re at the party!"
he shouted. "The damned, canting, sniveling old thief! No wonder he's
got money! He probably stole it where he came from! Jake, we've got to
go back and make him give this money back--come on!"

"Make who give it back?" I asked.

"Who?" said he. "Why old DeWitt Clinton Wade, the old thief! Who else
had the key to the office or knew how to open that safe? Come on, Jake,
and bring your pistol!"

I handed him the pistol.

"I agreed to guard you and the county's money," I said, "and that's all.
You hain't got the county's money, it seems, and my job's over. I've got
to break prairie to-day, and I guess I'd better be going!"

I passed out of the door, and as I went I heard them--the judge and his
wife, and I thought Virginia joined in--condemning me for deserting
them. But I needed to think this thing over before I could see into it.
It looked pretty dark for some one then, and I saw it was a matter to
see N.V. about before taking any further part.

I never have seen through it. There it was: The money in the treasury,
and supposed to be in the bag, and placed in Governor Wade's safe. There
were the two men, both supposed to be rich. There was the time, when the
kissing games were going on, when the governor was not seen by any of
his guests. The governor was rich always afterward, while the judge
struggled along with adversity and finally went away from the county
poor as a church mouse. Then there was the jingle I seemed to remember
at starting, and Judge Stone's twice speaking of it--the jingle Virginia
did not hear. Salt does not jingle.

For a long time it appeared to me that these things seemed to prove that
the governor got the money; but lately, since both the men have passed
away, I have had my doubts. Judge Stone was a much nicer man than the
governor to meet up with, but--well, what's the use? It is long past. It
was past for me, too, as I walked out to my farm that morning as the
dawn broadened into day, with the prairie-chickens singing their
wonderful morning song, and the blue-joint grass soaking me with dew
to my knees.

At that moment, or soon after, in a stormy encounter at the Wade farm,
with witnesses that the judge took with him, began the great Wade-Stone
feud of Monterey County, Iowa. It lasted until the flood of new settlers
floated it away in a freshet of new issues during and after the great
Civil War.

I took the story to N.V. as soon as I went to town. He sat looking a