l
because of my going. Rachel will come into her full possessions in a
short time, as you say. Mapleson, will you renounce your retainer's fees
in your interest in the orphaned?"

It was Tell's bad day, and he swore sulphureously in a low tone.

"Now I'll take up this matter where I left off," John Baronet said.
"While O'mie was taking a vacation in the heated days of August, he
slept up in the stone cabin. Jean Pahusca, thief, highwayman, robber,
and assassin, kept his stolen goods there. Mapleson and his mercantile
partner divided the spoils. O'mie's sense of humor is strong, and one
night he played ghost for Jean. You know the redskin's inherent fear of
ghosts. It put Jean out of the commission goods business. No persuasion
of Mapleson's or his partner's could induce Jean to go back after night
to the cabin after this reappearance of the long quiet ghost of the
drowned woman."

Le Claire could not repress a smile.

"I think I unconsciously played the same role in September out there,
frightening a little man away one night. I was innocent of any harm
intended."

"It did the work," my father replied. "Jean cut for the West at once,
and joined the Cheyennes for a time--and with a purpose." Then as he
looked straight at Tell, his voice grew stern, and that mastery of men
that his presence carried made itself felt.

"Jean has bought the right to the life of my son. His pay for the
hundreds of dollars he has turned into the hands of this man was that
Mapleson should defame my son's good name and drive him from Springvale,
and that Jean in his own time was to follow and assassinate him.
Mapleson here was in league to protect Jean from the law if the deed
should ever be traced to his door. With these conditions in addition,
Mapleson was to receive the undivided one-half of section 29, range 14.

"Tell Mapleson, I pass by the crime of forging lies against the name of
Irving Whately; I pass by the plotted crimes against this town in '63; I
ignore the systematic thievery of your dealings with the half-breed Jean
Pahusca; but, by the God in heaven, my boy is my own. For the crime of
seeking to lay stain upon his name, the crime of trying to entangle him
hopelessly in a scandal and a legal prosecution with a sinful erring
girl, the crime of lending your hand to hold the coat of the man who
should stone him to death,--for these things, I, the father of Philip
Baronet, give you now twenty-four hours to leave Springvale and