"I want my dinner," said Wade plaintively. "I Paul Revered on a shoestring. I Sheridaned without a commissariat. I brought the good news to Ghent on an empty tummy. Is thy servant a dog, that he should eat with a Chinaman? And I'd do that willingly; but, Casey, you know as well as I do that the only thing fit to drink Clyde's health in is in this room, and I warn you that if there is much more delay in doing so nothing which may occur hereafter will be either lucky or legal. While it is possibly true that a dinner of herbs where love is has a porterhouse, rare, and hashed brown spuds backed clean off the board, I submit, not being in love myself——"
"What's that?" cried Kitty Wade from the door.
"Why, it's a shame!" said Clyde. "He must be starving. It's all Casey's fault, too."
"Wouldn't he break away?" asked Wade. "I remember——?"
"Harrison!" cried Kitty, warningly.
"Well, then, do I eat?" he demanded.
"Yes. Anything to keep you quiet. I'll get your dinner myself."
Half an hour later Wade pushed back his chair with a sigh of satisfaction, lit a cigar, and joined the others.
"I feel better," he announced. "A child could play with me in comparative safety. Now let me tell you what else I discovered. In the first place, Cross is dead. I was talking to Shiller. He says that Tom wasn't to blame—corroborates his story, in fact, in every material particular. So Tom's all right on that score. My advice to him would be to come in and have his trial over."
"That isn't what's bothering him so much. It's these friends of Cross's. I don't blame him. Some sheriffs are mighty weak-kneed about such things."