May I ask, sir, if you can tell me the precise date of
the attorney-general's departure--for the seat of war, I mean--for
Tippecanoe?"
The judge shook his head, hardly hearing the inquiry. The agitation
which had shaken him was leaving him greatly spent. The old look of
abstraction came back, quickly dulling his gaze, and, sinking down in
his chair, he very soon began to nod and doze.
"With your permission, sir," William went on with a touch of sarcasm in
his cool, slow voice, "I should like to call upon Mr. Alston to-morrow.
You have, I presume, no objection to my going to see him in his own
house. It is impossible to drop a matter of business without a word of
explanation. And if you have no objection, I will mention to him the
matters of which you have just been speaking. No one has a deeper
interest in the public welfare, and certainly no one could be more
eminently discreet. However, I shall, of course, speak in the strictest
confidence."
The judge bent his head, but it was in nodding not in assent, for he had
not heard a word that his nephew said.
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