Peter: a novel of which he is not the hero eBook

Francis Hopkinson Smith
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 476 pages of information about Peter.

Peter: a novel of which he is not the hero eBook

Francis Hopkinson Smith
This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 476 pages of information about Peter.

Jack didn’t want any high-ball, and said so. (Biffy didn’t care if he did.) The boy’s mind was still on the scoop, particularly on the way in which every one of his fellow-members had spoken of the incident.

“Horrid business, all of it.  Don’t you think so, Garry?” Jack said after a pause.

“No, not if you keep your eyes peeled,” answered Garry, emptying his glass.  “Never saw Gilbert but once, and then he looked to me like a softy from Pillowville.  Couldn’t fool me, I tell you, on a deal like that.  I’d have had a ‘stop order’ somewhere.  Served Gilbert right; no business to be monkeying with a buzz-saw unless he knew how to throw off the belt.”

Jack straightened his shoulders and his brows knit.  The lines of the portrait were in the lad’s face now.

“Well, maybe it’s all right, Garry.  My own opinion is that it’s no better than swindling.  Anyway, I’m mighty glad Uncle Arthur isn’t mixed up in it.  You heard what Sam and the other fellows thought, didn’t you?  How would you like to have that said of you?”

Garry tossed back his head and laughed.

“Biffy, are you listening to his Reverence, the Bishop of Cumberland?  Here endeth the first lesson.”

Biff nodded over his high-ball.  He wasn’t listening—­discussions of any kind bored him.

“But what do you care, Jack, what they say—­what anybody says?” continued Garry.  “Keep right on.  You are in the Street to make money, aren’t you?  Everybody else is there for the same purpose.  What goes up must come down.  If you don’t want to get your head smashed, stand from under.  The game is to jump in, grab what you can, and jump out, dodging the bricks as they come.  Let’s go up-town, old man.”

Neither of the young men was expressing his own views.  Both were too young and too inexperienced to have any fixed ideas on so vital a subject.

It was the old fellow in the snuff-colored coat, black stock and dog-eared collar that was behind Jack.  If he were alive to-day Jack’s view would have been his view, and that was the reason why it was Jack’s view.  The boy could no more explain it than he could prove why his eyes were brown and his hair a dark chestnut, or why he always walked with his toes very much turned out, or made gestures with his hands when he talked.  Had any of the jury been alive—­and some of them were—­or the prosecuting-attorney, or even any one of the old settlers who attended court, they could have told in a minute which one of the two young men was Judge Breen’s son.  Not that Jack looked like his father.  No young man of twenty-two looks like an old fellow of sixty, but he certainly moved and talked like him—­and had the same way of looking at things.  “The written law may uphold you, sir, and the jury may so consider, but I shall instruct them to disregard your plea.  There is a higher law, sir, than justice—­a law of mercy—­That I myself shall exercise.”  The old Judge had sat straight up on his bench when he said it, his face cast-iron, his eyes burning.  The jury brought in an acquittal without leaving their seats.  There was an outbreak, of course, but the man went free.  This young offshoot was from the same old stock, that was all; same sap in his veins, same twist to his branch; same bud, same blossom and—­same fruit.

Copyrights
Project Gutenberg
Peter: a novel of which he is not the hero from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.