caught his breath
before that level scrutiny; then with a flourish of utter finality he
threw up one pudgy hand.

"There's one of 'em right now," he cried. "There's Young Denny Bolton,
who went to school with him, right here in this town. _Ask him_ if Jed
Conway was pretty handy as a boy! Ask him," he leered around the room,
an insinuating accent that was unmistakable underrunning the words.
Then a deep-throated chuckle shook him. "But maybe he won't
tell--maybe he's still a little mite too sensitive to talk about it
yet. Eh, Denny--just a little mite too sensitive?"

Denny Bolton failed to realize it at that moment, but there was a new
quality in the Judge's chuckling statement--a certain hearty admission
of equality which he had only a second before denied to Old Jerry's
eager endeavor to help. The eyes of the fat man in brown lifted
inquiringly from the notebook upon his knees and followed the
direction of the Judge's outstretched finger. He was still grinning
expansively--and then as he saw more clearly through the thick smoke
the face which Judge Maynard was indicating, the grin disappeared.

Little by little Young Denny's body straightened until the slight
shoulder stoop had entirely vanished, and all the while that his gaze
never wavered from the Judge's face his eyes narrowed and his lips
grew thinner and thinner. The confused lack of understanding was gone,
too, at last, from his eyes. He even smiled once, a fleeting,
mirthless smile that tugged at the corners of his wide mouth. For the
moment he had forgotten the circle of peering faces. The room was very
still.

It was the man on the desk who finally broke that quiet, but when he
spoke his voice had lost its easily intimate good-fellowship. He spoke
instead in a low-toned directness.

"So you went to school with Jed The Red, did you?" he asked gravely.
"Knew him when he was a kid?"

Slowly Denny Bolton's eyes traveled from the Judge's face. His lips
opened with equal deliberation.

"I reckon I knew him--pretty well," he admitted.

The eyes of the man in brown were a little narrower, too, as he nodded
thoughtfully.

"Er--had a few set-to's with him, yourself, now and then?"

He smiled, but even his smile was gravely direct. Again there was a
heavy silence before Young Denny replied.

Then, "Maybe," he said, noncommittally. "Maybe I did."

The throbbing silence in that room went all to bits. Judge Maynard
wheeled in his chair toward the man on t