As he left the bath room abruptly, Boyd made no reply until he joined the lawyer in the dining room where the papers from the packet lay spread out in the order in which they were to be taken up for consideration. Then he said:
"I will try to be interested, Jack; for your sake I'll do my best. But what interest can a man in my position feel in anything?"
"Now listen to me, Boyd!" Jack Towns said commandingly, and rising to his feet to say it. "Listen to me. You are morbid. You need calomel or something. You're the victim of some mistake and you're in sore trouble. But you are not disgraced. Nobody can disgrace a man but the man himself. You are conscious of your own honor; what matters it what others think? Besides, no honest man in Virginia believes that you are guilty of a sneaking crime or capable of it. The jury that convicted you didn't believe it and not one of them believes it now. The Judge who will sentence you doesn't believe it. If the envious and malignant falsely pretend to believe it, why should you care for the despicable pretense of people so utterly unworthy? If cowards fight shy of your acquaintance, lest recognition of you should compromise themselves, why should you care for the acquaintance of such poltroons? You are Westover of Wanalah—inheritor of an honorable name. You will be that so long as you shall live. It behoves you to bear that name with head erect and with contempt alone for those who do not recognize your worthiness to bear it. This affair is an unfortunate incident. It will soon be over, and you will have a lifetime before you in which to teach men the falsity of the accusation against you. There. My lecture is done. Let us get to these papers. They hold great news for you."
When the two were seated, Jack took up a letter, which was first of the papers in the order of consideration.
"This is from a firm of lawyers, Dodge, Denslow and Deming of Denver—charmingly alliterative throughout—do you happen to know who they are?"
"Yes, in a way. There was a memorandum among my father's papers, that mentioned them."
"Well, go on. What did it say, or reveal, or suggest? This is business, Boyd. Put your thinking machine on it."
"I will,—to oblige you, Jack. The memorandum catalogued a long list of mining lands and mining claims somewhere up in the Rocky Mountains or in some side issue of a range—you'll find the paper in my desk at home—lands and claims which my father had bought during one of his journeys out that way and had placed in my name, as a provision for me in case of accident."
"That accounts for these papers being in your name and not your father's," interrupted Jack. "I was puzzled by that. But go on. I want to hear all about it."
"Well, you know my father was an optimist—a dreamer almost—and he was possessed of an idea, reflected in the memorandum, that these things would make the future Westover of Wanalah—myself or my son if I should have one—enormously rich. As nearly as I could make out, the multitudinous lands and mining claims he bought in my name covered a large area of entirely untillable and not very accessible land somewhere up in the high mountains, where grub-staked miners scratched the surface for silver ore, with now and then a little find of gold. They worked on shares somehow, and this law firm collected my share from time to time and remitted it. It was so small a part of the assets of the estate that I've forgotten how much it was. That's all I know of Dodge, Denslow & Deming."