"I have thought it over, and have talked with Mrs. Dudley, and it seems to me it is your duty to consider the matter very carefully now that you know your relationship to Uncle Philip."
A conservative by nature, and unconsciously influenced by the atmosphere of the Davison home, Lucy Davison had begun to fear that Justin was in the wrong. From that there was but a step to the conclusion that it was her duty to tell him so. She did not dream that she was but a pawn in the game which was being played by Sibyl Dudley.
Justin looked into the earnest brown eyes, and his voice was grave.
"If any one in the world could make me vote against my opinion it would be you. I'm not going to argue with you, but let me say just this. If I vote with the cattlemen, or refuse to vote at all, it will place me in the position of sustaining them in a rebellious defiance of the national government, in addition to upholding the unsheltered range, a question on which perhaps we could not agree. But the fences which they maintain on government lands are so clearly illegal that the government has in some instances ordered them down. The cattlemen hope by sending a senator to Washington to have that order rescinded and the entire matter dropped. They have fenced untaken public lands, and lands which settlers occupy, or wish to occupy, and they want to continue this without interruption from Washington."
"I do not intend to argue. I'm simply going to ask if you think I would be justified in using my vote, or withholding it, to continue a practice that is in defiance of the orders of the land department, even to please my own father?"
"That order is not, as I understand, a legal enactment, and it might be changed," she urged.
"It will be changed, no doubt, if the cattlemen win; but should it be changed, or withdrawn?"
"It seems to me that the settlers are doing well enough, and those fences aren't injuring anybody."
"I want to please your Uncle Philip--my father--and I want to please you. I'll admit that I have myself had some doubts on this question lately, serious doubts. Yet I cannot make myself think that I have not been in the right from the first. If I thought I was wrong I would change in a minute without regard to the consequences."