With a man open to sane reason and moral decency a compromise might have been effected. But after Pulaski D. Britt had craftily drawn out proffer of a truce and proposition of a trade in one phase of the great question of water-rights, he burst into a bellow of "blackmail" that echoed from end to end of the State. The words bristled in the newspapers controlled by the land barons and was rolled on the tongues of gossip. And as humanity in general, selfish in its easy-going way and jealous of resolute activity, likes to believe ill of reformers, men were readier to believe Britt than to give a motive of honest friendship its due. The jeers of the mob make what some people like to call "public opinion." And sometimes when public opinion is loudly gabbling and can be politely referred to in case of doubt, there can be found judges who will listen with one ear to the voices of the street and with the other to the specious representations of the man in power. So it came about that the judge presiding at the _nisi prius_ term in the great county dominated by Pulaski D. Britt hearkened in chambers to some very distressing details set before him by that gentleman and certain other "employers of labor" and "developers of the great timber interests." The judge pursed his lips and with his tongue clucked horrified astonishment at stories of brutal assaults made "on members of Pulaski Britt's crew" (this being Dwight Wade's desperate defence of himself, as pictured by Britt), and other tales of lunatics provoked to deeds of violence towards aforesaid "developers"; of incendiaries spirited away from officers; of men stolen out of Britt's crew (poor Tommy Eye's rescue from torture, as revamped for evidence by the Honorable Pulaski D. Britt); and, lastly, of that desperate and malignant attempt on the life of Honorable Pulaski D. Britt when a load of timber was sluiced at him from the shoulder of Enchanted Mountain. Dwight Wade had not put into the hands of his lawyer the details of those pitiful secrets of the woods; for not only his honor as a man set a seal on his lips, but the sacredness of his love imposed higher obligation still. So his lawyer listened, amazed, incredulous, but incapable of refuting these tales in the categorical way that the law demands. So much, then, for what "the gang" had done for Pulaski D. Britt and his interests. Britt lacked neither words nor will to make the story a black one. As to what they intended to do, the Honorable Pulaski declaimed, with quivering finger rapping tattoo on the map of the Blunder valley, his voice hoarse with emotion and the perspiration of apprehensiveness streaking his puffy cheeks.