ydraulic engineering, so as to know more about protecting the
common rights in the flowage of this river." He swung his hand to
indicate the thundering falls of Hagas. "You have used your tongue to
hurt my standing with some of the independents--they distrust my
reliability and good faith--you have pulled in a few of them. The others
will stand by me. Frankly, Mr. Craig, I don't like your style! It'll be
a good thing for both of us if we have no more talk after this." He
walked rapidly down the tote road, not turning his head when Craig
called furiously after him.

"Pretty uppish, ain't he?" ventured the driver, touching the horses with
the whip.

Craig, bouncing alone on the middle seat of the buckboard, grunted.

"Excuse me, Mr. Craig, but that's some news--what he said about getting
aholt of the old Walpole tract."

The Comas boss did not comment.

The driver said nothing more for some time; he was a slouchy woodsman of
numb wits; he chewed tobacco constantly with the slow jaw motion of a
ruminating steer, and he looked straight ahead between the ears of the
nigh horse, going through mental processes of a certain sort. "Now 't I
think of it, I wish I'd grabbed in with a question to young Latisan. But
he doesn't give anybody much of a chance to grab in when he's talking.
Still, I'd have liked to ask him something." He maundered on in that
strain for several minutes.

"Ask him what?" snapped Craig, tired of the monologue.

"Whuther he's talked with my old aunt Dorcas about the heir who went
off into the West somewheres. Grandson of the old sir who was the first
Walpole of the Toban--real heir, if he's still alive! My aunt Dorcas had
letters about him, or from him, or something like that, only a few years
ago."

"Look here!" stormed Craig. "Why haven't you said something about such
letters or such an heir?"

"Nobody has ever asked me. And he's prob'ly dead, anyway. Them lawyers
know everything. And he's a roving character, as I remember what my aunt
said. No use o' telling anybody about him--it would cost too much to
find him."

"Cost too much!" snarled the Comas director. "Oh, you----" But he choked
back what he wanted to say about the man's intellect. Craig pulled out
notebook and pencil and began to fire questions.

Latisan was headed for home, the old family mansion in the village of
Toban Deadwater where Ward and his widowed father kept bachelor's hall,
with a veteran woods cook to tend and do for the