The clock in the Temple Court tower was pointing to five minutes of five when the senator, instead of taking the direct street to the Inter-Mountain, as his son expected him to, turned the car aside into the Capitol grounds and brought it to rest before the side entrance which led to the chambers of the Supreme Court justices.

“You’re still in time, Evan, boy,” he intimated gently; “and I’m only going to ask one thing of you.  When you get through with Hemingway, come around to the hotel and show your grit by taking dinner with the rest of us.  Are you man enough to do that?”

If the son hesitated, it was only for a fraction of a second.  When he answered, it was to say:  “If I were going up-stairs to put a noose around my own neck, it would be simpler and easier than the thing I’ve got to do.  As to your one condition—­dad, I’ll be with you at dinner, and at all other times, after this thing is done.  I’ve quit the railroad, and I did it so that I might be free to be your son and your lawyer when the smash comes.  Can I say more?”

“You don’t need to say another blessed word, son,” was the sober rejoinder; and when Evan Blount got out, the Honorable David drove away without a backward glance for the young man who was dragging himself up the granite steps of the Capitol entrance like a condemned criminal going to execution.

XXIX

AT SHONOHO INN

Evan Blount’s interview with the venerable chief justice was not at all what he had imagined it would be.  To begin with, he found it blankly impossible to take the attitude he had meant to take—­namely, that of a conscientious member of the bar, rigorously ignoring all the little cross-currents of human sympathy and the affections.

Almost at once he found himself telling his story incident by incident to the kindly old man who was figuring rather as a father confessor than as a judge and a legal superior.  When it was done, and the chief justice had gone thoughtfully over the mass of evidence, Blount saw no thunder-cloud of righteous indignation gathering upon the judicial brow.  Nor was Judge Hemingway’s comment in the least what he had expected it would be.

“I can not commend too highly your prudence and good judgment in bringing these papers to me, Mr. Blount,” was the form the comment took.  “Your position was a difficult one, and not one young man in a hundred would have been judicious enough to choose the conservative middle path you have chosen.  The fanatic would have rushed into print, and the vast majority would have weakly compromised with conscience.  It is a source of the deepest satisfaction to me, as your father’s friend, to find that you have done neither.”

“As my father’s friend?” echoed Blount.