ood judgment in
bringing these papers to me, Mr. Blount," was the form the comment took.
"Your position was a difficult one, and not one young man in a hundred
would have been judicious enough to choose the conservative middle path
you have chosen. The fanatic would have rushed into print, and the vast
majority would have weakly compromised with conscience. It is a source
of the deepest satisfaction to me, as your father's friend, to find that
you have done neither."

"As my father's friend?" echoed Blount.

"Yes, just that, Mr. Blount. There is an appreciation which transcends
the commonplace things of life, and I don't know which is worthier of
the greater admiration, your courage in coming to me, or your father's
single-heartedness in urging you to do it after he had learned the
purport of these papers. Yet this is what I should have expected of
David Blount as I know him. Men say of him that he has sometimes wielded
his tremendous political power regardless of the law and of other men's
rights. But in the field of pure ethics, in the exercise of the high and
holy duty which is laid upon the man who has become a father, I should
look to find your father doing precisely what he has done. I assure you
that it is not without reason that many of his fellow citizens call him
most affectionately the 'Honorable Senator Sage-Brush.'"

"But the consequences!" gasped the unwilling informer. "His name in
those affidavits!"

The chief justice was nodding slowly.

"Without doubt a great crime has been committed, and a still greater one
is contemplated. We shall take prompt action to defeat the contemplated
crime at the polls next Tuesday, rest assured of that. But at the same
time, let me say a word for your comfort: these papers came to you from
the hands of a criminal, and that particular criminal had--as I am well
informed--every reason to be vindictively enraged against your father. I
am sure you are too good a lawyer to fail to see the point. If this man
Gryson, in 'getting even,' as he expressed it to you, has added perjury
to his other crimes--But we need not follow the suggestion any further
at this time. Be hopeful, Mr. Blount, as I am. Leave these matters with
me, and go and be as good a son as he deserves to my old friend David."

Evan Blount left the venerable presence in the judges' chambers of the
Capitol with a heart strangely mellowed, and with a feeling of relief
too great to be measured. At last, without c