one for him
already, this rich-man's-son business. To think that one of my blood,
my own gran'son, should go to law! Why, by high heaven, Blenham, the
thing's downright disgraceful!"

Swiftly, deftly, employing a remark like a surgeon's lancet, Blenham
offered:

"I have the hunch that Temple girl put it in his head."

"You're right!" This new suggestion required no weighing and fine
balancing. You could attribute no villainy whatever to one of the old
man's enemies that he would not admit the extreme likelihood of your
being right. "Stephen ain't that sort; she's got him by the nose, hell
take her! She's drivin' him to it, an' it's Temple drivin' her. An'
it's up to you an' me to drive him clean out'n this corner of the
universe. Which we can do without goin' to the law!" he interjected
scornfully. "I reckon you understan', don't you, Blenham?"

Blenham nodded and put on his hat.

"I'm to hound him from the start to finish; until we drive him an' her
out the country. An' I'm to pound at your gran'son too an' at the same
time until we bust him wide open. That right?"

"Right an' go to it!" cried Packard.

Blenham saluted as he might have done were he still a sergeant down on
the border, wheeled and went out. Five minutes later he was riding
again toward the south. And now the look on his face was one of near
triumph. For at last the time had come when the old man had given
outright the instructions which could make many things possible.

That same day, about noon, Terry Temple, flashing across country in her
car, met Blenham on the country road. She was going toward Red Creek,
her errand urgent as were always the errands of Terry. Half a mile
away she knew him, first by the white stocking of his favorite mare,
second by his big bulk and the way it sat the saddle.

So, quite like the old Packard whom she so heartily detested, she gave
him the horn and never an inch of the road which was none too wide.
Blenham, his mouth working, jerked his horse out of the way, down over
the edge of the slope, and cursed after her as she passed him.

Terry, in Red Creek, went straight to the store and to a shelf in a far
and dusty corner where were all of the purchasable books of the
village. A thumb in her mouth, a frown in her eyes, she regarded them
long and soberly.

In the end she severed the Gordian knot by taking an even dozen
volumes. There were a grammar, an ancient history, some composition
books,