"I should hate your contract, Lin," said I. "Adopting's a touch-and-go business even when a man has a home."
"I'll fill the contract, you bet! I wish the little son-of-a-gun was mine. I'm a heap more natural to him than that pair of drunkards that got him. He likes me: I think he does. I've had to lick him now and then, but Lord! his badness is all right--not sneaky. I'll take him hunting next month, and then the foreman's wife at Sunk Creek boards him till school. Only when they move, Judge Henry'll make his Virginia man foreman--and he's got no woman to look after Billy, yu' see."
"He's asking one hard enough," said I, digressing.
"Oh yes; asking! Talk of adopting--" said Mr. McLean, and his wide-open, hazel eyes looked away as he coughed uneasily. Then abruptly looking at me again, h
