"Go ahead," I told him. "I reckon I'm old enough to keep my
counsel. Let it go, Farwell."

"Do you know," he began, with a sharp, grinding of his teeth, "that
dishonourable scoundrel has had me _watched_, ever since there
was talk of me for the fusion candidate? He's had me followed,
_shadowed_, till he knows more about me than I do myself."

I saw right there that I'd never really measured Gorgett for as tall
as he really was. "Have a cigar?" I asked Knowles, and lit one
myself. But he shook his head and went on:

"You remember my taking you to call on General Buskirk's daughter?"

"Quite well," said I, puffing pretty hard.

"An angel! A white angel! And this beast, this _boodler_ has the
mud in his hands to desecrate her white garments!"

"Oh," says I.

The angel's knight began to pace the room as he talked, clinching and
unclinching his hands, while the perspiration got his hair all
scraggly on his forehead. You see Farwell was doing some suffering and
he wasn't used to it.

"When she came home from abroad, a year ago," he said, "it seemed to
me that a light came into my life. I've got to tell you the whole
thing," he groaned, "but it's hard! Well, my wife is taken up with our