When the doctor had looked to his cuts, the fellow on the raft cast off and went on down the Elk." It occurred to the judge that he himself had news to impart.

He must account for the boy's presence.
"While you've been taking your whiff of life down at the steamboat landing, Mahaffy, I've been experiencing a most extraordinary coincidence." The judge paused.

By a sullen glare in his deep-sunk eyes Mr.Mahaffy seemed to bid him go on.

"Back east--" the judge jerked his thumb with an indefinite gesture "back east at my ancestral home--" Mahaffy snorted harshly.

"You don't believe I had an ancestral home ?--well, I had! It was of brick, sir, with eight Corinthian columns across the front, having a spacious paneled hall sixty feet long.