y other decent man have with the nest of rattlesnakes that we can't
drag out from under that bluff?"

"It is a very simple matter, sir, if you would permit me to explain,"
William said more coldly and deliberately than ever. "Mr. Alston is
merely making a trade for a boatload of horses, and simply asked me, as
his attorney, to meet him at Duff's Fort to draw up the contract with
Mason and Sturtevant."

The judge stared blankly for a moment, so overwhelmed by surprise that
he forgot his anger. "Mason and Sturtevant," he repeated. "Do you mean
to tell me that a man of half Alston's intelligence doesn't know that
those men never have a horse that they haven't stolen?"

William Pressley said nothing more; he suspected that his uncle had been
drinking a little more heavily than common. Moreover, it scarcely seemed
worth while to argue with blind prejudice, drunk or sober.

"Then if you've got nothing more to say, it's with Alston that I will
settle this matter. But all the same, I forbid you to go near Duff's
Fort. I have a right to forbid you, as a member of my household. I have
a right to forbid any one belonging to my family to do anything that
touches my own honor, my good name. And this touches both to the quick."

"Very well, sir. I shall tell Mr. Alston what you say. I must, of
course, give some reason for breaking a professional engagement," said
William.

"I shall tell him a few things myself," stormed the judge. "It's all
very well for him to put on his high-and-mighty tolerant air about the
state of things hereabouts, and to keep on saying, soothingly, that
everything will come right after a while, as it does in all new
countries; but neither he nor any honest man can afford to handle pitch.
It sticks to the cleanest hands. See that you keep yours out of it.
Nobody belonging to me shall be smirched--and just now, too, when we are
going to cleanse the whole country of it at last, thank God! We have
only been waiting for a chance to carry out the plan which was arranged
while General Jackson was here. Joe Daviess has now found the
opportunity, and our campaign has already begun. He is determined to put
it in motion before he leaves for Tippecanoe--"

"Then he is really going?" broke in William, quickly, with a marked
change of tone and manner.

The judge paid no attention to the question. He seldom noticed what his
nephew said, and his thoughts were now solely of the undertaking which
absorbed him heart and