and a touch of frost in the night air
loosened the chestnuts in their burrs, and a stray morning breeze shook
them in showers down upon the carpet of rustling yellowed leaves, Tom's
letters had become few and far between, and none of them had contained
any account of the intentions of the legislative body with regard to the
claim.

"There's nothing to tell, boys," he wrote. "As far as I've gone, it seems
a man gets a claim through Congress by waiting about Washington and
telling his story to different people until he wears them out--or they
wear him out."

For some time after this they did not hear from him at all. The winter
set in, and the habitues of the Cross-roads Post-office gathered about
the glowing stove. Under the influence of cold gray skies, biting air,
leafless trees, and bare land, the claim seemed somehow to have receded
into the distance. The sanguine confidence of the community had not
subsided into doubt so much as into helpless mystification. Months had
passed and nothing whatsoever had happened.

"Seems somehow," said Jabe Doty one night, as he tilted his chair forward
and stared at the fire in the stove, "seems somehow as if Tom was a right
smart ways off--es ef he got furder as the winter closed in--a'most like
Washin'ton city hed moved a thousand miles or so out West somewhars, an'
took him with it."

CHAPTER XXVIII

To Tom himself it seemed that it was the old, easy-going mountain life
which had receded. The days when he had sat upon the stone porch and
watched the sun rise from behind one mountain and set behind another
seemed to belong to a life lived centuries ago. But that he knew little
of occult beliefs and mysteries, he would have said to himself that all
these things must have happened in a long past incarnation.

The matter of the De Willoughby claim was brought before the House. Judge
Rutherford opened the subject one day with a good deal of nervous
excitement. He had supplied himself with many notes, and found some
little difficulty in managing them, being new to the work, and he grew
hot and uncertain because he could not secure an audience. Claims had
already become old and tiresome stories, and members who were unoccupied
pursued their conversation unmovedly, giving the speaker only an
occasional detached glance. The two representatives of their country
sitting nearest to him were, not at all furtively, eating apples and
casting their cores and parings into their part