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 some legal business—Mr. Boland, the biggest client of them all!

"You look at a Siwash," Old Two Blades was going on, with the unconscious directness of his kind, "and he isn't much to gaze on; but they owned all this country once. And I tell you I've got a sentimental feeling for 'em. They ought to be protected. Right now there's a bunch of them up on Shell Point that are in danger of being robbed."

Henry started slightly, recalling that this was exactly what Miss Marceau had been saying.

"They're hard up," explained Old Two Blades. "Their land is valuable, but not to them. Some day when the tribe is hungry and discouraged a white man is going to come along and skin them out of it—buy it for a song—land that might be immensely valuable some time."

"But," Henry's legal mind observed, "there could be no danger of their being inveigled into a bad sale unless the Indian agent could be corrupted."

Old Two Blades shook his head. "Not corrupted; oh, not likely," he averred gravely. "But—swayed in his judgment, let us say. Take that miscreant, Hornblower, now," he instanced, "where that fellow is not too well-known his line of talk is very persuasive. He might convince an Indian agent of most anything; or, let us say, a commissioner of Indian affairs, as far away as Washington, for while that scalawag lives the man is potentially dangerous."

Old Two Blades said this almost as if he regretted the necessity of having saved the wretch's life, and it struck Henry that Mr. Boland was vaguely, distantly apprehensive about Hornblower, which seemed too bad,