added mournfully, "But I
wish I could have been saved the shame of meeting an assassin on the
field of honor."
"It couldn't be helped, uncle. If I had known you were going to
challenge him, I should have felt obliged to sacrifice my pledged word in
order to stop it, but Wilson couldn't be expected to do otherwise than
keep silent."
"Oh, no, Wilson did right, and is in no way to blame. Tom, Tom, you have
lifted a heavy load from my heart; I was stung to the very soul when I
seemed to have discovered that I had a coward in my family."
"You may imagine what it cost ME to assume such a part, uncle."
"Oh, I know it, poor boy, I know it. And I can understand how much it
has cost you to remain under that unjust stigma to this time. But it is
all right now, and no harm is done. You have restored my comfort of
mind, and with it your own; and both of us had suffered enough."
The old man sat awhile plunged in thought; then he looked up with a
satisfied light in his eye, and said: "That this assassin should have
put the affront upon me of letting me meet him on the field of honor as
if he were a gentleman is a matter which I will presently settle--but not
now. I will not shoot him until after election. I see a way to ruin them
both before; I will attend to that first. Neither of them shall be
elected, that I promise. You are sure that the fact that he is an
assassin has not got abroad?"
"Perfectly certain of it, sir."
"It will be a good card. I will fling a hint at it from the stump on the
polling day. It will sweep the ground from under both of them."
"There's not a doubt of it. It will finish them."
"That and outside work among the voters will, to a certainty. I want you
to come down here by and by and work privately among the rag-tag and
bobtail. You shall spend money among them; I will furnish it."
Another point scored against the detested twins! Really it was a great
day for Tom. He was encouraged to chance a parting shot, now, at the
same target, and did it.
"You know that wonderful Indian knife that the twins have been making
such a to-do about? Well, there's no track or trace of it yet; so the
town is beginning to sneer and gossip and laugh. Half the people believe
they never had any such knife, the other half believe they had it and
have got it still. I've heard twenty people talking like that today."
Yes, Tom's blemishless week had restored him to the favor of his aunt and
uncle.
His mother was satisfied with him, too. Privately, she believed s