for your chickens--grandpa was only joking; you know he loves to
joke. Take the chickens to the hen-house and get something hot to
eat in the kitchen before you start out again."

She ran hurriedly up the steps and entered the hall just as
Fletcher was shaking hands with his guest.



CHAPTER III. Showing that a Little Culture Entails Great Care

Carraway had risen to meet his host in a flutter that was almost
one of dread. In the eight years since their last interview it
seemed to him that his mental image of his great client had
magnified in proportions--that Fletcher had "out-Fletchered"
himself, as he felt inclined to put it. The old betrayal of his
employer's dependence, which at first had been merely a suspicion
in the lawyer's mind, had begun gradually, as time went on, to
bristle with the points of significant details. In looking back,
half-hinted things became clear to him at last, and he gathered,
bit by bit, the whole clever, hopeless villainy of the
scheme--the crime hedged about by law with all the prating
protection of a virtue. He knew now that Fletcher--the old
overseer of the Blake slaves--had defrauded the innocent as
surely as if he had plunged his great red fist into the little
pocket of a child, had defrauded, indeed, with so strong a blow
that the very consciousness of his victim had been stunned. There
had been about his act all the damning hypocrisy of a great
theft--all the air of stern morality which makes for the popular
triumph of the heroic swindler.