“It sounds well, Price, but where's the money coming from to push a lawsuit?”
The judge waved this aside.
“The means will be found, Solomon. Our horizon is lifting—I can see it lift! Don't drag me back from the portal of hope! We'll drink the stuff that comes across the water; I'll warm the cockles of your heart with imported brandy. I carry twenty years' hunger and thirst under my wes-coat and I'll feed and drink like a gentleman yet!” The judge smacked his lips in an ecstasy of enjoyment, and dropping down before the table which served him as a desk, seized a pen.
“It's good enough to think about, Price,” admitted Mahaffy grudgingly.
“It's better to do; and if anything happens to me the papers I am going to leave will tell you how it's to be done. Man, there's a million of money in sight, and we've got to get it and spend it and enjoy it! None of your swinish thrift for me, but life on a big scale—company, and feasting, and refined surroundings!”
“And you are going to meet Fentress in the morning?” asked Mahaffy. “I suppose there's no way of avoiding that?”
“Avoiding it?” almost shouted the judge. “For what have I been living? I shall meet him, let the consequences be what they may. To-night when I have reduced certain facts to writing I shall join you at Belle Plain. The strange and melancholy history of my life I shall place in your hands for safe keeping. In the morning I can be driven back to Boggs'.”
“And you will go there without a second?”
“If necessary; yes.”
“I declare, Price, you are hardly fitted to be at large! Why, you act as if you were tired of life. There's Yancy—there's Cavendish!”