CHAPTER III

CONCERNING THE PRACTICE OF LAW

So instinctively do we hark back to the primeval man that there was a
tendency to lionize the prodigal in Ripton, which proves the finished
civilization of the East not to be so far removed from that land of
outlaws, Pepper County. Mr. Paul Pardriff, who had a guilty conscience
about the clipping, and vividly bearing in mind Mr. Blodgett's mishap,
alone avoided young Mr. Vane; and escaped through the type-setting room
and down an outside stairway in the rear when that gentleman called. It
gave an ironical turn to the incident that Mr. Pardriff was at the moment
engaged in a "Welcome Home" paragraph meant to be propitiatory.

Austen cared very little for lionizing. He spent most of his time with
young Tom Gaylord, now his father's right-hand man in a tremendous lumber
business. And Tom, albeit he had become so important, habitually fell
once more under the domination of the hero of his youthful days. Together
these two visited haunts of their boyhood, camping and fishing and
scaling mountains, Tom with an eye to lumbering prospects the while.

After a matter of two or three months bad passed away in this pleasant
though unprofitable manner, the Honourable Hilary requested the presence
of his son one morning at his office. This office was in what had once
been a large residence, and from its ample windows you could look out
through the elms on to the square. Old-fashioned bookcases lined with
musty books filled the walls, except where a steel engraving of a legal
light or a railroad map of the State was hung, and the Honourable Hilary
sat in a Windsor chair at a mahogany table in the middle.