This was anything but a promising preamble; Dave wondered, too, at his friend’s obvious nervousness.

“So you’ve found the girl, eh?” the judge went on.

“Yes.”

“Are you accepted?  I mean, have you asked her to marry you?”

“Of course I have.  That’s about the first thing a fellow does.”

Ellsworth shuffled the papers on his desk with an abstracted gaze, then said, slowly, “Dave—­I don’t think you ought to marry.”

“So you told me once before.  I suppose you mean I’m poor and a failure.”

“Oh no!  All men are failures until they marry.  I’m thinking of what marriage means; of the new duties it brings, of the man’s duty to himself, to the woman, and to society; I’m thinking of what lies inside of the man himself.”

“Um-m!  That’s pretty vague.”

“I’ve studied you a long time, Dave, and with a reason.  I’ve studied heredity, too, and—­you mustn’t marry.”

Law stirred in his chair and smiled whimsically.  “I’ve done some studying along those lines, too, and I reckon I know myself pretty well.  I’ve the usual faults, but—­”

Ellsworth interrupted.  “You don’t know yourself at all, my boy.  There’s just the trouble.  I’m the only man—­living man, that is—­ who knows you.”  For the first time he looked directly at his caller, and now his lids were lifted until the eyes peered out bright, hard, and piercing; something in his face startled Dave.  “I was your father’s attorney and his friend.  I know how he lived and how he died.  I know—­what killed him?”

“You mean, don’t you, that you know who killed him?”

“I mean just what I say.”

Dave leaned forward, studying the speaker curiously.  “Well, come through.  What’s on your mind?” he demanded, finally.

“The Guadalupes had to kill him, Dave.”

“Had to?  Had to?  Why?”

“Don’t you know?  Don’t you know anything about your family history?” Dave shook his head.  “Well, then—­he was insane,”

“Insane?”

“Yes; violently.”

“Really, I—­Why—­I suppose you know what you’re talking about, but it sounds incredible.”

“Yes, it must to you—­especially since you never knew the facts.  Very few people did know then, even at the time, for there were no newspapers in that part of Mexico; you, of course, were a boy at school in the United States.  Nevertheless, it’s true.  That part of the story which I didn’t know at the time I learned by talking with General Guadalupe and others.  It was very shocking.”

Dave’s face was a study; his color had lessened slightly; he wet his lips.  “This is news, of course,” said he, “but it doesn’t explain my mother’s death.  Who killed her, if not the Guadalupes?”