Bates ran in to report a summons at the outer wall, and Larry and I went together to answer it, sending Bates to keep watch toward the lake.

Our friend the sheriff, with a deputy, was outside in a buggy. He stood up and talked to us over the wall.

“You gents understand that I’m only doing my duty. It’s an unpleasant business, but the court orders me to eject all trespassers on the premises, and I’ve got to do it.”

“The law is being used by an infamous scoundrel to protect himself. I don’t intend to give in. We can hold out here for three months, if necessary, and I advise you to keep away and not be made a tool for a man like Pickering.”

The sheriff listened respectfully, resting his arms on top of the wall.

“You ought to understand, Mr. Glenarm, that I ain’t the court; I’m the sheriff, and it’s not for me to pass on these questions. I’ve got my orders and I’ve got to enforce ’em, and I hope you will not make it necessary for me to use violence. The judge said to me, ‘We deplore violence in such cases’ Those were his Honor’s very words.”

“You may give his Honor my compliments and tell him that we are sorry not to see things his way, but there are points involved in this business that he doesn’t know anything about, and we, unfortunately, have no time to lay them before him.”

The sheriff’s seeming satisfaction with his position on the wall and his disposition to parley had begun to arouse my suspicions, and Larry several times exclaimed impatiently at the absurdity of discussing my affairs with a person whom he insisted on calling a constable, to the sheriff’s evident annoyance. The officer now turned upon him.

“You, sir,—we’ve got our eye on you, and you’d better come along peaceable. Laurance Donovan—the description fits you to a ‘t’.”

“You could buy a nice farm with that reward, couldn’t you—” began Larry, but at that moment Bates ran toward us calling loudly.

“They’re coming across the lake, sir,” he reported, and instantly the sheriff’s head disappeared, and as we ran toward the house we heard his horse pounding down the road toward St. Agatha’s.

“The law be damned. They don’t intend to come in here by the front door as a matter of law,” said Larry. “Pickering’s merely using the sheriff to give respectability to his manceuvers for those notes and the rest of it.”