“I have been listening just now! I heard you threaten to strip my poor father of every cent he has in the world! Do you deny you said it?”
“No, but—”
“Do you deny that you have been the sort of a man I have said you were?”
She rushed at me, her hands like claws. I was reminded of a sight I had witnessed in boyhood—a shrieking meadow-thrush defending her nest against a sneaking snake.
I looked past her toward the judge. I did hope he would say something, even though I did not expect that he would come out with the whole truth. Honestly, I would have stopped him short if he had started to confess to her anything about the real reason why I was mixed into his affairs. Had not the whole expedition been planned so that the women folks would not know?
Nevertheless, a decent man in his right senses could have made some sort of talk to help me out. But it was plain enough that Judge Kingsley was not in his right senses—he did not seem to have much of any sense left in him; he was doddering around the room, twisting his hands and accusing himself of having killed his wife.
“Please listen,” I implored. “You have heard only one side—”
“I will not listen! You, your uncle, the renegades you associate with, you have tried to ruin my father. You weren’t even decent enough to be an open enemy—you came sneaking into our home to lie to us and deceive us.”
“By the gods,” I shouted, “you will listen to me! I don’t propose to be kicked around from pillar to post all my life. I am the best friend the Kingsley family ever had. If your father doesn’t tell you so, I will. Judge Kingsley, why don’t you be a man?”
But he gave me a fishy look and went on lamenting.