However, I didn't reveal my full plan regarding Belknap to my kinsman. I had a hunch that even my likeness to Grandpa De La Tour wouldn't convince him. You see, like most kids, savages, and people not grown up in general, I believed in playing the game as it was played on me. I wouldn't let a rogue escape for want of a helpful lie in season, acted or spoken. I couldn't see why you shouldn't get him his way, so long as you got him. It took me some years to understand Saxton's saying, that it was better for a rascal to escape, than for an honest man to turn rascal in catching him. Plain enough when you think of it. If you work low down on the other feller, to trip him, there's two rascals, that's all. It comes medium hard to see it in that light, though, when before your eyes the rascal is having it all his own way. And, while I disapprove of my own methods, the results was great. No use talking, the wicked sometimes prosper and your Uncle William played in a full-jeweled streak of luck. The next day I opened my campaign. XIII RED MAKES A FEW REMARKS It seemed to me it was only friendly for me to get some sympathy for Saxton, as he wouldn't try for himself. Yet this looked a delicate proposition. I can't give you the proper idea of how quick-witted Mary was, how easy she saw the behind-meaning of your words, or even saw things you didn't know yourself. It's a good trait to its possessor, but, like everything else in this world, there's a price to pay for it. She sometimes saw things that weren't there. A man with extra good sight is more fooled by mirage than a man who doesn't trust his eyes so much. And it had fallen down on her, on the most important dealing of her life. She saw Saxton wrong, and couldn't see him right, for that trust in her own judgment. She had to root up the very foundation of her belief in everything to upset her wrong judgment of him. She felt the drawing toward him was something to be fought hard, the same as a man would fight a growing inclination to drink. And like a great many people (although it's a thing I can't understand myself), she swung to what was solemn, uninteresting, and hard, for safety. And changed! Well, that morning, when I slid around to the house of the fountain, I scarcely knew her. It was Saturday, and no school. About a dozen or twenty young Panamans walked or sat about the yard. The Reconstructed looked stiff and unhappy in the boiled white shirt of progress, but out of native good nature tried to appear pleasant.