r write such a
thing."

"But didn't Shakespeare--he wrote it, didn't he?--get it out of some
history?"

"Of course," says Mitch, "and didn't Linkern live, and right here in
this town, as you might say? But suppose somebody could write up Linkern
and use the very things that Linkern did and said, not as we hear 'em
around here, wonderful as they are; but write 'em up so that you'd know
what Linkern really was and why and all about it. For that matter, take
Doc Lyon. We know he was a lunatic, but why, and what for, and just what
it means to be a lunatic, I don't know and no one will know until some
Shakespeare writes him up. For that matter, some folks think that Hamlet
was a lunatic."

"Well, you ain't, Mitch," says I.

"No more than Hamlet was. He just was troubled and his mind kept
workin', and that's me. But what would you say if I was the son of Joe
Rainey and Mrs. Rainey?"

"How do you mean?" says I.

"Well, suppose I was their son, and suppose I knew that Mrs. Rainey, my
mother, wanted Joe Rainey, my father, dead, and put it into Temple
Scott's mind to kill my father, Joe Rainey; and then Temple Scott did
kill him, and then Mrs. Rainey, my mother, put a pistol down so as to
make it seem that my father, Joe Rainey, had carried a pistol. Suppose I
was their son and was up in the tree and saw what I saw, what would I
do?"

"Then you'd have to testify," said I.

"You don't know what you're sayin', Skeet. You don't see that I love my
father, and he's been murdered; and I love my mother, and she has really
murdered him. And if I testify against my mother, I get her hanged; and
if I don't testify against her, then I wrong my father that I love; my
mother goes free, and sometimes I hate her, because she is free, and my
father has been robbed of his life, and I do nothing to punish her and
Temple Scott for taking his life away. That's the worst of it; or maybe
it's just as bad because I'm tangled in law and can't do what I want to
do--can't be free to hunt treasure, we'll say, or do what I want to.
Don't you see what a fix I'm in? Then suppose with findin' out what my
mother is, the whole world changes for me--I get suspicious of my girl,
and won't marry her and everything goes bad and finally I get killed
myself, after killin' Temple Scott who's married my mother, we'll say,
and in a way cause my mother to die too."

"Well, of course all this can't be," says I, "for you're not the
Raineys' son;--they're both d