d a quick smile and a ready tongue; he liked to
talk and shake hands; he never had an opinion he was not willing to
sell; he was always prepared to sacrifice a friend, if required, and to
ask favors from his worst enemies. He called himself Andrew Jackson
Offitt--a name which, in the West, is an unconscious brand. It
generally shows that the person bearing it is the son of illiterate
parents, with no family pride or affections, but filled with a bitter
and savage partisanship which found its expression in a servile worship
of the most injurious personality in American history. But Offitt's
real name was worse than Andrew Jackson--it was Ananias, and it was
bestowed in this way: When he was about six years old, his father, a
small farmer in Indiana, who had been a sodden, swearing, fighting
drunkard, became converted by a combined attack of delirium tremens and
camp-meeting, and resolved to join the church, he and his household.
The morning they were going to the town of Salem for that purpose, he
discovered that his pocket had been picked, and the money it contained
was found on due perquisition in the blue jeans trousers of his son
Andrew Jackson. The boy, on being caught, was so nimble and fertile in
his lies that the father, in a gust of rage, declared that he was not
worthy the name of the great President, but that he should be called
Ananias; and he was accordingly christened Ananias that morning in the
meeting-house at Salem. As long as the old man lived, he called him by
that dreadful name; but when a final attack of the trembling madness
had borne him away from earth, the widow called the boy Andrew again,
whenever she felt careless about her spiritual condition, and the youth
behaved himself, but used the name of Sapphira's husband when the lad
vexed her, or the obligations of the christening came strongly back to
her superstitious mind. The two names became equally familiar to young
Offitt, and always afterward he was liable to lapses of memory when
called on suddenly to give his prenomen; and he frequently caused
hateful merriment among his associates by signing himself Ananias.

When Sam presented himself at Captain Farnham's house the next morning,
he was admitted by Budsey, who took him to the library and showed him
the work he was to do. The heat of the room had shrunk the wood of the
heavy doors of carved oak so that the locks were all out of position.
Farnham was seated by his desk, reading and writing l