“To him?� Dr. Cheyney twinkled, “No, sir, not yet. He’s taken the packing out of Jacob; he says that more than half these countrymen vote with the Eaton faction because they’ve put all their money in the Eaton Investment Company, and I’ll be hanged, sir, if he doesn’t state it fairly.�
Colonel Royall got up and stood, a towering figure of a man, his blue eyes kindled. “William,� he said hoarsely, “that doesn’t sound honorable.�
“David,� retorted the old man uncompromisingly, “I tell the truth and shame the devil—I’ve got an eighty-mile circuit in this county, sir, and it’s true!�
“Then, sir,� said Colonel Royall, “this county’s rotten.�
William Cheyney leaned back in his chair and smiled quietly. “It’s the same way in the State; the Eaton Company’s offering bigger interest than any other company this side of the Mississippi; it hasn’t cut its rate, even in the panic, and it’s getting new investors every day—or it did till Caleb Trench got up at Cresset and cut the thing in two.�
“Caleb Trench?� repeated the colonel slowly. “William, that young man’s creating a sensation. I begin to doubt him; does he mean it, or is he bidding for notoriety?�
Dr. Cheyney smiled grimly. “David,� he said, “you ask Judge Hollis; he believes in him and so do I.�
“I don’t know why I shouldn’t believe in Jacob,� said the colonel stiffly; “he’s my own blood, and we might as well believe in one young man as another. What’s the difference between them?�
“Well,� replied the doctor slowly, “when I go into a grocery store and see one basket of eggs labelled ‘Box eggs, fresh, thirty-two cents,’ and the other basket, ‘Hen’s eggs, forty-five cents,’ I’m kind of naturally suspicious of the box eggs. Not that I want to bear too hard on Jacob.�