in New York, named Amasa Munn. Through this
man, O'Hara began to speculate in every wild-cat scheme that squalled
aloud for public support; and between Munn and the wild-cats his little
fortune spread its wings of gold and soared away, leaving him a wreck on
his wrecked land.

But he could still find strength to watch the spite dam with his
shot-gun. One day a better scheme came into his unbalanced brain; he
broke the dam and sent for Munn. Between them they laid a plan to ruin
forever the trout-fishing in the Sagamore; and Munn, taking the last of
O'Hara's money as a bribe, actually secured several barrels full of live
pickerel, and shipped them to the nearest station on the Sagamore and
Inland Railway.

But here the club watchers caught Munn, and held him and his fish for
the game-wardens. The penalty for introducing trout-destroying pickerel
into waters inhabited by trout was a heavy fine. Munn was guilty only in
intent, but the club keepers swore falsely, and Peyster Sprowl, a lawyer
and also the new president of the Sagamore Club, pushed the case; and
Munn went to jail, having no money left to purge his sentence.

O'Hara, wild with rage, wrote, threatening Sprowl.

Then Sprowl did a vindictive and therefore foolish thing: he swore out
a warrant for O'Hara's arrest, charging him with blackmail.

The case was tried in Foxville, and O'Hara was acquitted. But a chance
word or two during the testimony frightened the club and gave O'Hara the
opportunity of his life. He went to New York and scraped up enough money
for his purpose, which was to search the titles of the lands controlled
by the Sagamore Club.

He worked secretly, grubbing, saving, starving; he ferreted out the
original grants covering nine-tenths of Sagamore County; he disinterred
the O'Hara patent of 1760; and then he began to understand that his
title to the entire Sagamore Club property was worth the services, on
spec, of any first-class Centre Street shyster.

The club got wind of this and appointed Peyster Sprowl, in his capacity
of lawyer and president of the club, to find out how much of a claim
O'Hara really had. The club also placed the emergency fund of one
hundred thousand dollars at Sprowl's command with _carte-blanche_ orders
to arrest a suit and satisfy any claim that could not be beaten by money
and talent.

Now it took Sprowl a very short time to discover that O'Hara's claim was
probably valid enough to oust the club from three-quar