Wade had grasped at as vague encouragement. But now the clairvoyancy of his sensitiveness enabled him to understand John Barrett’s nature and his own pitiful position in that great affair of the heart; he had not dared to look at that affair too closely till now.

So he hurried on, seeking the open country, obsessed by the strange fancy that there was something in his soul that he wanted to take out and scrutinize, alone, away from curious eyes.

The Honorable Pulaski D. Britt had watched that hasty exit with sudden ire that promptly changed to amusement. He turned slowly and gazed at the timber baron with that amusement plainly showing—amusement spiced with a bit of malice. The reverse of Britt’s hard character as bully and tyrant was an insatiate curiosity as to the little affairs of the people he knew and a desire to retail those matters in gossip when he could wound feelings or stir mischief. If one with a gift of prophecy had told him that his next words would mark the beginning of the crisis of his life, Pulaski Britt would have professed his profane incredulity in his own vigorous fashion. All that he said was, “Well, John, your girl has picked out quite a rugged-lookin’ feller, even if he ain’t much inclined to listen to good advice on forestry.”

Confirmed gossips are like connoisseurs of cheese: the stuff they relish must be stout. It gratified Britt to see that he had “jumped” his friend.

“I didn’t know but you had him in here to sign partnership papers,” Britt continued, helping himself to a cigar. “I wouldn’t blame you much for annexin’ him. You need a chap of his size to go in on your lands and straighten out your bushwhackin’ thieves with a club, seein’ that you don’t go yourself. As for me, I don’t need to delegate clubbers; I can attend to it myself. It’s the way I take exercise.”

“Look here, Pulaski,” Barrett replied, angrily, “a joke is all right between friends, but hitching up my daughter Elva’s name with a beggar of a school-master isn’t humorous.”

Britt gnawed off the end of the cigar, and spat the fragment of tobacco into a far corner.

“Then if you don’t see any humor in it, why don’t you stop the courtin’?”

“There isn’t any courting.”

“I say there is, and if the girl’s mother was alive, or you ’tending out at home as sharp as you ought to, your family would have had a stir-up long ago. If you ain’t quite ready for a son-in-law, and don’t want that young man, you’d better grab in and issue a family bulletin to that effect.”

“Damn such foolishness! I don’t believe it,” stormed Barrett, pulling his chair back to the desk; “but if you knew it, why didn’t you say something before?”

“Oh, I’m no gossip,” returned Britt, serenely. “I’ve got something to do besides watch courtin’ scrapes. But I don’t have to watch this one in your family. I know it’s on.”

Barrett hooked his glasses on his nose with an angry gesture, and began to fuss with the papers on his desk. But in spite of his professed scepticism and his suspicion of Pulaski Britt’s ingenuousness, it was plain that his mind was not on the papers.

He whirled away suddenly and faced Britt. That gentleman was pulling packets of other papers from his pocket.

“Look here, Britt, about this lying scandal that seems to be snaking around, seeing that it has come to your ears, I—”

“What I’m here for is to go over these drivin’ tolls so that they can be passed on to the book-keepers,” announced Mr. Britt, with a fine and brisk business air. He had shot his shaft of gossip, had “jumped” his man, and the affair of John Barrett’s daughter had no further interest for him. “You go ahead and run your family affairs to suit yourself. As to these things you are runnin’ with me, let’s get at ’em.”

In this manner, unwittingly, did Pulaski D. Britt light the fuse that connected with his own magazine; in this fashion, too, did he turn his back upon it.

CHAPTER II

THE HEIRESS OF “OAKLANDS”