I

Upon the death of the Old Morkan it was widely supposed in Springfield that his son, Leighton Shea, would quickly meet with calamity. Silent save when bossing laborers at Morkan Quarry, the young man struggled without the easy gab and foxy acumen of his late father. Those wartime comrades who hunted and killed bushwhackers alongside him in the Federal Home Guards did not speak much of their service. Yet they alone brooked no ill word about him. And so it became the general lean that without a mate, without some truly Christian guidance, this one would fail, and his quarry fold, and maybe something quiet and respectable could succeed there, and that would be just as well, him being Irish and Catholic after all. What the Cross cannot abide the rope will mend.