"Catesby and Frazier have got into a squabble about that lot of tobacco they brought in last February," he said, "and they have both agreed to accept your decision in the matter."
Ordway nodded, without replying, as he followed the other through the doorway. Such judicial appeals to him were not uncommon, and his power of pacification, as his employer had once remarked, was one of his principal qualifications for the tobacco market.
"Shall I hear them now? or would it be as well to give them time to cool off?" he asked presently, while Baxter settled his great person in a desk chair that seemed a size too small to contain it.
"If they can cool off on a day like this they're lucky dogs," returned Baxter, with a groan, "however, I reckon you might as well get it over and let 'em go home and stew in peace. By the way, Smith, I forgot to tell you that Major Leary—he's the president of the Southside Bank, you know, was asking me yesterday if I could tell him anything about you before you came to work for me."
"Of the Southside Bank," repeated Ordway, while his hand closed tightly over a paper weight, representing a gambolling kitten, which lay on Baxter's desk. With the words he was conscious only of the muffled drumming of his pulses, and above the discord in his ears, the cheerful tones of Baxter sounded like an echo rather than a real voice. At the instant he was back again in his room in the great banking house of Amos, Bonner & Amos, in the midst of the pale brown walls, the black oak furniture and the shining leather covered volumes behind the glass doors of the bookcases. With peculiar vividness he remembered the eccentric little bird on the bronze clock on the mantel, which had hopped from its swinging perch to strike the hour with its beak; and through the open windows he could hear still the din of traffic in the street below and the ceaseless, irregular tread of footsteps upon the pavement.
"Oh, I didn't mean to raise your hopes too high," remarked Baxter, rising from his chair to slap him affectionately upon the shoulder, "he isn't going to make you president of the bank, but of the Citizen's Improvement League, whose object is to oust Jasper Trend, you know, in the autumn. The Major told me before he left that you'd done as much for Tappahannock in two years as any other man had done in a lifetime. I said I thought he'd hit the nail pretty squarely, which is something he doesn't generally manage to do."
"So I'm to fight Jasper Trend, am I?" asked Ordway, with sudden interest. The sound of his throbbing arteries was no longer in his ears, and as he spoke, he felt that his past life with his old identity had departed from him. In the swift renewal of his confidence he had become again "Ten Commandment Smith" of Tappahannock.
"Well, you see, Jasper has been a precious bad influence around here," pursued Baxter, engrossed in the political scheme he was unfolding. "The only thing on earth he's got to recommend him is his pretty daughter. Now, I've a soft enough heart, as everybody knows, when the ladies come about—particularly if they're pretty—but I'm ready to stand up and say that Jasper Trend can't be allowed to run this town on the platform of pure chivalry. There's such a thing as fairness, suh, even where women are concerned, and I'll back my word with my oath that it ain't fair!"
"And I'll back your word with another that it isn't," rejoined Ordway.
"There's no doubt, I reckon," continued Baxter, "that Jasper has connived with those disorderly saloons that you've been trying to shut up, and for all his money and the men he employs in the cotton mills there's come a considerable reaction against him in public sentiment. Now, I ain't afraid to say, Smith," he concluded with an ample flourish of his dirty hand, "that the fact that there's any public sentiment at all in Tappahannock is due to you. Until you came here there weren't six decent men you could count mixed up in the affairs of this town. Jasper had everything his own way, that's why he hates you."