The Mysterious Stranger, and Other Stories. Mark Twain
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in the village—nor Marget, either. And not even a half-enemy that's rich enough to chance eleven hundred ducats to do you a mean turn. I'll ask you if that's so or not?”
He couldn't get around that argument, and it cheered him up. “But it isn't mine, you see—it isn't mine, in any case.”
He said it in a wistful way, like a person that wouldn't be sorry, but glad, if anybody would contradict him.
“It is yours, Father Peter, and we are witness to it. Aren't we, boys?”
“Yes, we are—and we'll stand by it, too.”
“Bless your hearts, you do almost persuade me; you do, indeed. If I had only a hundred-odd ducats of it! The house is mortgaged for it, and we've no home for our heads if we don't pay to-morrow. And that four ducats is all we've got in the—”
“It's yours, every bit of it, and you've got to take it—we are bail that it's all right. Aren't we, Theodor? Aren't we, Seppi?”
We two said yes, and Nikolaus stuffed the money back into the shabby old wallet and made the owner take it. So he said he would use two hundred of it, for his house was good enough security for that, and would put the rest at interest till the rightful owner came for it; and on our side we must sign a paper showing how he got the money—a paper to show to the villagers as proof that he had not got out of his troubles dishonestly.
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