rned around and bought it
back. I knew from the first that he'd lied about my father and I kept
after him till I got my hands on that stock--and then, when I'd proved
it, he tried to put the blame on you!"

"The devil!" exclaimed the Colonel, and paced up and down, snapping his
fingers and muttering to himself. "The cowardly dastard!" he burst out
at last. "He has poisoned ten years of my life. I must hurry back at
once and go to John Holman and apologize to him publicly for this
affront. After all the years that we were pardners in everything, and
then to have me doubt his integrity! He was the soul of honor, one man
in ten thousand; and yet I took the word of this lying Blount against
the man I called My Friend! I remember, by gad, as if it were yesterday,
the first time I really knew your father; and Blount was squeezing me,
then. I owed him fifteen thousand dollars on a certain piece of property
that was worth fifty thousand at least; and at the very last moment,
when he was about to foreclose, John Holman loaned me the money. He
mortgaged his cattle at the other bank and put the money in my hand, and
Blount cursed him for an interfering fool! That was Blount, the Shylock,
and Honest John Holman; and I turned against my friend."

"Yes, that's right," agreed Wiley, "but if you want to make up for it,
make 'em quit calling him 'Honest John'!"

"No, indeed," cried the Colonel, his voice tremulous with emotion. "He
shall still be called Honest John; and if any man doubts it or speaks
the name fleeringly he shall answer personally to me. And now, about
this stock--what was that, Virginia, that you were saying about my
holdings?"

"Why, Mother put them up as collateral on a loan, and Blount claimed
them at the end of the first month."

"All my stock? Well, by the horn-spoon--how much did your mother borrow?
Eight--hundred? Eight hundred dollars? Well, that is enough, on the face
of it--but never mind, I will recover the stock. It is certainly a
revelation of human nature. The moment I am reported dead, these
vultures strip my family of their all."

"Well, I was one of them," spoke up Wiley bluntly, "but you don't need
to blame my father. When I was having trouble with Mrs. Huff he wrote up
and practically disowned me."

"So you were one of them," observed the Colonel mildly. "And you had
trouble with Mrs. Huff? But no matter?" he went on. "We can discuss all
that later--now to return to this lawsuit, with Blount.