"I don't believe it," said the girl bluntly.
"One way or another," declared the old man. "That Dorn boy isn't worth the price he'd want."
"What price would he want?" asked Jane.
"How should I know?" retorted her father angrily.
"You've tried to hire him—haven't you?" persisted she.
The father concentrated on his crackers and milk. Presently he said: "What did that fool Hull boy say about Dorn to you?"
"He doesn't like him," replied Jane. "He seems to be jealous of him—and opposed to his political views."
"Dorn's views ain't politics. They're—theft and murder and highfalutin nonsense," said Hastings, not unconscious of his feeble anti-climax.
"All the same, he—or rather, his mother—ought to have got damages from the railway," said the girl. And there was a sudden and startling shift in her expression—to a tenacity as formidable as her father's own, but a quiet and secret tenacity.
Old Hastings wiped his mouth and began fussing uncomfortably with a cigar.