honest as the day; you will find him plain-spoken if he speaks at all,
and I have great hopes that you will agree. Tom, the Major and I are
boyhood friends, and for the sake of that friendship he has consented to
this meeting."

"I fear that your kind efforts will be useless, Colonel," Major Colfax
put in, rather tartly. "Mr. McChesney not only ignores my rights, but
was near to hanging my agent."

"What?" says Colonel Clark.

I glanced at Tom. However helpless he might be in a court, he could be
counted on to stand up stanchly in a personal argument. His retorts
would certainly not be brilliant, but they surely would be dogged. Major
Colfax had begun wrong.

"I reckon ye've got no rights that I know on," said Tom. "I cleart the
land and settled it, and I have a better right to it nor any man. And
I've got a grant fer it."

"A Henderson grant!" cried the Major; "'tis so much worthless paper."

"I reckon it's good enough fer me," answered Tom. "It come from those
who blazed their way out here and druv the redskins off. I don't know
nothin' about this newfangled law, but 'tis a queer thing to my thinkin'
if them that fit fer a place ain't got the fust right to it."

Major Colfax turned to Colonel Clark with marked impatience.

"I told you it would be useless, Clark," said he. "I care not a fig for