he
railroad steal. Speaking of MacFarlane's continued absence, Hunnicott
said, jokingly, that it was a pity we couldn't go back to the methods of a
few hundred years ago and hire the Hot Springs doctor to 'obliterate' him.
The word stuck in my mind, and I broke away and took the train chiefly to
have a chance to think out the new line. In the smoking-room of the
sleeper I found--whom, do you suppose?"

"Oh, I don't know: Judge MacFarlane, perhaps, coming back to give you a
chance to poison him at short range?"

"No; it was Marston."

"And he talked so long and so fast that you couldn't get here in time for
dinner this evening? That would be the most picturesque of the little
fictions you spoke of."

Kent laughed.

"For the first hour he wouldn't talk at all; just sat there wooden-faced,
smoking vile little cigars that made me think I was getting hay-fever. But
I wouldn't give up; and after I had worn out all the commonplaces I began
on the Trans-Western muddle. At that he woke up all at once, and before I
knew it he was giving me an expert legal opinion on the case; meaty and
sound and judicial. Miss Van Brock, that man is a lawyer, and an
exceedingly able one, at that."

"Of course," she said coolly. "He was one of the justices of the Supreme
Court of his own state at forty-two: that was before he had to come West
for his health. I found that out a long time ago."

"And you never told me!" said Kent, reproachfully. "Well, no matter; I
found out for myself that he is a man to tie to. After we had canvassed
the purely legal side of the affair, he wanted to know more, and I went in
for the details, telling him all the inferences which involve Bucks,
Meigs, Hendricks, MacFarlane and the lot of them."

Miss Portia's eyes were flashing.

"Good, good, good!" she said. "David, I'm proud of you. That took
courage--heaps of it."

"I did have to forget pretty hard that he was the lieutenant-governor and
nominally one of the gang. But if he is not with us, neither is he against
us. He took it all in quietly, and when I was through, he said: 'You have
told me some things that I knew, and some others that I only suspected.'"

"Was that all?" asked Miss Van Brock, eagerly.

"No; I took a good long breath and asked his advice."

"Did he give it?"

"He did. He said in sober earnest just what Hunnicott had said in a joke:
'If I had your case to fight, I should try to obliterate Judge
MacFarlane.' I began to say that Ma