N his office in one corner of his great grain and cotton warehouse, at a dusty, littered desk before a murky, cobweb-bed window, Garner found old Dwight, his lap full of telegraphic reports, his head submerged in a morning paper containing the market and crop news in general. Outside of the thin-walled office heavy iron trucks, in the grasp of brawny black men, rattled and rumbled over the heavy floor and across weighty skids into open cars in the rear. There was the creaking sound of the big hand elevators engaged in hoisting and lowering bales, barrels, bags, and casks, the mellow sing-song of the light-hearted negroes as they toiled, blissfully ignorant of the profound gloom which had fallen on the defender of their rights.

“I came to see you on an important matter concerning Carson,” Garner began, as he leaned over the old man's desk.

Dwight lowered his paper, shrugged his shoulders, and sniffed.

“Campaign funds, I reckon,” he said. “Well, I've been looking for some such demand. In fact, I've been astonished that you fellows haven't been after me sooner. I'll do anything but buy whiskey to give away. I'm against that custom.”

“It wasn't that,” said Garner, who, usually plain-spoken, shrank from beating about the bush even in so delicate a matter. “The truth is, Carson is in a little trouble, Mr. Dwight.”

“Trouble?” the merchant said, bluntly. “Will you kindly show me when he's ever been out of it? Since the day he was born it's been scrape after scrape. By all possessed, Billy, when he wasn't a year old I had to spend fifty dollars to encase all the chimneys in with iron grating to keep him from crawling into the fire. He's walked or stumbled into every fire that was made since then. When he was only twelve a man out at the farm fell in a well and nothing would do Carson but that he must go down after him. He did it, fastened the only available rope about the man and sent him to the top, and when they lowered it to Carson he was so nearly drowned that he could hardly sit in the loop. If I had a list of the scrapes that boy went through at home and at college I'd sell it to some blood-and-thunder novel writer. It would make his fortune. Well, what is it now?”

“Carson is in very serious trouble I'm afraid, Mr. Dwight,” Garner said, as he took a chair and sat down. “You will have to prepare yourself for a pretty sharp shock. He couldn't help it. It was pushed on him to such an extent that there was no other way out of it and retain his self-respect. Mr. Dwight, you, of course, heard of Dan Willis's death?”

“Yes, and thought that now that he was under the sod Carson would surely—”

“The death was not an accident, Mr. Dwight,”

Garner interrupted, and his eyes rested steadily on the old man's face.

“You mean that Willis killed himself—that he—”

“I mean that he forced Carson to kill him, Mr. Dwight.”

The old merchant's face was working as if in the throes of death; he leaned forward, his eyes wide in growing horror.

“Don't, don't say that, Billy; take it back!” he gasped. “Anything but that—anything else under God's shining sun.”

“You must try to be calm,” Garner said, gently. “It can't be helped. After all, the poor boy was forced to do it to save his life.”

Old Dwight lowered his face to his hands and groaned. The negro at the head of the gang of truckmen approached and leaned in the doorway. He had come to ask some directions about the work, but with widening eyes he stood staring. Garner peremptorily waved him away, and, rising, he laid his hand on Dwight's shoulder.

“Don't take it so hard!” he said, soothingly. “Remember, there is a lot to do, and that's what I came to see you about.”

Old Dwight raised his blearing eyes, which, in his pallid face now looked bloodshot, and stammered out: “What is there to do? What does it mean? How was it kept till now? Was he trying to hide it?”

“Yes”—Garner nodded—“the poor boy has been bearing it in secret. He was afraid the news of it would seriously injure his mother.”

“And it will!” Dwight groaned. “She will never bear it in the world. She is as frail as a flower. His conduct has brought her within a hair's-breadth of the grave more than once, and nothing under high heaven could save her from this. It's awful, awful!”

“I know it's bad, but we've got to save him, Mr. Dwight. You can't have your own son—”

“Have him what?” Dwight rose, swaying from side to side, and stood facing the lawyer.

“Well, you can't have him sent to jail for murder; you can't have him—found guilty and publicly executed. The law is a ticklish business. Absolutely innocent men have been hanged time after time. I tell you this concealment of the thing, and Carson's hot fury at Willis and the remarks he has made here and there about him—the fact that he was armed—that there were no witnesses to the duel—that he allowed the erroneous verdict of the coroner's jury to go on record—all these things, with a scoundrel like Wiggin in the background at deadly work to thwart us and pull Carson out of his track, are very, very serious. It is the most serious job I ever tackled in the courts, but I'm going to put it through or, as God is my judge, Mr. Dwight, I'll throw up the law.”

Tears were now flowing freely from the old merchant's eyes and, unhindered, dripped from his face to the ground. Taking Garner's hand he grasped it firmly, and as he wrung it he sobbed: “Save my boy, Billy, and I'll never let you want for means as long as you live. He's all I've got, and I'm prouder of him than I ever let folks know. I've made a lot of fuss over some things he's done, but through it all I was proud of him, proud of him because he saw deeper into right than I did. Even this nigger question—I talked against that a lot, because I thought it would pull him down, but when I heard how he got you all together in Blackburn's store that night and persuaded you to save old Linda's boy—when I learned of that and heard the old woman's cries of joy, and saw the far-reaching effects of what Carson was standing for, I was so proud and thankful that I sneaked off to my room and cried—cried like a child; and now upon it all, as his reward, comes this thing. Oh, Billy, save him! Don't crush the poor boy's spirit. I've always wanted to aid you in some substantial way for your interest in him, and I'm going to do it this time.”

“I hope we can squash the thing in justice court in the morning, Mr. Dwight,” Garner said, confidently. “The chief thing is for you to keep it all from your wife until then, anyway. I can't do a thing with Carson till his mind is at ease over her. He worships the ground she walks on, Mr. Dwight, and if it hadn't been for that he would have been out of this trouble long ago, for I'm sure a plain statement of the matter immediately after it happened would have cleared him without any trouble. In his desire to spare his mother he has complicated the case, that's all.”

“Oh, I can keep it from his mother that long easy enough,” said Dwight. “I'll go home now and see to it. Pull my boy through this, Billy. If you have to draw on me for every cent I've got, pull him through. I'm going to treat him different in the future-. If he can get out of this I believe he will be elected and make a great man.”

An hour later Garner hurried back to the office.

“Everything is in fine shape!” he chuckled, as he threw off his coat and fell to work at his desk. “Squire Felton has fixed the hearing for to-morrow morning at eleven and Pole Baker has gone on the fastest horse in the livery-stable to secure witnesses for our side. He says he can find them galore in the mountains, and your father is as solid as a stone wall. He fell all in a tumble at first, but braced up, said some beautiful things about you, and went home to see that your mother's ears are closed.

“I saw the sheriff, too. What do you think? When I told him the facts, and said that you were ready to give yourself up, he almost cried. Braider's a trump. He said that the law gave him the right to let you go on your own recognizance, and that before he'd arrest you and put you in a common jail he'd have his arms and legs cut off. He said, knowing your heart as he knew it, he'd let you go all the way to Canada without stopping you, and that if you were bound over on this charge he'd throw up his job rather than arrest you. He told me he'd been looking for it—that he got wind of it two days ago, and would have been in to see you about it if he hadn't been afraid you'd misunderstand his coming at such a time. He put a flea in my ear, too. He said we must beware of Wiggin. He has an idea that Wiggin has been on to this for sometime and may have a dangerous dagger up his sleeve. The district-attorney is out of town to-day but will be back to-night. He's as straight as a die and will act fair. I will see him the first thing in the morning. Now, you brace up. Leave everything to me. You are as good a lawyer as I am, but you are too nervous and worried about your mother to act on your best judgment.”

At this juncture the colored gardener from Dwight's came in with a note directed to Garner. Garner opened it and read it while Carson stood looking on. It ran: “Dear Billy,—Everything is all right at this end, and will remain so, at least till after the hearing to-morrow. I enclose my check for ten thousand dollars as a retaining fee. I always intended to give you a little start, and I hope this will help you materially. Save my boy. Save him, Billy. For God's sake pull him through; don't let this thing crush his spirit. He's got a great and a useful future before him if only we can pull him through this.”

Carson read the note through a blur and turned away. He was standing alone in the dreary little consultation-room a few minutes later, when Garner came to him, old Dwight's check fluttering in his hands.

“Your dad's the right sort,” he said, his eyes gleaming with the infant fires of avarice. “One only has to know how to understand him. The size of this check is out of all reason, but if I can do what he wishes to-morrow, I'll not only accept it, but I'll put it to a glorious use. Carson, there is a young woman in this town whom I'll ask to marry me, and I'll buy a home with this to start life on.”

“Ida Tarpley?” said Carson.

“She's the one,” Garner said, with a bare touch of rising color. “I think she would take me, from a little remark she dropped, and it was through you that I found her.”

“Through me?” Dwight said.

“Yes, it was in talking of your ups and downs that I first saw into her wonderfully sweet and sympathetic nature. Carson, if you get your walking-papers in the morning, I won't wait ten minutes before I pop the question. The lack of means was the only thing that kept me from proposing the last time I saw her.”