"You're into it too, are you? Might of knowed! If there was ever a worse show an' hullabaloo than that old fool has raised I never seen it. If I was the Widder Jones I'd starve afore I'd leave my daughter tend shop for the kind he is. Batty--that's what's wrong with him! Crazy as a coot! And dangerous! Them damn flowers! Ptah!"
Then he closed up like a clam. I got not one word more out of him until we pulled up in front of my uncle's house, now mine. Then: "Go on up there," he said. "See for yourself. Giddap!"
Which, of course, is exactly what I did. Of all my old friends and cronies, Melchizedek Hobbs was the one to whom I had been closest. Jeremiah Jones had written me a few times from Chicago, where he was with some firm of chemists, and I gathered that Sydney Smythe was enjoying the spoils of aristocracy as cashier of his father's bank, but I was not anxious to see Sydney. The others had scattered or married and settled down, and I doubted that they would have much in common with footloose Jamie Abercrombie, who had too much money for his own good and had just inherited another slice that he hadn't earned.
I had dinner and a pipe and then set out along the well-remembered, maple shaded lane of Spring Street, past the old Sutherland place at the corner of Eagle, where a scrawny hedge had replaced the old white picket fence; over the limestone bridge across the Grooterkill, built by one of the Irish stonecutters who had been brought over to work on the Erie Canal; past the Jones house with its neat lawn and big red barn. There was someone on the porch, but I didn't stop. I didn't cotton much to Abigail, and there would be plenty of time in daylight to talk to Mrs. Jones.
Melchizedek Hobbs lived almost at the end of Spring Street, in a huge, rambling clapboard house that hadn't been painted since before Gettysburg. The grass, as usual, was rank on the lawn, but the flower-beds that lined the flagstone walk were pictures of tender care, and the big new greenhouse in the backyard shone like silver in the moonlight.
There was a light out there, so I went through the side yard and around the house. There was a high wire fence across the yard, with an iron gate, and the gate was padlocked. I rattled it and hooted. The light went out in the greenhouse, and a moment later I saw the gaunt, scarecrow figure of Melchizedek Hobbs stalking toward me.