Peggy's hand trembled as he held out the five hundred dollar draft and glared from it to his cronies with a white face.
"Suff'rin' Jehu!" gasped Nick Thorne.

"Is it good ?" The paper was passed reverently around, and examined with a succession of dubious head-shakes.
"Send for Bob West," suggested Cotting.

"He's seen more o' that sort o' money than any of us." The widow Clarke's boy, who was present, ran breathlessly to fetch the hardware dealer, who answered the summons when he learned that Peggy McNutt had received a "check" for five hundred dollars.
West was a tall, lean man with shrewd eyes covered by horn spectacles and a stubby gray mustache.

He was the potentate of the town and reputed to be worth, at a conservative estimate, in the neighborhood of ten thousand dollars--"er more, fer that matter; fer Bob ain't tellin' his business to nobody." Hardware and implements were acknowledged to be paying merchandise, and West lent money on farm mortgages, besides.

He was a quiet man, had a good library in his comfortable rooms over the store, and took the only New York paper that found its way into Millville.