Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/175

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States Supreme Court. If they took the wrong view——"

"If they did—— God, what a crash!" groaned Scanlon. "Why, it would jerk the bottom out from under everything!" He stared at Henry reproachfully, as if he had been traitorous to suggest such a thing.

"Supposing the Court holds, from the record, that Hornblower did prove his case at the trial, but that local feeling was so strong the jury refused to see the facts," persisted Henry, as if fascinated by such a melancholy prospect.

Scanlon shook himself as if cold. "Henry, you're pessimistic this morning!" he accused.

"Maybe so," sighed Henry; "but a gust of gloom Charlie Clayton was blowing at me has got my mind going on a lot of stuff. Funny Cosby never got any trace of that gold, isn't it? Or the disappearing dead man? You know, Scanlon, those things are more than a year old, those two little matters; but I've never let up on 'em for a minute. Not for a minute."

"Haven't, eh?" grunted Scanlon, expressionlessly, and contemplated the young man as from behind a screen. There were people who thought that Scanlon was getting jealous of Henry. Henry did not suspect it.

"They'll never carry that case to Washington," Scanlon announced out of silence.

"Hope not," said Henry, deep in thought—musing now upon the steady up-towering of the Boland fortune. For all this while that Henry was prospering, Boland General was also prospering. Axes resounded in the forest, trees crashed and donkey engines snaked out the logs to where trains and rivers bore them to the