e Honorable David shook his head.

"This close to an election you're mighty near safe in blaming anybody
and everybody in sight, son," he returned gravely; and apart from this
small break in the monotony, the second half of the fifteen miles went
speechless.

The clock in the Temple Court tower was pointing to five minutes of five
when the senator, instead of taking the direct street to the
Inter-Mountain, as his son expected him to, turned the car aside into
the Capitol grounds and brought it to rest before the side entrance
which led to the chambers of the Supreme Court justices.

"You're still in time, Evan, boy," he intimated gently; "and I'm only
going to ask one thing of you. When you get through with Hemingway, come
around to the hotel and show your grit by taking dinner with the rest
of us. Are you man enough to do that?"

If the son hesitated, it was only for a fraction of a second. When he
answered, it was to say: "If I were going up-stairs to put a noose
around my own neck, it would be simpler and easier than the thing I've
got to do. As to your one condition--dad, I'll be with you at dinner,
and at all other times, after this thing is done. I've quit the
railroad, and I did it so that I might be free to be your son and your
lawyer when the smash comes. Can I say more?"

"You don't need to say another blessed word, son," was the sober
rejoinder; and when Evan Blount got out, the Honorable David drove away
without a backward glance for the young man who was dragging himself up
the granite steps of the Capitol entrance like a condemned criminal
going to execution.

XXIX

AT SHONOHO INN

Evan Blount's interview with the venerable chief justice was not at all
what he had imagined it would be. To begin with, he found it blankly
impossible to take the attitude he had meant to take--namely, that of a
conscientious member of the bar, rigorously ignoring all the little
cross-currents of human sympathy and the affections.

Almost at once he found himself telling his story incident by incident
to the kindly old man who was figuring rather as a father confessor than
as a judge and a legal superior. When it was done, and the chief justice
had gone thoughtfully over the mass of evidence, Blount saw no
thunder-cloud of righteous indignation gathering upon the judicial brow.
Nor was Judge Hemingway's comment in the least what he had expected it
would be.

"I can not commend too highly your prudence and g