“That’s right.” And Wint added: “I’m glad you got him, Jim. Good work.”
“Oh, he weren’t so much to get. I told you he put himself in the way of it.”
“Just the same, you had good nerve.”
“We-ell—maybe so.”
Wint went back to bed; but he didn’t go to sleep. He was tingling with the pleasurable excitement of combat; and he was immensely pleased at this chance to give evidence of the sincerity of his fight for a clean Hardiston. Those orders to Radabaugh which had become something like a proverb in Hardiston.... This was their test. He meant that they should meet the test.
He could not decide whether the incident would help him or hurt him at the polls; it was impossible to tell. But—he did not care. Hurt or help, his course would be the same. Unchangeable. Lutcher should get the limit. Whatever the evidence justified. The rest was on the lap of the gods. Let them take care of it.
It may have been an hour or two before he was asleep again; and he woke in the morning a little tired because of the sleep he had lost. But the cold tub revived him; he was cheerful enough when he came down to breakfast; and when his father appeared, Wint told him the news.
“Something doing, dad,” he said.
Chase looked at him in quick and surprised interest; and he asked: “What? What do you mean, Wint?”
“Did you hear the telephone last night, about midnight?”