Boone laughed. "For five years old Parson Fletcher never went abroad without the escort of an armed bodyguard. He even built a stockade around his house, but they got him. Jim Garrard was shot to death while militiamen stood in a hollow square about him. Precautions of that sort don't succeed. They are only a public confession of fear, and in politics a man can't afford such an admission. All I can do is to be watchful."
"Have you a guess as to who the man is behind this enmity?"
Boone nodded as he rose and went to the mantel where the pipes and tobacco lay.
"Here and there of late I've heard a name mentioned that hasn't been much discussed for years—the name of a man who has been away."
McCalloway shot a keenly searching glance at his companion as he interrogatively prompted,
"You mean—?"
"I mean Saul Fulton. Yes."
Victor McCalloway went to the hearth and kicked a smoking log into the flame. He turned then with the sternly knit brows of deep abstraction and weighed his words before giving them utterance.
"You have need to remember, my boy," he began gravely at last, "how deep the tap-root of heredity strikes down even when the tree top stretches far up into the sky."
"Meaning—?"