Page:The gold brick (1910).djvu/190

 tie hung unknotted at his throat. When he moved it was in that loose and lazy way that told, as his hat and his habit did, that he came from the country south of the old O. and M., which divides Egypt from the corn lands of central Illinois. He drew a rocking-chair to the grate, and stretching himself comfortably in it, with his feet upon the ash-strewn fender, drew from his hip pocket a plug of tobacco and gnawed on it. Then he drawled, in a voice haunted by musical echoes of southern ancestry:

"What news?"

"Why," replied the attorney-general, "haven't you heard? Jim Lockhart's dead."

"The hell he is!" responded Jennings. "I hadn't heerd ary word. When'd he die?"

"This afternoon."

"Sudden?"

"Rather."

"What was ailin' of him?"

The attorney-general smiled, a peculiar, mirthless smile.

The secretary of state ceased to rock.

"You don't reckon now—"

"That's it exactly."