The Manitowoc tribune. [volume] (Manitowoc, Wis.) 1866-1878, 1877-09-06
OLD MONEYBAGS, WILL.

"What time it is since you were
here, Mrs. Marbury and how fresh you
look p exclaimed Mrs. Chappell, while I
shook hands with her over the counter
one day in the early part of August.
Z" Wherever have you been SO long? I
should say into the country, from your
appearance.
/ could not reciprocate the compli-
ment, for 1 thought she looked tagged
and iaded-but it might be with the
heat, so I simply answered the ques-
ton.
"Wen, 1 have been into the country,
it is true, but not among green fields
and scented hedgerows. [ have been
into the BLACK Country black with
coal and slang and cinder-heaps and
smoke; and fiery-red at night with the
glow from roaring furnaces. So, you
see, have not been picking up my
fresh looks where children pick up
daisies. No, I have been helping to
right a great wrong and perhaps my
inward satisfaction may have smoothed
away few outward wrinkles"
Indeed y calculated Mrs. Chappel,
bending forward with look of eager in
quiry; 81 hope it is not secret ?"
"No, just the reverse I replied, sit
ting down on a shop-chair. tI have
disburdened myself of secret which has
loaded my mind for many years. Ihave
not kept it willingly; but the time had
not come for me to speak.
''It is about ten years ago, when I
followed my calling in Willenhan and
Walsall, was sent for somewhat hastily
to attend an old fellow-I cannot call
him a gentleman, though he was rich
enough-who lived in a solitary, square
house away from the high-road, and was
supposed to be dying.
81 had often seen old Weston, or
'owd Moneybags,' as he was called,
walking about and talking to the lock-
smiths and nail-makers, men and women
both and it was from one of the latter
Amazons, whose head I was plastering
up after a free fight with a rival of the
hammer, that I had heard what little I
knew of him.
'Theer goes owd Moneybags after
his rents. They say he's a mint O.
money in tn bank, an lots O. houses :;
an it'll a fa' to his gran child, lad no
bigger nor eawr Sam. Look at his
goold stick, an him nobbut Willenha'
locksmith when OF wer wed; but thet's
moore nor forty year sin'l
"She then went ON to tell me that
Jim Weston had invented new kind of
lock, and, taking out a patent for his
invention, had thereby amassed fort
me, and it would all fall to a boy who
had put other folks noses out though.
to be sure, who had a better right than
his own grandchild? Jim Weston had
turned his back upon his daughter for
marrying John Dudley, Walsan spur
maker, without penny, just as her
father was beginning to make his way
in the world, and thought his money and
her pretty face together might procure
her gentleman for a husband.
He set his face against the young
couple, and never relented till after she
was widow, or quite forgave her until
he found little Jim sobbing beside his
dead mothers coffin, in a miserable gar
ret, in a grimy neighborhood. Then he
buried her grandly, and put fine mon
ument over her--a sort of broken pillar
taking the boy home to his big house,
and engaging masters to give him good
education, of which he had felt thewant
"There were two people, however,
who did not take kindly to this arrange
msnt, and these were Keturah and Job
Bromley, his eldest sisters son and
daughter, who had done their best to
wriggle into his good graces; and though
he had shown no other marks of favor
than getting the latter into an attorneys
| office Che was arhcled ON a sixty-pound
stamp and putting Keturah into small
shop in Walsall, these two looked upon
themselves as the rightful heirs to their
rich uncle's property, real and personal,
and, it was more than suspected, kept
open the breach between the father and
daughter to make assurance doubly
sure.
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