, an' prob'ly pay off
the princ'ple in almost no time. Wa'al, she done it, an' off he went.
She didn't come to me fer the money, because--I dunno--at any rate she
didn't, but got it of 'Zeke Swinney.

"Wa'al, it turned out jest 's any fool might 've predilictid, fer after
the first year, when I reckon he paid it out of the thousan', Charley
never paid no int'rist. The second year he was jest gettin' goin', an'
the next year he lost a hoss jest as he was cal'latin' to pay, an' the
next year the grasshoppers smote him, 'n so on; an' the outcome was that
at the end of five years, when the morgidge had one year to run,
Charley'd paid one year, an' she'd paid one, an' she stood to owe three
years' int'rist. How old Swinney come to hold off so was that she used
to pay the cuss ten dollars or so ev'ry six months 'n git no credit fer
it, an' no receipt an' no witniss, 'n he knowed the prop'ty was
improving all the time. He may have had another reason, but at any rate
he let her run, and got the shave reg'lar. But at the time I'm tellin'
you about he'd begun to cut up, an' allowed that if she didn't settle up
the int'rist he'd foreclose, an' I got wind on't an' I run across her
one day an' got to talkin' with her, an' she gin me the hull narration.
'How much do you owe the old critter?' I says. 'A hunderd an' eighty
dollars,' she says, 'an' where I'm goin' to git it,' she says, 'the Lord
only knows.' 'An' He won't tell ye, I reckon,' I says. Wa'al, of course
I'd known that Swinney had a morgidge because it was a matter of record,
an' I knowed him well enough to give a guess what his game was goin' to
be, an' more'n that I'd had my eye on that piece an' parcel an' I
figured that he wa'n't any likelier a citizen 'n I was." ("Yes," said
John to himself, "where the carcase is the vultures are gathered
together.")

"'Wa'al,' I says to her, after we'd had a little more talk, 's'posen you
come 'round to my place to-morro' 'bout 'leven o'clock, an' mebbe we c'n
cipher this thing out. I don't say positive that we kin,' I says, 'but
mebbe, mebbe.' So that afternoon I sent over to the county seat an' got
a description an' had a second morgidge drawed up fer two hundred
dollars, an' Mis' Cullom signed it mighty quick. I had the morgidge made
one day after date, 'cause, as I said to her, it was in the nature of a
temp'rary loan, but she was so tickled she'd have signed most anythin'
at that pertic'ler time. 'Now,' I says to her, 'you go an'