nt, as he puffed and
pondered--apparently debating something.

"Judge," said the Captain suddenly and then the Captain's courage fell
and he added, "Bad morning."

"Yes," acquiesced the Judge from his abstraction. In a long pause that
followed, Captain Morton swallowed at least a peck of Adam's apples that
kept coming up to choke him, and then he cleared his throat and spoke:

"Tom--Tom Van Dorn--look around here." He lowered his voice and went on,
"I want to talk to you." The Captain edged over on the bench.

"Sit down here a minute--I've been wanting to see you for a month."
Captain Morton spoke all but in a whisper. The Adam's apple kept
strangling him. The Judge saw that the old man was wrestling with some
heavy problem. He turned, and looking down at the little wizened man,
asked: "Well, Captain?"

The Captain moistened his lips, patted his toes on the floor, and
twirled his fingers. He took a deep breath and said: "Tom, I've known
you since you were twenty-one years old. Do you remember how we took you
in the first night you came to town--me and mother? before the hotel was
done, eh?" A smile on the Judge's face emboldened the Captain. "You've
got brains, Tom--lots of brains--I often say Tom Van Dorn will sit in
the big chair at the White House yet--what say? Well, Tom--" Now there
was the place to say it. But the Captain's Adam's apple bobbed
convulsively in a second silence. He decided to take a fresh start:
"Tom, you're a sensible man--? I says to myself I'm going to have a
plain talk to that man. He's smart; he'll appreciate it. Just the other
day--George back there, and John Kollander and Dick Bowman and old man
Adams, and Joe Calvin, and Kyle Perry were in here talking and I
says--Gentlemen, that boy's got brains--lots of brains--eh? and he's a
prince; 'y gory a prince, that's what Tom Van Dorn is, and I can go to
him--I can talk to him--what say?" The Captain was on the brink again.
Slowly there mantled over the face of the prince the gray scum of a
fear. And the scar on his forehead flashed crimson. The Captain saw that
he had been anticipated. He began patting his toes on the floor. Judge
Van Dorn's face was set in a cement of resistance.

"Well?" barked the Judge. The little man's lips dried, he smiled weakly,
and licked his lips and said: "It was about my sprocket--my Household
Horse--I says, Tom Van Dorn understands it if you gentlemen don't and
some day him and me will talk it over and 'y gory--