“We’ll go, willin’ enough, sheriff, because we see just how it is; but--I’m awfully afraid you’ve put a job up to us that we can’t get away with. Honest, I am! You see, it’s this way. Uncle Bill’s a funny old feller. Got queer notions about things. He loves that place up there, not so much for what it’s worth, because money couldn’t buy it at all; but because he talks to the trees, and has a notion that the same birds come to ’im every year, and all that. They’re all like children to him, and they’re all the family he’s got. Uncle Bill told me one time that his place up there was his idea of heaven, and that if he died and the Lord Almighty’d let him, all he would ask would be to just come back there and keep on livin’ and workin’. Said he wouldn’t mind it even in spite of his rheumatiz, which he gets most awfully bad in wet seasons. “You got to look at that from his viewpoint, and put yourself in his place. Well, if you was to get to heaven, and the place suited you mighty fine, and you’d got sort of used to it after livin’ there for about fifty years, and along came some big, husky angel with a nickel-plated star on his chest and undertook to chuck you out, when you thought you hadn’t done nothin’ wrong, I reckon--I reckon, sheriff--you’d fight, too --wouldn’t you?” The sheriff somberly admitted that he “Reckoned he would.” “So!” said David. “That’s just what we’re up against. But--me and Goliath’ll go over there and try to do some persuadin’. Only, sheriff, it’s goin’ to take some time. Maybe two or three weeks, and maybe we can’t do it at all. He’s powerful set in his notions, Uncle Bill is.” Again the sheriff scratched his head and ruminated. “It ain’t business,” he grumbled, “but I can put things off for a whole month, I guess, rather than start a war on that poor old cuss. And then if he doesn’t go--by Jehos’a-phat! He must! Even if we have to tote him out on a shutter.” He stopped and groaned. “Lord! This is the most unpleasant and toughest job I’ve had to tackle since I been sheriff, and this is my fourth term in office. Road agents and train robbers is easy compared to this, because then you expect to have to shoot and don’t mind it at all; but to have to shoot Old Harmless---- Good Lord! It’s awful!” David sat thoughtfully scowling at the floor. “How can you put it off a month?” he asked, as if working over a problem. “Well, you see, I can just naturally neglect arresting Uncle Bill on the charge of bein’ too free with his rifle, and as far as throwing him off the land is concerned, Newport will have to first of all bring an action in court for ejectment and demand possession, and all that, and--by Jingoes!--maybe that could be dragged on for months, if Uncle Bill got a good lawyer! But--just the same--in the long run, I’m afraid he’ll have to go. Now, if we could square up this shootin’ business, which comes first of all, it would make things a lot easier for me. If the engineers were to be fixed up some way so----”