. Newbolt before meeting her son--that he make a clean breast of
all that took place between himself and Isom Chase before the tragedy.
Colonel Price felt that he would be taking an offensive and unwarranted
liberty in offering any advice at all on that head. Whatever his reasons
for concealment and silence were, the colonel told himself, the young
man would be found in the end justified; or if there was a revelation to
be made, then he would make it at the proper time without being pressed.
Of that the colonel felt sure. A gentleman could be trusted.

But there was another matter upon which the colonel had no scruples of
silence, and that was the subject of the attorney upon whom Joe had
settled to conduct his affairs.

"That man Hammer is not, to say the least, the very best lawyer in
Shelbyville," said he.

"No, I don't suppose he is," allowed Joe.

"Now, I believe in you, Joe, as strong as any man can believe in
another----"

"Thank you, sir," said Joe, lifting his solemn eyes to the colonel's
face. The colonel nodded his acknowledgment.

"But, no matter how innocent you are, you've got to stand trial on this
outrageous charge, and the county attorney he's a hard and unsparing
man. You'll need brains on your side as well as innocence, for innocence
alone seldom gets a man off. And I'm sorry to tell you, son, that Jeff
Hammer hasn't got the brains you'll need in your lawyer. He never did
have 'em, and he never will have 'em--never in this mortal world!"

"I thought he seemed kind of sharp," said Joe, coloring a little at the
colonel's implied charge that he had been taken in.

"He is sharp," admitted the colonel, "but that's all there is to him. He
can wiggle and squirm like a snake; but he's got no dignity, and no
learnin', and what he don't know about law would make a book bigger than
the biggest dictionary you ever saw."

"Land's sake!" said Mrs. Newbolt, lifting up her hands despairingly.

"Oh, I guess he'll do, Colonel Price," said Joe.

"My advice would be to turn him out and put somebody else in his place,
one of the old, respectable heads of the profession here, like Judge
Burns."

"I wouldn't like to do that, colonel," said Joe.

"Well, we'll see how he behaves," the colonel yielded, seeing that Joe
felt in honor bound to Hammer, now that he had engaged him. "We can put
somebody else in if he goes to cuttin' up too many didoes and capers."

Joe agreed that they could, and gave his mother a gr