“You said it!” cried Jim admiringly. “If ever a man was trimmed to the queen’s taste he’s that man.”
“But I’m going to nail, right now, the lies you fellows have been spreading,” continued Joe, eyes alight with the thought of his coming vindication. “You’ve got to sign a written confession of the part you’ve played in this dirty business.”
“We w-will, w-when we get back to town,” stammered Fleming.
“No, you won’t,” cried Joe. “You’ll do it right here and now.”
“B-but we haven’t any writing materials,” suggested Braxton, through his swollen lips.
“I’ve got paper and a fountain pen!” exclaimed Jim eagerly. “This light is rather dim, but probably Mike has got the automobile lamps going by this time and that’ll be light enough.”
“Come along!” cried Joe sternly, and his crest-fallen opponents knew him too well by this time to resist.
They went out into the open and found that the rain had almost stopped. As Jim had prophesied, 243 the automobile lamps were gleaming through the dusk. Like every Irishman, Mike dearly loved a scrap, and his eyes lighted with a mixture of eagerness and regret as he looked at Braxton and realized what he had been missing.
“Begorra!” he cried in his rich brogue, “’tis a lovely shindy ye’ve been after havin’.”
With the paper resting on his knee and Jim’s fountain pen in his hand, Joe wrote out the story of the trickery and fraud that had been practiced in getting his signature. When he had covered every important point, he held out the pen to Braxton.