But he remained seated, perhaps because Mr. Stamps began again.

"Thar wasn't nothin' but them an' the bit of a' envelope," he remarked.
"It was a-sticken in a crack o' the house, low down, like it hed ben swep'
or blowed thar an' overlooked. I shouldn't hev seed it"--modestly--"ef I
hedn't ben a-goin' round on my hands an' knees."

Then Tom rose very suddenly indeed, so suddenly that he knocked his chair
over and amazed Sheba by kicking it violently across the store. For the
moment he so far forgot himself as to be possessed with some idea of
falling upon Mr. Stamps with the intent to do him bodily injury. He
seized him by the shoulders and turned him about so that he had an
excellent view of his unprepossessing back. What Mr. Stamps thought it
would have been difficult to discover. Sheba fancied that when he opened
his mouth he was going to utter a cry of terror. But he did not. He
turned his neck about as well as he could under the circumstances, and
looking up into Tom's face meekly smiled.

"Tom," he said, "ye ain't a-gwine ter do a thing to me, not a dern
thing."

"Yes, I am," cried Tom, furiously, "I'm goin' to kick----"

"Ef ye was jest haaf to let drive at me, ye'd break my neck," said Mr.
Stamps, "an ye ain't a-gwine ter do it. Ef ye was, Tom, ye'd be a bigger
fool than I took ye fer. Lemme go."

He looked so diminutive and weak-eyed, as he made these remarks, that it
was no wonder Tom released him helplessly, though he was obliged to
thrust his hands deep into his pockets and keep them under control.

"I thought I'd given you one lesson," he burst forth; "I thought----"

Mr. Stamps interrupted him, continuing to argue his side of the question,
evidently feeling it well worth his while to dispose of it on the spot.

"Ye weigh three hundred, Tom," he said, "ef ye weigh a pound, an' I don't
weigh but ninety, 'n ye couldn't handle me keerful enuf not to leave me
in a fix as wouldn't be no credit to ye when ye was done; 'n it 'ed look
kinder bad for ye to meddle with me, anyhow. An' the madder ye get, the
more particular ye'll be not to. Thar's whar ye are, Tom; an' I ain't
sich a fool as not to know it."

His perfect confidence in the strength of his position, and in Tom's
helplessness against it, was a thing to be remembered. Tom remembered it
long afterwards, though at the moment it only roused him to greater heat.

"Now then," he demanded, "let's hear what you're driving at. What I want
to know is w