into the city with one of the passengers. Old Jimmy A. it was,--anybody on the Western waters will know who I mean; for strangers I will only say that A. was one of the most thorough misers I ever knew. He was an extensive stock-broker and speculator in Western lands. When his wife lived he had always consulted her, and abode by her advice in his business. I believe he mourned for the old woman sincerely, though when she died he had taken the ribbon away with which the women had bound her chin and put twine instead, to save a penny.
A. was my companion, as I said. Coming down into the old town a sudden idea struck me.
“These lots are cheap, Mr. A.,” I said. “Buy them and put up good dwellings on them, and your fortune is made. Real estate is going up here daily.”
The old man seized on the plan eagerly, and held me by the coat while he went about the lots, calculating, muttering, chuckling to himself.
“It’s a good notion, very good. This swamp could be drained,--it would bring in eleven per cent, eleven and a half--and a half; I wish I knew what Ann would think of it, poor Ann! I’ve a great mind to go into it; I have indeed.”