"Osborne is certainly up and doing!" he exclaimed, chuckling. "I suppose he has tossed a quarter, and decided it's better to be good than to be senator. By the way, that was a curious story in the newspapers about Dangerfield and Osborne having a row at New Orleans. I wonder just what passed between them?"
Griswold was conscious that Habersham glanced at him a little curiously, with a look that implied something that half formed itself on the prosecuting attorney's lips.
"I know nothing beyond what I read in the newspapers at the time. Some political row, I fancy."
"I suppose Governor Osborne hasn't discussed it with you since his return to Columbia?" asked Habersham carelessly. The shadow of a smile flitted across his face but vanished quickly as though before a returning consciousness of the fact that he was facing Henry Maine Griswold, who was first of all a gentleman, and not less a scholar and a man of the world, who was not to be trifled with.
"No," replied Griswold, a little shortly. "I was appealed to in rather an unusual way in this matter of Appleweight. It is quite out of my line as a legal proposition, but there are other considerations of which I may not speak."
"Pardon me," murmured Habersham; but he asked: "What was Governor Osborne doing when you left Columbia?"
"When I left Columbia," remarked Griswold, and it was he that smiled now, "to the best of my knowledge and belief the governor of South Carolina was deeply absorbed in knitting a necktie, the color of which was, I think, the orange of a Blue Ridge autumn sunset. And now, if you will kindly give me pen and paper, I will communicate the Appleweight situation and our prospects to my honored chief."