The judge
shuddered. "Can such things be?" he murmured at last.
"You won't let him take me?"
"I never unsay my words," said the judge grandly. "With God's
help I'll be the instrument for their destruction." He frowned
with a preternatural severity. Eh--if he could turn a trick like
that, it would pull him up! There would be no more jeers and
laughter.
What credit and standing it would give him! His thoughts slipped
along this fresh channel. What a prosecution he would conduct
--what a whirlwind of eloquence he would loose! He began to
breathe hard. His name should go from end to end of the state!
No man could be great without opportunity--for years he had known
this--but here was opportunity at last! Then he remembered what
Mahaffy had told him of the man on the raft. This Slosson's
tavern was probably on the upper waters of the Elk. Yancy had
been thrown in the river and had been picked up in a dying
condition. "Hannibal," be said, "Solomon Mahaffy, who was here
last night, told me he saw down at the river landing, a man who
had been fished up out of the Elk--a man who had been roughly
handled."
"Were it my Uncle Bob?" cried Hannibal, lifting a swollen face to
his.
"Dear lad, I don't know," said the judge sympathetically. "Some
people on a raft had picked him up out of the river. He was
unconscious and no one knew him. He was apparently a stranger in
these parts."
"It were Uncle Bob! It were Uncle Bob--I know it were my Uncle
Bob! I must go find him!" and Hannibal slipped from the judge's
lap and ran for his rifle and bundle.
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