e missionary which I saw riveted upon me indeed until the
end; and they forthwith made plain their quite dissimilar opinions.

Judge Henry struck the table lightly with his fist. "I knew it!" And he
leaned back in his chair with a face of contentment. He had trusted his
man, and his man had proved worthy.

"Pardon me." Dr. MacBride had a manner of saying "pardon me," which
rendered forgiveness well-nigh impossible.

The Judge waited for him.

"Am I to understand that these--a--cow-boys attempted to mutiny, and
were discouraged in this attempt upon finding themselves less skilful at
lying than the man they had plotted to depose?"

I began an answer. "It was other qualities, sir, that happened to be
revealed and asserted by what you call his lying that--"

"And what am I to call it, if it is not lying? A competition in deceit
in which, I admit, he out did them.

"It's their way to--"

"Pardon me. Their way to lie? They bow down to the greatest in this?"

"Oh," said Miss Wood in my ear, "give him up."

The Judge took a turn. "We-ell, Doctor--" He seemed to stick here.

Mr. Ogden handsomely assisted him. "You've said the word yourself,
Doctor. It's the competition, don't you see? The trial of strength by no
matter what test."

"Yes," said Miss Wood, unexpectedly. "And it wasn't that George
Washington couldn't tell a lie. He just wouldn't. I'm sure if he'd
undertaken to he'd have told a much better one than Cornwall's."

"Ha-ha, madam! You draw an ingenious subtlety from your books."

"It's all plain to me," Ogden pursued. "The men were morose. This
foreman was in the minority. He cajoled them into a bout of tall
stories, and told the tallest himself. And when they found they had
swallowed it whole--well, it would certainly take the starch out of me,"
he concluded. "I couldn't be a serious mutineer after that."

Dr. MacBride now sounded his strongest bass. "Pardon me. I cannot accept
such a view, sir. There is a levity abroad in our land which I must
deplore. No matter how leniently you may try to put it, in the end we
have the spectacle of a struggle between men where lying decides the
survival of the fittest. Better, far better, if it was to come, that
they had shot honest bullets. There are worse evils than war."

The Doctor's eye glared righteously about him. None of us, I think,
trembled; or, if we did, it was with emotions other than fear. Mrs.
Henry at once introduced the subject of trout-fishing, an