d, his eyelid cocked in comical suggestion. Instead of
narrowing ominously, as they might have twelve hours before, Denny's
own eyes lighted appreciatively at the statement. He even waited an
instant while he pondered with mock gravity.

"I reckon," he drawled finally, "that I'll have to confess that I've
never been what you might call a general favorite."

The newspaper man's head lifted a little. He flashed a covertly
surprised glance at the boy's sharp profile. It was far from being the
sort of an answer that he had expected.

"No, you certainly are not," he emphasized, and then he opened the
flat notebook with almost loving care across his knees.

Young Denny, with the first glimpse he caught of that very first page,
comprehended in one illuminating flash the cause of those muffled
chuckles which had convulsed that rounded back when he turned the
corner of the station-shed a moment before; he even remembered that
half-veiled mirth in the eyes of the man who had sat balanced upon the
desk in the Tavern office the night before and understood that, too.
For the hurriedly penciled sketch, which completely filled the first
page of the notebook, needed no explanation--not even that of the
single line of writing beneath it, which read:

"I always said he'd make the best of 'em hustle--yes, sir, the very
best of 'em!"

It was a picture of Judge Maynard--the Judge Maynard whom Young Denny
knew best of all--unctuous of lip and furtively calculating of eye.
For all the haste of its creation it was marvelously perfect in
detail, and as he stared the corners of the boy's lips began to twitch
until his teeth showed white beneath. The fat man grinned with him.

"Get it, do you?" he chuckled. "Get it, eh?"

And with the big-shouldered figure leaning eagerly nearer he turned
through page after page to the end.

"Not bad--not bad at all," he frankly admired his own handiwork at
the finish. "You see, it was like this. I've been short on anything
like this for a long time--good Rube stuff--and so when Conway came
through in his match the other night it looked like a providential
opportunity--and it certainly has panned up to expectations."

Once more he turned to scan the lean face turned toward him, far more
openly, far more inquisitively, this time. It perplexed him,
bewildered him--this easy certainty and consciousness of power which
had replaced the lost-dog light that had driven the smile from his own
lips the night be