seen it before—which was perhaps the truth. He read it carefully from the first line to the last and then from under his beetling brows looked at Henry. "Seems sound," he observed meditatively.
"Sound?" gasped that young man.
"It'll hold, I judge," declared Mr. Boland, as with satisfaction at a good piece of legal carpentry.
"Hold!" cried Henry, feelings unbottled. "Do you mean that you are satisfied with that document, Mr. Boland? Do you mean that it seems commendable to you? That you do not see the iniquity of it? Do not see that it is a mere trick—a subterfuge? That it may conform to the letter of the law, but that it is a gross perversion of the spirit of it? That it makes the law a mockery, a pretense, a sham? That it makes of Jim Hogan not an officer of the law but a highway robber? And that he wasn't any more sacred because he was your highway robber?"
Mr. Boland sat suddenly rigid, his features hard as some glacier-chiseled face upon the Devonian rock. "My highway-robber?" he rebuked cuttingly. "You are not so happy in your choice of words today."
"I'm not happy—I'm not happy about anything this morning, Mr. Boland," Henry confessed, letting down a little. "I'm very much distressed. I'm all shot to Pieces and that's the truth. Why, Mr. Boland, you amaze me! You strike me silly when you stand for a thing like this. It looks to me wrong, all wrong, every bit of it wrong. Or—am I?" Harrington wiped his brow and sank into a chair to sit gazing with a bewildered air at Mr. Boland.
"You are!" assured Mr. Boland with emphasis, as he returned Harrington's scrutiny calmly.
