ot go where his whirling head
directed them. Once he called out to her, before he staggered back to
the kitchen door, and received no answer.

With his hands gripping the door frame he eased himself down to the
top step and sat rocking gently to and fro.

"S'all right," he muttered once, his tongue thick with pain. "S'always
been all right!"

And he laughed aloud, a laugh of utter confidence in spite of all its
unsteadiness.

"Twelve thousand dollars," he said, "and--and he never whipped me! He
never could--not the best day he ever lived!"

CHAPTER VII

Denny Bolton never quite knew at what hour of that long black night he
reached the final decision; there was no actual beginning or ending or
logical sequence to the argument in the back of his brain which led up
to it, to crystallize into final resolve.

He merely sat there in the open door of his half-lighted kitchen,
swaying a little from side to side at first, giddy with the pain of
that crashing blow that had laid open his chin; then balancing,
motionless as the thick shadows themselves, in a silence that was
unbroken save for the creaking night noises about him and the rhythmic
splash of the warm drops that fell more and more slowly from the
gaping, unheeded wound, he groped back over the succession of events
of that afternoon and night, reconstructing with a sort of dogged
patience detail after detail which was waveringly uncertain of
outline, until with the clearing of his numbed brain they stood out
once again in sane, well-ordered clarity. And as they gradually took
shape again each detail grew only more fantastically unbelievable.

It seemed ages since he had stood against the closed door of the
Tavern office and seen Judge Maynard turn and falter before his
unsuspected presence--days and days since he had stood there and
watched that round moon-like face flush heavily with the first shock
of surprise, and realized that the startled light in the shifty eyes
of Boltonwood's most prominent citizen was part fear, part appeal,
that he, Denny Bolton, whose name in the estimation of that same
village stood for all that was at the other extreme, would confirm and
support his barefaced lying statement. It was more than merely
fantastic; and yet, at that, sitting there in the dark, Young Denny
still found something in the recollection that was amusing--far more
amusing than he had imagined anything so simple ever could be.

And already, although it