Rucker."

Then there recurred to my mind the words in my mother's last letter;
that the money had been paid on the settlement of my father's estate,
and that she and Rucker were coming out West to make a new start in
life. I had never given it a moment's thought before, and should have
gone away without asking anybody a single question about it, if this
scaly pettifogger, as I now know him to have been, had not sidled up
to me.

"The estate," said my new friend, "is small, Jacob; but right is right,
and there is no reason why this man Rucker should not be made to
disgorge every cent that's coming to you--every cent! I know Doctor
Rucker slightly, and I hope I shall not shock you if I say that in my
opinion he would steal the Lord's Supper, and wipe his condemned lousy
red whiskers and his freckled claws with the table-cloth! That's the
kind of pilgrim and stranger Rucker is. He will cheat you out of your
eye teeth, sir, unless you are protected by the best legal talent to be
had--the best to be had--the talent and the advice of the man to whom
your late lamented mother went for counsel."

"Yes," said I after a while, "I think he will."

"That is why your mother," he went on, "advised with me; for even if I
have to say it, I'm a living whirlwind in court. Suppose we have
a drink!"

I sat with my drink before me, slowly sipping it, and trying to see
through this man and the new question he had brought up. Certainly, I
was entitled to my mother's property--all of it by rights, whatever the