“Guess I’ll chop down the old tree while I’m here, and ship it into Massachusetts as firewood,” he suggested.
“Fine idea,” Maida acquiesced, “but you’d only have your trouble for your pains. You see, the stipulation was, ‘without the intervention of human hands.’”
“All right, we’ll chop it down by machinery, then.”
“I wish the tree promise meant anything, but it doesn’t. It was only made as a proof positive how impossible was any chance of pardon.”
“But now a chance of pardon has come.”
“Yes, but a chance that cannot be taken. You’ll be here, Jeff, when they come back. Then you can talk with Mr. Appleby, and maybe, as man to man, you can convince him——”
“Convince nothing! Don’t you suppose I’ve tried every argument I know of, with that old dunderhead? I’ve spent hours with him discussing your father’s case. I’ve talked myself deaf, dumb and blind, with no scrap of success. But, I don’t mind telling you, Maida, that I might have moved the old duffer to leniency if it hadn’t been for—you.”
“Me?”
“Yes; you know well enough young Sam’s attitude toward you. And old Appleby as good as said if I’d give up my claim on your favor, and give sonny Sam a chance, there’d be hope for your father.”
“H’m. Indeed! You don’t say so! And you replied?”