hat was curious." The Hon. Sam laughed:

"Well, sir, them intelligent pigs used both them sows as mothers, and
may be they had another mother somewhere else. They would breakfast with
the Widow Crane's sow and take supper with the squire's sow. And so them
witnesses, too, was naturally perplexed."

Hale waited while the Hon. Sam puffed his pipe into a glow:

"Believin', as I do, that the most important principle in law is
mutually forgivin' and a square division o' spoils, I suggested a
compromise. The widow said the squire was an old rascal an' thief and
he'd never sink a tooth into one of them shoats, but that her lawyer
was a gentleman--meanin' me--and the squire said the widow had been
blackguardin' him all over town and he'd see her in heaven before she
got one, but that HIS lawyer was a prince of the realm: so the other
lawyer took one and I got the other."

"What became of the third?"

The Hon. Sam was an ardent disciple of Sir Walter Scott:

"Well, just now the mayor is a-playin' Gurth to that little runt for
costs."

Outside, the wheels of the stage rattled, and as half a dozen strangers
trooped in, the Hon. Sam waved his hand: "Things is comin'."

Things were coming. The following week "the booming editor" brought in
a printing-press and started a paper. An enterprising Hoosier soon
established a brick-plant. A geologist--Hale's predecessor in Lonesome
Cove--made the Gap his headquarters, and one by one the vanguard of
engineers, surveyors, speculators and coalmen drifted in. The wings of
progress began to sprout, but the new town-constable soon tendered his
resignation with informality and violence. He had arrested a Falin,
whose companions straightway took him from custody and set him free.
Straightway the constable threw his pistol and badge of office to the
ground.

"I've fit an' I've hollered fer help," he shouted, almost crying with
rage, "an' I've fit agin. Now this town can go to hell": and he picked
up his pistol but left his symbol of law and order in the dust. Next
morning there was a new constable, and only that afternoon when Hale
stepped into the Ludlow Brothers' store he found the constable already
busy. A line of men with revolver or knife in sight was drawn up inside
with their backs to Hale, and beyond them he could see the new constable
with a man under arrest. Hale had not forgotten his promise to himself
and he began now:

"Come on," he called quietly, and when the men turned a