you know?” he asked.

Trench returned his look without a word, and Judge Hollis colored; it was not the first time that the young man had rebuked him and let him know that he could not trespass on forbidden ground. The old lawyer fingered his brief an instant in annoyed silence, then he spoke of something else.

“I’ll tell you about the feud,” he said irrelevantly; “it began seventy years ago over a piece of ground that lay between the two properties; Christopher Yarnall claimed it and so did Jacob Eaton, this man’s grandfather. There was a fence war for years, then Yarnall won. Winfield Mahan, Peter’s grandfather, won by a fifteen-hour speech. They said the jurymen all fell asleep in the box and voted in a nightmare. Anyway he got it, and Mahan got more money for the case than the whole place was worth. That was the beginning. Chris Yarnall’s son married a pretty girl from Lexington, and she fell in love with Eaton, Jacob’s father. There was a kind of fatality about the way those two families got mixed up. Everybody saw how things were going except Jinny Eaton, his wife. She was playing belle at Memphis,[31] and Jacob was about a year old. Eaton tried to run away with Mrs. Yarnall, that’s the size of it, and Yarnall shot him. There was a big trial and the Eatons claimed that Eaton was innocent. Young Mrs. Yarnall swore he was, and fainted on the stand, but the Yarnalls knew he wasn’t innocent, and they got Yarnall off. He wouldn’t live with his wife after that; there was a divorce and he married a Miss Sarah Garnett. This Garnett Yarnall, they want to run, is his son. Of course the whole Eaton clan hate the Yarnalls like the devil, and Jacob hates Garnett worse than that, because he’s never been able to run him. Jacob likes to run things in a groove; he’s a smart fellow, is Jacob.”

[31]

Trench said nothing; he had filled his pipe and sat smoking, the law book closed on his finger. The judge swung back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head.

“Of course he’ll marry Diana Royall. They’re fourth cousins; Jinny is the colonel’s second cousin, on his mother’s side; there’s a good deal of money in the family, and I reckon they want to keep it there. Anyway, Jacob’s set his mind—I’m not saying his heart, for I don’t know that he’s got one—on getting Diana; that’s as plain as the nose on a man’s face, but Diana—well, there’s a proposition for you!” and the judge chuckled.

Trench knocked the ashes from his pipe very carefully into a little cracked china plate that 

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