"If I'd done business with him fifteen minutes longer by the clock I'd have been in prison now for murder--and it would have been a bloody murder at that," blurted the Cap'n. "It had to be over and done with short and sharp. He took half. I took half. Passed papers. He got away just before I lost control of myself. Narrowest escape I ever had. All I know about the part I've got is that it's well wooded and well watered." "It is," agreed Mr. Crowther, despondently. "It's the part where the big reservoir dam flows back for most twenty miles. You can sail all over it in a bo't, and cut toothpicks from the tops of the second-growth birch. He collected all the flowage damages. He's lumbered the rest of your half till there ain't northin' there but hoop poles and battens. All the standin' timber wuth anything is on his half. I wouldn't swap a brimstun' dump in Tophet for your half." "How in the devil did you ever let yourself get trimmed that way?" demanded Hiram. "It's all right for ten-year-old boys to swap jack-knives, sight unseen, but how a man grown would do a thing like you done I don't understand." "Nor I," agreed the Cap'n, gloomily. "I reckon about all I was thinkin' of was lettin' him get away before I had blood on my hands. I'm afraid of my own self sometimes. And it's bad in the family when you kill a brother-in-law. I took half. He took half. Bein' a sailorman, I reckoned that land was land, acre for acre." "The only man I ever heard of as bein' done wuss," continued Mr. Crowther, "was a city feller that bought a quarter section of township 'Leven for a game-preserve, and found when he got up there that it was made up of Misery Bog and the south slope of Squaw Mountain, a ledge, and juniper bushes. The only game that could stay there was swamp-swogons, witherlicks, and doodywhackits." "What's them?" inquired the Cap'n, as though he hoped that he might at least have these tenants on his worthless acres. "Woods names for things that there ain't none of," vouchsafed Mr. Crowther. "You owe me for twenty-two days' work, nine shillin's a day, amountin' to--" "Here! Take that and shut up!" barked the Cap'n, shoving bills at him. Then he wagged a stubby finger under Mr. Crowther's nose. "Now you mark well what I say to you! This thing stays right here among us. If I hear of one yip comin' from you about the way I've been done, I'll come round to your place and chop you into mince-meat and feed you to that animile there!" "Oh, I'm ashamed enough for you so that I won't ever open my mouth," cried Mr. Crowther. He went out through the gate, dragging his sulky captive. "And you needn't worry about me, neither," affirmed Mr. Bodge, who had been standing unnoted in the shadow of the woodbine. "Of course," he continued, "I ain't got so thick with either of you gents as some others has in this place, never likin' to push myself in where I ain't wanted. But I know you are both gents and willin' to use them right that uses you right."