"Fifty-five past," corrected Jimmy Tomlinson, breaking the thread of his thought for the first time; then he went on, "it ain't right for a man to live all his lone, out here among the kyoots (coyotes), an' see nothin' at all of life. I was born and fetched up on a farm. My father, he married late in life--you know that, Jack--an' when I was born, my parents was both old. I was their first an' their last, an' I never had nobody to talk to--no brothers n'r sisters--so it's natural, ain't it, that I grew up kind of backward. "Well, nobody has ever seemed to want for to talk to me, an' I ain't the kind that can push myself in; so I made up my mind, a long time ago, I'd stay in the shack here and save money; and when I got enough to pay my way, so I wouldn't have to ask no favors of nobody, nowhere, I'd sell out an' pack my grip and travel. I could have quit ten years ago or more, an' had worlds-an'-a-plenty of cash to carry me through; but I'm kind of slow to move, and I guess a feller gets more so as he gets older--not that I'm anyways old yet, you know----" "Oh, no," said Nixon; "just beginnin' life, Jimmy--that's all." "----and I guess I would have b'en here for another ten years maybe, Jack, if you and your friend hadn't come along. But I feel just as good now, better if anything, as I did at forty-five past, and I have considerable more money, so maybe it's just as well after all. Now," Jimmy Tomlinson, concluding this explanatory prelude to the sale of his farm in the manner in which he had often rehearsed it to himself, swung his chair around facing Ware, and injected into his tone a bargaining briskness that cracked his voice to a squeal, "whutt's it to be. Twenty thousand, cash down, takes this place--buildin's, stock, implements, what grain's in the grennery, fowls, feed, everything: want to get it all off my hands in one sling. All that the man I sell to's got to do is to hitch up my team--his team, it will be then--and drive me and my trunk into Toddburn. But I got to have the cash, right in my hand--no notes to worry over, no fear of the place comin' back onto me when I thought I was through with it, nothin' to worry about in this wide world. Well, sir?" "Have you a pen and ink?" said Sir William, bustling from his chair to accommodate himself to the other's mood, moving over to a seat by the table, and laying his cheque-book on the red oilcloth. Jimmy Tomlinson, his hands trembling with the excitement of this climactic moment of his whole life, brought an old stone ink-bottle and a pen with a nib that sputtered like an angry cat as the baronet wrote. An interval of quick writing; a brisk ripping sound, as perforated edges tore apart: and Jimmy Aleck Tomlinson, bachelor and recluse, held at last in his hand the small precious oblong slip which spelled emancipation from the farm life that had held the Tomlinsons of four tardy-marrying generations.