n' as Het was
willin' to let bygones be bygones. But not him. As me 'n him walked up
to the house, an' he looked over them broad acres on all sides, an' as
we went in at that fine door, he seemed to get back to his old self--an'
that is one thing that sorter makes me believe a little in the crazy
spell, for he looked like a man that had just waked up from a long nap,
shore enough. He was the maddest chap I ever laid eyes on as he went up
them steps to her private quarters. I followed. I wasn't wanted, I
reckon, but I had to see the thing through. She come up to him, Het did,
all wet from head to foot with tears, and tried to throw 'er arms around
his neck, but he shoved 'er off, he did, an' begun the awfulest
rip-rantin' jowerin' you ever heard, about the scan'lous way she'd
carried on with you while he was off. He didn't say nothin' about his
spell--he had no apologies to make. Accordin' to his way o' lookin' at
it, she'd blackened the white purity of his home while his back was
turned, an' nothing but blood, an' whole gurglin' streams of it, would
suit him. Well, they had it nip and tuck for fully an hour, an' then
they come to an agreement. They was to drive over to Carlton the next
day and ax Judge Fisk if Het had disgraced 'erself past recall; and so
we hit the road bright an' early. The judge was mighty nice. He said a
big mistake had evidently been made, but it was one that the law could
rectify if Het 'u'd just grease its wheels properly. He said he'd quit
settin' on the bench hisse'f--bein' beat by the Prohibitionists in the
last election--an' had gone back to practise at the bar, an' would
gladly take the case in hand. He saw plainly, he said, that it was Het's
duty, havin' come into sech a big estate as that, to clear her record
all she could, even if it _did_ cost her considerable outlay, first an'
last. He summed the whole thing up as calm, an' bent over with his
pencil in his hand, an' peepin' above his specs, just like he was
deliverin' a charge to a jury in a murder case. It was for Het to weigh
the evidence pro and con, an' consider, an' deliberate, an' make her
final choice betwixt the two claimants she had got tangled up with. He
didn't know, he went on to say--an', of course, he must have suspicioned
that she'd already made up her mind, bein' as she had fetched Dick along
an' left you out in the wet--he didn't know, he said, but what jestice
sorter leaned to the prior claimant, possession bein' nine pa