He watched the passing river traffic abstractedly, particularly the lumbering and heavily-laden barges moving along in the wake of chortling tugs. The sight of them always made him think of his father and of what might have been, and the more he saw of them the more did the feeling grow within him that it was a strange and unjust law that could take his father away from him. Moreover, he could not understand why a jury would not believe his father’s straightforward story, which proved so clearly to him that another hand had taken Josiah Flint’s life.