Page:Hopkinson Smith--Tom Grogan.djvu/248

 live. Maybe I oughtn't tell ye,—I've niver told anybody,—but whin my Tom lay sick upstairs, McGaw come in one night, an' his own wife half dead with a blow he had given her, an' sat down in this very room,—it was our kitchen then,—an' he says, 'If your man don't git well, ye'll be broke.' An' I says to him, 'Dan McGaw, if I live twelve months, Tom Grogan'll be a richer man than he is now.' I was a-sittin' right here when I said it, wid a rag carpet on this floor, an' hardly any furniture in the room. He said more things, an' tried to make love to me, and I let drive and threw him out of me kitchen. Then all me trouble wid him began; he's done everything to beat me since, and now maybe, after all, he'll down me. It all come up yisterday through McGaw meetin' Dr. Mason an' askin' him about me Tom; an' whin the doctor told him Tom was dead seven years, McGaw runs to Justice Rowan wid the story, an' now they say I can't sign a dead man's name. Judge Bowker has the papers, an' it's all to be settled to-morrow.”

“But they can't take your contract away,” said Babcock indignantly, “no matter what Rowan says.”