Chapter 35

"There is a man who seems to have begun to haunt my pathway," Baird said to Tom; "or perhaps it is Latimer's pathway, for it is when Latimer is with me that I meet him. He is small and sharp-featured and unwholesome."

"It sounds like Stamps," laughed big Tom.

He related the story of Stamps and his herds. The herds had not gained the congressional ear as Mr. Stamps had hoped. He had described their value and the gravity of his loss to everyone who would listen to his eloquence, but the result had been painfully discouraging. His boarding-house had become a cheaper one week by week, and his blue jeans had grown shabbier. He had fallen into the habit of hanging about the entrances of public buildings and the street corners in the hope of finding hearers and sympathisers. His sharp little face had become haggard and more weasel-like than before. Baird recognised big Tom's description of him at once.

"Yes, it must be Stamps," he said. "What is the meaning of his interest in us? Does he think we can provide evidence to prove the value of the herds? What are you thinking of, De Willoughby?"

In fact, there had suddenly recurred to Tom's mind a recollection of Sheba's fifth birthday and the visit Mr. Stamps had made him. With something of a shock he recalled the shrewd meekness of his voice as he made his exit.

"It begins with a 'L,' Tom; it begins with a 'L.'"

The need of money was merely the natural expression of Mr. Stamps's nature. He had needed money when he was born, and had laid infant schemes to secure cents from his relatives and their neighbours before he was four years old. But he had never needed it as he did now. The claim for governmental restitution of the value of the daily increasing herds had become the centre of his being. His belief in their existence and destruction was in these days profound; his belief that he should finally be remunerated in the name and by the hand of national justice was the breath of life to him. He had at last found a claim agent whose characteristics were similar to his own, and, so long as he was able to supply small sums with regularity, this gentleman was willing to encourage him and direct him to fresh effort. Mr. Abner Linthicum, of Vermont, had enjoyed several successes in connection with two or three singular claims which he had "put through" with the aid of genius combined with a peculiar order of executive ability. They had not been large claims, but he had "put them through" when other agents had declined to touch them. In fact, each one had been a claim which had been fought shy of, and one whose final settlement had been commented upon with open derision or raised eyebrows.

"Yours is the kind of claim I like to take up," he had said to his client in their first interview; "but it's the kind that's got to be engineered carefully,