Page:Post - Uncle Abner (Appleton, 1918).djvu/177

 the law will undertake to say what is right and what is wrong I shall leave her to say it and let myself go free. What she requires me to give I shall give, and what she permits me to take I shall take, and there shall be an end of it."

"It is an easy standard," replied Abner, "and it simplifies a thing that I have come to see you about."

"And what have you come to see me about?" said Dillworth; "I knew that it was for something you came."

And he laughed a little, dry, nervous laugh.

I had observed this laugh breaking now and then into his talk and I had observed his uneasy manner ever since we came. There was something below the surface in this man that made him nervous and it was from that under thing that this laugh broke out.

"It is about your lawsuit," said Abner.

"And what about it?"

"This," said Abner: "That your suit has reached the point where you are not the man to have charge of it."

"Abner," cried Dillworth, "what do you mean?"

"I will tell you," said Abner. "I have followed the progress of this suit, and you have won it. On any day that you call it up the judge will enter a decree, and yet for a year it has stood there on the docket and you have not called it up. Why?"

Dillworth did not reply, but again that dry, nervous laugh broke out. 164