ed the
supremacy of that graceful motion and that penetrating look.

"It takes cannon for the soldier, the rope for the assassin, the fist
for the rowdy; but, by Heaven! it's a ludicrous thing to squander
gunpowder when insect powder will accomplish the same results. I told
you, I had waited until I had the evidence," he said. "Now you are going
to listen while I speak."

It isn't the fighter, but the man with the fighting strength, who wins
the last battle. Judson cowered down in his chair and dropped his eyes,
while my father seated himself and went on.

"Before Irving Whately went to the war he had me draw up a will. You
witnessed it. It listed his property--the merchandise, the real estate,
the bank stock, the cash deposits, and the personal effects. One half of
this was to become Marjie's at the age of twenty (Marjie was twenty on
Christmas Day), and the whole of it in the event of her mother's death.
He did not contemplate his wife's second marriage, you see. That will,
with other valuable papers, was put into the vault here in the
courthouse for safe keeping, and you carried the key. While most of the
loyal, able-bodied men were fighting for their country's safety, you
were steadily drawing on the bank account in the pretence of using it
for the store. Nobody can find from your bookkeeping how matters were in
that business during those years.

"On the night Springvale was to be burned, you raided the courthouse,
taking these and other papers away, because you thought the courthouse
was to be burned that night. Mapleson got mixed up in his instructions,
you remember, and Dodd nearly lost his good name in his effort to get
these same papers out of the courthouse to burn them. You and Tell
didn't 'tote fair' with him, and he thought you were here in town. You
wouldn't have treated the parson well, had your infamous scheme
succeeded. But you were not in town. You left your sick baby and
faithful wife to carry that will and that property-list out to the old
stone cabin, where you hid them. You meant to go back and destroy them
after you had examined them more carefully. But you never could find
them again. They were taken from your hiding-place and put in another
place. You thought you were alone out there; also you thought you had
outwitted Dodd. You could manage the Methodist Church South, but you
failed to reckon with the Roman Catholics. While you were searching the
draw to get back across the flood, Father Le