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"Money!" repeated Abner, astonished.

"Yes, you might require some money just at this period of your life, say to go to school on."

"No, I don't want to go to school," returned Abner promptly.

"I didn't know. Your grandfather was a very bookish man. Then perhaps you'd like three or four hundred dollars to buy yourself an automobile; most boys want an auto."

An automobile had been, up to that moment, furthest from Abner's thoughts, but now the mere hint that he possibly might get one set up a trembling inside of him.

"I'd shore like that, but how in the worl' kin I git it?"

"As an old friend of your family," smiled the banker, "I might advance you that amount."

"Jest because my gran'daddy knowed yore daddy?"

"Well, yes, and because, too—" here the banker hesitated, placed the tips of his bony fingers delicately together—"because too, Abner, there was a little cloud on the title of some of my father's holding; it's what Mr. Sharp here calls a shadow on the title; so we thought if you would just sign us a quit-claim deed to a little tract of land in question we would make you a present of four or five hundred dollars just to show our appreciation."

All this talk about clouds on titles meant nothing whatever to Abner, but his hill instinct to trade made him say, "Is five hunderd as good as you could do on that, Mr. Northcutt?"

Mr. Buckingham Sharp leaned back and laughed roundly at this.

"If you had offered him a million, Perry, you would have got the same answer; it's automatic with them."

Mr. Northcutt likewise smiled his bloodless smile. "You forget, Abner, this is mainly a present in memory of your grandfather."

"What is a cloud on a title?" queried the youth shrewdly.

"Well, it is just some irregularity, perhaps your grandfather's signature was not witnessed; or your grandmother's