"What did you tell him?"

"That to lift the mortgage now was out of the question."

"Won't he be troublesome? You remember how he acted towards poor old
Mr. Peabody."

"I know he's a hard-hearted, selfish man. I don't believe that there
is a spark of humanity about him. But he'll scarcely go to
extremities with me. I don't fear that."

"Did he threaten?"

"Yes. But I hardly think that he was in earnest."

How far this last remark of old Mr. Bacon was correct, the following
brief conversation will show. It took place between Dyer and a
miserable pettyfogging lawyer, in Brookville, named Grant.

"I've got a mortgage on old Bacon's farm that I wish entered up,"
said the tavern-keeper, on calling at the lawyer's office.

"Can't he pay it off?" inquired Grant.

"Of course not. He's being running down for the last six or seven
years, and is now on his last legs."

"And so you mean to trip him up before he falls of himself." The
lawyer spoke in an unfeeling tone and with a sinister smile.