“How long have you lived here?” asked the judge abruptly.  Fentress seemed to hesitate; but the judge’s glance, compelling and insistent, demanded an answer.

“Ten years.”

“You have known many men of all classes as a lawyer and a planter?” said the judge.  Fentress inclined his head.  The judge took a step nearer him.  “People have a great trick of coming and going in these western states—­all sorts of damned riffraff drift in and out of these new lands.”  A deadly earnestness lifted the judge’s words above mere rudeness.  Fentress, cold and distant, made no reply.  “For the past twenty years I have been looking for a man by the name of Gatewood—­David Gatewood.”  Disciplined as he was, the colonel started violently.  “Ever heard of him, Fentress?” demanded the judge with a savage scowl.

“What’s all this to me?” The words came with a gasp from Fentress’ twitching lips.  The judge looked at him moody and frowning.

“I have reason to think this man Gatewood came to west Tennessee,” he said.

“If so, I have never heard of him.”

“Perhaps not under that name—­at any rate you are going to hear of him now.  This man Gatewood, who between ourselves was a damned scoundrel”—­the colonel winced—­“this man Gatewood had a friend who threw money and business in his way—­a planter he was, same as Gatewood.  A sort of partnership existed between the pair.  It proved an expensive enterprise for Gatewood’s friend, since he came to trust the damned scoundrel more and more as time passed—­even large sums of his money were in Gatewood’s hands—­” the judge paused.  Fentress’ countenance was like stone, as expressionless and as rigid.

By the door stood Mahaffy with Yancy and Cavendish; they understood that what was obscure and meaningless to them held a tragic significance to these two men.  The judge’s heavy face, ordinarily battered and debauched, but infinitely good-natured, bore now the markings of deep passion, and the voice that rumbled forth from his capacious chest came to their ears like distant thunder.

“This friend of Gatewood’s had a wife—­” The judge’s voice broke, emotion shook him like a leaf, he was tearing open his wounds.  He reached over and poured himself a drink, sucking it down with greedy lips.  “There was a wife—­” he whirled about on his heel and faced Fentress again.  “There was a wife, Fentress—­” he fixed Fentress with his blazing eyes.

“A wife and child.  Well, one day Gatewood and the wife were missing.  Under the circumstances Gatewood’s friend was well rid of the pair—­he should have been grateful, but he wasn’t, for his wife took his child, a daughter; and Gatewood a trifle of thirty thousand dollars his friend had intrusted to him!”

There was another silence.

“At a later day I met this man who had been betrayed by his wife and robbed by his friend.  He had fallen out of the race—­drink had done for him—­there was just one thing he seemed to care about and that was the fate of his child, but maybe he was only curious there.  He wondered if she had lived, and married—­” Once more the judge paused.