"Strong enough! I'm only afraid he's _too_ strong." "Well, now, let's not take everything for granted, you know. Let's go at this thing a little at a time. There's got to be a system of courts established in here, and we've got to know our judiciary, as a matter of course. Then we've got to know our own lawyers, as another matter of course. Did you say you knew him before, that is, to get a line on him, before he came out here?" Ellsworth colored just a trifle. "Well, yes," he admitted. "He's a Princeton man. He comes of good family--maybe a little wild and headstrong--wouldn't settle down, you know. Why, I offered him a place in my office once, and he--well, he refused it. He started out West some five years ago. Of course--well, you know, in a good many cases of this sort, there's a girl at the bottom of the Western emigration." "What girl?" asked Porter Barkley, sharply. "One back East somewhere," said Ellsworth, evasively. Porter Barkley came and seated himself beside the older man, leaning forward, his elbows resting on his knees, meditatively crumbling a bit of bark in his hands. "I was just going to say, Mr. Ellsworth," said he, "that a girl in a case like this--always provided that this man is as influential as you think--may be a mighty useful thing. Maybe you couldn't buy the man for himself, but you could buy him for the girl. Do you see?" Ellsworth did not answer. "He wants to make good, we'll say," went on Barkley. "He wants to go back East with a little roll. Now, we give him a chance to make good. We give him more money than he ever saw before in his life, and set him up as leading citizen, all that sort of thing. For the sake of going back and making a front before that girl, he'll be willing to do a heap of things for us. You've seen it a thousand times yourself. A woman can do more than cash, in a real hard bit of work. Now, Ellsworth, you furnish the girl, and leave the rest to me. I'll deliver Heart's Desire in a hand-bag to you, if the man's half as able as you seem to think he is." Porter Barkley never quite understood why Mr. Ellsworth arose suddenly and walked to the far end of the gallery, leaving him alone, crumbling his bits of bark in the sunshine. CHAPTER XIII BUSINESS AT HEART'S DESIRE _This Describing Porter Barkley's Method with a Man, and Tom Osby's Way with a Maid_