“All right; but Sherlock Holmes wouldn’t stop with that.”
“Neither do I. Tryon told me a little tale two days ago that possibly forges the connecting link. We know that both Morgan and Sill are McNabbs, and that for some reason of their own they dropped the surname when they hired out to me.”
“Good!” Carfax approved. “The plot thickens. Can’t you stir in a little more stiffening?”
“With the help of Tryon’s story, I can. It seems that these men are, or have been, moonshiners—breakers of the revenue laws. Some years ago the revenue officers raided their secret still, which was hidden somewhere in the Pocket, and arrested these two, with a number of others. Morgan McNabb and his brother were booked for the penitentiary; would have gone there if Judge Birrell hadn’t come out of his retirement and fought for them.”
Carfax was slowly filling the short pipe he had borrowed from his companion. “I begin to see daylight,” he said. “What was the judge’s motive?”
“A sort of clan loyalty, Tryon says. The McNabbs live on his land; they are ‘his people’.”
“Um,” was the thoughtful comment. “And because the judge defends them, they take up the cudgels for him. We have to-morrow—or rather to-day—before us, with nothing especial to do; since Rucker will hardly be back with the drills before afternoon. Shall we telegraph to Hesterville for the sheriff, borrow Tait’s team, and make a party call upon the man with the bandaged head?”
“That would be rather too summary, wouldn’t it?” Tregarvon objected. “We may be well convinced, ourselves, but we have no direct evidence. Neither of us could go on the stand and swear that the man we saw at the boiler-head was Morgan McNabb.”
“No; that is so. Past that, since I have asked the judge’s daughter to consider me as a possible husband—” Carfax had called up the cherubic smile, but it had the opposite of a mollifying effect upon the objector.
“Don’t harp on that part of it any more than you have to,” was the morose interruption.