Old Hezekiah did not reply immediately. He sat for a while staring absently at the other as though not seeing him. Then suddenly he aroused himself almost as with a start. “Hey?” he said, “How? Oh, ay! what you say appeareth all very true, Master Burton. But—will you let me see them papers?”
“To be sure I will,” said the other; “and if you can explain the business satisfactorily, Master Tipton, and if you can satisfy Sir Henry Ballister that his nephew is safe and sound, and shall be duly fetched back again with no ill having befallen him, why, I, for one, will be as glad as glad can be.”
“That’s right, that’s right,” said the old man, almost briskly. He adjusted his spectacles as he spoke, and then opened the first paper of the packet and began slowly and deliberately reading it. Then he took up the second and gave it a like close and deliberate scrutiny, and so on through the packet.
“Well, Master Hezekiah,” said the attorney, when the other had finished the perusal of the packet, “now you’ve read these papers, what do you think of ‘em, and what do you intend to do about this business? I will report to Sir Henry Ballister just what you choose for me to say.”
The old man did not reply immediately. He had taken up his spectacles again, and was rubbing them and rubbing them with his red bandana handkerchief. “Those papers, Master Burton,” said he, at last, “bear mightily hard upon me. They make it appear like I kidnapped Jacky myself. Here be you spending all your time a-hunting up evidence to make it look like as though I had dealt foul with my own flesh and blood—and you a neighbor of mine, and I one who hath put many and many a good guinea’s worth of work into your way.”
“That last is true enough, Master Tipton,” said the little lawyer; “and, as I said before, I, for one, have no wish to do aught to harm you. Just you think, Master Tipton,—that was why I sent for you to come and see me; else I would have sent these papers straight to Sir Henry Ballister instead of showing them, first of all, to you.”
“I be much beholden to you, neighbor,” said the old man. “But these papers look mightily ill for me. Suppose anything should happen to you, and those papers should fall into strange hands; how would it be with me then? Ha’ ye thought of that?”