"I want my rights," interrupted a man with a hoarse crow.
"Your rights!" shouted the Judge. "You've got no right to a damned
thing but a good horsewhipping!"
"I've got my rights to the money other folks are keeping, I'll let
you know!"
Then the Judge fairly bellowed, as he got slowly to his feet:
"I tell you once for all, the whole damned lot of you," he shouted,
"that every man, woman and child in Brookville has been paid,
compensated, remunerated and requited in full for every cent he, she
or it lost in the Andrew Bolton bank failure."
There was a snarl of dissent.
"You all better go slow, and hold your tongues, and mind your own
business. Remember what I say; that girl does not owe a red cent in
this town, neither does her father. She's paid in full, and you've
spent a lot of it in here, too!" The Judge wiped his red face.
"Oh, come on, Jedge; you don't want to be hard on the house,"
protested the man in the red sweater, waving his arms as frantically
as a freight brakeman. "Say, you boys! don't ye git excited! The
Jedge didn't mean that; you got him kind of het up with argufying....
Down in front, boys! You, Lute--"
But it was too late: half a dozen voices were shouting at once. There
was a simultaneous descent upon the bar, with loud demands for liquor
of the sort Lute Parsons filled up on. Then the raucous voice of the
ringleader pierced the tumult.
"Come on, boys! Let's go out to the old place and get our rights off
that gal of Bolton's!"
"That's th' stuff, Lute!" yelled the others, clashing their glasses
wildly.
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