The colonel found that he could not fall into an easy, advisory attitude with Joe. He could not even suggest what he had so strongly recommended to Mrs. Newbolt before meeting her son–that he make a clean breast of all that took place between himself and Isom Chase before the tragedy. Colonel Price felt that he would be taking an offensive and unwarranted liberty in offering any advice at all on that head. Whatever his reasons for concealment and silence were, the colonel told himself, the young man would be found in the end justified; or if there was a revelation to be made, then he would make it at the proper time without being pressed. Of that the colonel felt sure. A gentleman could be trusted. 182
But there was another matter upon which the colonel had no scruples of silence, and that was the subject of the attorney upon whom Joe had settled to conduct his affairs.
“That man Hammer is not, to say the least, the very best lawyer in Shelbyville,” said he.
“No, I don’t suppose he is,” allowed Joe.
“Now, I believe in you, Joe, as strong as any man can believe in another––”
“Thank you, sir,” said Joe, lifting his solemn eyes to the colonel’s face. The colonel nodded his acknowledgment.
“But, no matter how innocent you are, you’ve got to stand trial on this outrageous charge, and the county attorney he’s a hard and unsparing man. You’ll need brains on your side as well as innocence, for innocence alone seldom gets a man off. And I’m sorry to tell you, son, that Jeff Hammer hasn’t got the brains you’ll need in your lawyer. He never did have ’em, and he never will have ’em–never in this mortal world!”
“I thought he seemed kind of sharp,” said Joe, coloring a little at the colonel’s implied charge that he had been taken in.
“He is sharp,” admitted the colonel, “but that’s all there is to him. He can wiggle and squirm like a snake; but he’s got no dignity, and no learnin’, and what he don’t know about law would make a book bigger than the biggest dictionary you ever saw.”
“Land’s sake!” said Mrs. Newbolt, lifting up her hands despairingly.