Betty stood under a dripping umbrella in the midst of a drenching downpour, her boxes and trunks forming a neat pyramid of respectable size beside her. She was somewhat perturbed in spirit, since they contained much elaborate finery all in the very latest eastern fashion, spoils that were the fruit of a heated correspondence with Tom, who hadn't seemed at all alive to the fact that Betty was nearly eighteen and in her own right a young woman of property. A tarpaulin had been thrown over the heap, and with one eye on it and the other on the stretch of yellow canal up which they were bringing the fast packet Pioneer, she was waiting impatiently to see her belongings transferred to a place of safety.
Just arrived by the four-horse coach that plyed regularly between Washington and Georgetown, she had found the long board platform beside the canal crowded with her fellow passengers, their number augmented by those who delight to share vicariously in travel and to whom the departure of a stage or boat was a matter of urgent interest requiring their presence, rain or shine. Suddenly she became aware of a tall, familiar figure moving through the crowd. It was Bruce Carrington. At the same moment he saw her, and with a casual air that quite deceived her, approached; and Betty, who had been feeling very lonely and very homesick, was somehow instantly comforted at sight of him. She welcomed him almost as a friend.
“You're leaving to-night?” he asked.
“Yes—isn't it miserable the way it rains? And why are they so slow—why don't they hurry with that boat?”
“It's in the last lock now,” explained Carrington.
“My clothes will all be ruined,” said Betty. He regarded the dress she wore with instant concern. “No—I mean the things in my trunks; this doesn't matter,” and Betty nodded toward the pile under the steaming tarpaulin. Carrington's dark eyes opened with an expression of mild wonder. And so those trunks were full of clothes—Oh, Lord!—he looked down at the flushed, impatient face beside him with amusement.
“I'll see that they are taken care of,” he said, for the boat was alongside the platform now; and gathering up Betty's hand luggage, he helped her aboard.
By the time they had reached Wheeling, Betty had quite parted with whatever superficial prejudice she might have had concerning river-men. This particular one was evidently a very nice river-man, an exception to his kind. She permitted him to assume the burden of her plans, and no longer scanned the pages of her Badger's and Porter's with a puckered brow. It reposed at the bottom of her satchel. He made choice of the steamer on which she should continue her journey, and thoughtfully chose The Naiad—a slow boat, with no reputation for speed to sustain. It meant two or three days longer on the river, but what of that? There would be no temptation in the engine-room to attach a casual wrench or so to the safety-valve as an offset to the builder's lack of confidence in his own boilers. He saw to it that her state-room was well aft—steamers had a trick of blowing up forward.
Ne had now reached a state of the utmost satisfaction with himself and the situation. Betty was friendly and charming. He walked with her, and he talked with her by the hour; and always he was being entangled deeper and deeper in the web of her attraction. “When alone he would pace the deck recalling every word she had spoken. There was that little air of high breeding which was Betty's that fascinated him. He had known something of the other sort, those who had arrived at prosperity with manners and speech that still reflected the meaner condition from which they had risen.
“I haven't a thing to offer her—this is plain madness of mine!” he kept telling himself, and then the expression of his face would become grim and determined. No more of the river for him—he'd get hold of some land and go to raising cotton; that was the way money was made.
Slow as The Naiad was, the days passed much too swiftly for him. When Memphis was reached their friendly intercourse would come to an end. There would be her brother, of whom she had occasionally spoken—he would be pretty certain to have the ideas of his class.
As for Betty, she liked this tall fellow who helped her through the fatigue of those long days, when there was only the unbroken sweep of the forest on either hand, with here and there a clearing where some outrageous soul was making a home for himself. The shores became duller, wilder, more uninteresting as they advanced, and then at last they entered the Mississippi, and she was almost home.
Betty was not unexcited by the prospect. She would be the mistress of the most splendid place in West Tennessee. She secretly aspired to be a brilliant hostess. She could remember when the doors of Belle Plain were open to whoever had the least claim to distinction—statesmen and speculators in land; men who were promoting those great schemes of improvement, canals and railroads; hard-featured heroes of the two wars with England—a diminishing group; the men of the modern army, the pathfinders, and Indian fighters, and sometimes a titled foreigner. She wondered if Tom had maintained the traditions of the place. She found that Carrington had heard of Belle Plain. He spoke of it with respect, but with a noticeable lack of enthusiasm, for how could he feel enthusiasm when he must begin his chase after fortune with bare hands?—he suffered acutely whenever it was mentioned. The days, like any other days, dwindled. The end of it all was close at hand. Another twenty-four hours and Carrington reflected there would only be good-by to say.
“We will reach New Madrid to-night,” he told her. They were watching the river, under a flood of yellow moonlight.
“And then just another day—Oh, I can hardly wait!” cried Betty delightedly. “Soon I shall hope to see you at Belle Plain, Mr. Carrington,” she added graciously.
“Thank you, your—your family—” he hesitated.
“There's only just Tom—he's my half-brother. My mother was left a widow when I was a baby. Later, some years after, she married Tom's father.”
“Oh—then he's not even your half-brother?”
“He's no relation at all—and much older. When Tom's father died my mother made Tom, manager, and still later he was appointed my guardian.”
“Then you own Belle Plain?” and Carrington sighed.
“Yes. You have never seen it?—it's right on the river, you know?” then Betty's face grew sober: “Tom's dreadfully queer—I expect he'll require a lot of managing!”
“I reckon you'll be equal to that!” said-Carrington, convinced of Betty's all-compelling charm.
“No, I'm not at all certain about Tom—I can see where we shall have serious differences; but then, I shan't have to struggle single-handed with him long; a cousin of my mother's is coming to Belle Plain to make her home with me—she'll make' him behave,” and Betty laughed maliciously. “It's a great nuisance being a girl!”
Then Betty fell to watching for the lights at New Madrid, her elbows resting on the rail against which she was leaning, and the soft curve of her chin sunk in the palms of her hands. She wondered absently what Judith would have said of this river-man. She smiled a little dubiously. Judith had certainly vindicated the sincerity of her convictions regarding the importance of family, inasmuch as in marrying Ferris she had married her own second cousin. She nestled her chin a little closer in her palms. She remembered that they had differed seriously over Mr. Yancy's defiance, of the law as it was supposed to be lodged in the sacred person of Mr. Bladen's agent, the unfortunate Blount. Carrington, with his back against a stanchion, watched her discontentedly.
“You'll be mighty glad to have this over with, Miss Malroy—” he said at length, with a comprehensive sweep toward the river.
“Yes—shan't you?” and she opened her eyes questioningly.
“No,” said Carrington with a short laugh, drawing a chair near hers and sitting down.
Betty, in surprise, gave him a quick look, and then as quickly glanced away from what she encountered in his eyes. Men were accustomed to talk sentiment to her, but she had hoped—well, she really had thought that he was, superior to this weakness. She had enjoyed the feeling that here was some one, big and strong and thoroughly masculine, with whom she could be friendly without—she took another look at him from under the fringe of her long lashes. He was so nice and considerate—and good looking—he was undeniably this last. It would be a pity! And she had already determined that Tom should invite him to Belle Plain. She didn't mind if he was a river-man—they could be friends, for clearly he was such an exception. Tom should be cordial to him. Betty stared before her, intently watching the river. As she looked, suddenly pale points of light appeared on a distant headland.
“Is that New Madrid?—Oh, is it, Mr. Carrington?”' she cried eagerly.
“I reckon so,” but he did not alter his position.
“But you're not looking!”
“Yes, I am—I'm looking at you. I reckon you'll think me crazy, Miss Malroy-presumptuous and all that but I wish Memphis could be wiped off the map and that we could go on like this for ever!—no, not like this but together—you and I,” he took a deep breath. Betty drew a little farther away, and looked at him reproachfully; and then she turned to the dancing lights far down the river. Finally she said slowly:
“I thought you were—different.”
“I'm not,” and Carrington's hand covered hers.
“Oh—you mustn't kiss my hand like that—”
“Dear—I'm just a man—and you didn't expect, did you, that I could see you this way day after day and not come to love you?” He rested his arm across the back of her chair and leaned toward her.
“No—no—” and Betty moved still farther away.
“Give me a chance to win your love, Betty!”
“You mustn't talk so—I am nothing to you—”
“Yes, you are. You're everything to me,” said Carrington doggedly.
“I'm not—I won't be!” and Betty stamped her foot.
“You can't help it. I love you and that's all there is about it. I know I'm a fool to tell you now, Betty, but years wouldn't make any difference in my feeling; and I can't have you go, and perhaps never see you again, if I can help it. Betty—give me a chance—you don't hate me—”
“But I do—yes, I do—indeed—”
“I know you don't. Let me see you again and do what I can to make you care for me!” he implored. But he had a very indignant little aristocrat to deal with. She was angry with him, and angry with herself that in spite of herself his words moved her. She wouldn't have it so! Why, he wasn't even of her class—her kind! “Betty, you don't mean—” he faltered.
“I mean—I am extremely annoyed. I mean just what I say.” Betty regarded him with wrathful blue eyes. It proved too much for Carrington. His arm, dropped about her shoulders.
“You shall love me—” She was powerless in his embrace. She felt his breath on her cheek, then he kissed her. Breathless and crimson, she struggled and pushed him from her. Suddenly his arms fell at his side; his face was white. “I was a brute to do that!—Betty, forgive me! I am sorry—no, I can't be sorry!”'
“How do you dare! I hope I may never see you again—I hate you—” said Betty furiously, tears in her eyes and her pulses still throbbing from his fierce caress.
“Do you mean that?” he asked slowly, rising.
“Yes—yes—a million times, yes!”
“I don't believe you—I can't—I won't!” They were alongside the New Madrid wharf now, and a certain young man who had been impatiently watching The Naiad's lights ever since they became visible crossed the gang-plank with a bound.
“Betty—why in the name of goodness did you ever, choose this tub?—everything on the river has passed it!” said the newcomer. Betty started up with a little cry of surprise and pleasure.
“Charley!”
Carrington stepped back. This must be the brother who had come up the river from Memphis to meet her—but her brother's name was Tom! He looked this stranger—this Charley—over with a hostile eye, offended by his good looks, his confident manner, in which he thought he detected an air of ownership, as if—certainly he was holding her hands longer than was necessary! Of course, other men were in love with her, such a radiant personality held its potent attraction for men, but for all that, she was going to belong to him—Carrington! She did like him; she had shown it in a hundred little ways during the last week, and he would give her up to no man—give her up?—there wasn't the least tie between them—except that kiss—and she was furious because of it. There was nothing for him to do but efface himself. He would go now, before the boat started—and an instant later, when Betty, remembering, turned to speak to him, his place by the rail was deserted.
On that day Hannibal was haunted by the memory of what he had heard and seen at Slosson's tavern. More than this, there was his terrible sense of loss, and the grief he could not master, when his thin, little body was shaken by sobs. Marking the course of the road westward, he clung to the woods, where his movements were as stealthy as the very shadows themselves. He shunned the scattered farms and the infrequent settlements, for the fear was strong with him that he might be followed either by Murrell or Slosson. But as the dusk of evening crept across the land, the great woods, now peopled by strange shadows, sent him forth into the highroad. He was beginning to be very tired, and hunger smote him with fierce pangs, but back of it all was his sense of bitter loss, his desolation, and his loneliness.
“I couldn't forget Uncle Bob if I tried—” he told himself, with quivering lips, as he limped wearily along the dusty road, and the tears welled up and streaked his pinched face. Now before him he saw the scattered lights of a settlement. All his terrors, the terrors that grouped themselves about the idea of pursuit and capture, rushed back upon him, and in a panic he plunged into the black woods again.
But the distant lights intensified his loneliness. He had lived a whole day without food, a whole day without speech. He began to skirt the settlement, keeping well within the thick gloom of the woods, and presently, as he stumbled forward, he came to a small clearing in the center of which stood a log dwelling. The place seemed deserted. There was no sign of life, no light shone from the window, no smoke issued from the stick-and-mud chimney.
Tilted back in a chair by the door of this house a man was sleeping. The hoot of an owl from a near-by oak roused him. He yawned and stretched himself, thrusting out his fat legs and extending his great arms. Then becoming aware of the small figure which had stolen up the path as he slept and now stood before him in the uncertain light, he fell to rubbing his eyes with the knuckles of his plump hands. The pale night mist out of the silent depths of the forest had assumed shapes as strange.
“Who are you?” he demanded, and his voice rumbled thickly forth from his capacious chest. The very sound was sleek and unctuous.
“I'm Hannibal,” said the small figure. He was meditating flight; he glanced over his shoulder toward the woods.
“No, you ain't. He's been dead a thousand years, more or less. Try again,” recommended the man.
“I'm Hannibal Wayne Hazard,” said the boy. The man quitted his chair.
“Well—I am glad to know you, Hannibal Wayne Hazard. I am Slocum Price—Judge Slocum Price, sometime major-general of militia and ex-member of congress, to mention a few of those honors my fellow countrymen have thrust upon me.” He made a sweeping gesture with his two hands outspread and bowed ponderously.
The boy saw a man of sixty, whose gross and battered visage told its own story. There was a sparse white frost about his ears; and his eyes, pale blue and prominent, looked out from under beetling brows. He wore a shabby plum-colored coat and tight, drab breeches. About his fat neck was a black stock, with just a suggestion of soiled linen showing above it. His figure was corpulent and unwieldy.
The man saw a boy of perhaps ten, barefoot, and clothed in homespun shirt and trousers. On his head was a ruinous hat much too large for him, but which in some mysterious manner he contrived to keep from quite engulfing his small features, which were swollen and tear-stained. In his right hand he carried a bundle, while his left clutched the brown barrel of a long rifle.
“You don't belong in these parts, do you?” asked the judge, when he had completed his scrutiny.
“No, sir,” answered the boy. He glanced off down the road, where lights were visible among the trees. “What town is that?” he added.
“Pleasantville—which is a lie—but I am neither sufficiently drunk nor sufficiently sober to cope with the possibilities your question offers. It is a task one should approach only after extraordinary preparation,” and the sometime major-general of militia grinned benevolently.
“It's a town, ain't it?” asked Hannibal doubtfully. He scarcely understood this large, smiling gentleman who was so civilly given to speech with him, yet strangely enough he was not afraid of him, and his whole soul craved human companionship.
“It's got a name—but you'll excuse me, I'd much prefer not to tell you how I regard it—you're too young to hear. But stop a bit—have you so much as fifty cents about you?” and the judge's eyes narrowed to a slit above their folds of puffy flesh. Hannibal, keeping his glance fixed on the man's face, fell back a step. “I can't let you go if you are penniless—I can't do that!” cried the judge, with sudden vehemence. “You shall be my guest for the night. They're a pack of thieves at the tavern,” he lowered his voice. “I know 'em, for they've plucked me!” To make sure of his prey, he rested a fat hand on the boy's shoulder and drew him gently but firmly into the shanty. As they crossed the threshold he kicked the door shut, then with flint and steel he made a light, and presently a candle was sputtering in his hands. He fitted it into the neck of a tall bottle, and as the light flared up the boy glanced about him.
The interior was mean enough, with its rough walls, dirt floor and black, cavernous fireplace. A rude clapboard table did duty as a desk, a fact made plain by a horn ink-well, a notary's seal, and a rack with a half-dozen quill pens. Above the desk was a shelf of books in worn calf bindings, and before it a rickety chair. A shakedown bed in one corner of the room was tastefully screened from the public gaze by a tattered quilt.
“Boy, don't be afraid. Look on me as a friend,” urged the judge, who towered above him in the dim candle-light. “Here's comfort without ostentation. Don't tell me you prefer the tavern, with its corrupt associations!” Hannibal was silent, and the judge, after a brief moment of irresolution, threw open the door. Then he bent toward the small stranger, bringing his face close to the child's, while his thick lips wreathed themselves in a smile ingratiatingly genial. “You can't look me squarely in the eye and say you prefer the tavern to these scholarly surroundings?” he said banteringly.
“I reckon I'll be glad to stop,” answered Hannibal. The judge clapped him playfully on the back.
“Such confidence is inspiring! Make yourself perfectly at home. Are you hungry?”
“Yes, sir. I ain't had much to eat to-day,” replied Hannibal cautiously.
“I can offer you food then. What do you say to cold fish?” the judge smacked his lips to impart a relish to the idea. “I dare swear I can find you some corn bread into the bargain. Tea I haven't got. On the advice of my physician, I don't use it. What do you say—shall we light a fire and warm the fish?”
“I 'low I could eat it cold.”
“No trouble in the world to start a fire. All we got to do is to go out, and pull a few palings off the fence,” urged the judge.
“It will do all right just like it is,” said Hannibal.
“Very good, then!” cried the judge gaily, and he began to assemble the dainties he had enumerated. “Here you are!” he cleared his throat impressively, while benignity shone from every feature of his face. “A moment since you allowed me to think that you were solvent to the extent of fifty cents—” Hannibal looked puzzled. The judge dealt him a friendly blow on the back, then stood off and regarded him with a glance of great jocularity, his plump knuckles on his hips and his arms akimbo. “I wonder”—and his eyes assumed a speculative squint “I wonder if you could be induced to make a temporary loan of that fifty cents? The sum involved is really such a ridiculous trifle I don't need to point out to you the absolute moral certainty of my returning it at an early date—say to-morrow morning; say to-morrow afternoon at the latest; say even the day after at the very outside. Meantime, you shall be my guest. The landlady's son has found my notarial seal an admirable plaything—she has had to lick the little devil twice for hooking it—my pens and stationery are at your disposal, should you desire to communicate to absent friends; you can have the run of my library!” the judge fairly trembled in his eagerness. It was not the loss of his money that Hannibal most feared, and the coin passed from his possession into his host's custody. As it dropped into the latter's great palm he was visibly moved. His moist, blue eyes became yet more watery, while his battered old face assumed an expression indicating deep inward satisfaction. “Thank you, my boy! This is one of those intrinsically trifling benefits which, conferred at the moment of acute need, touch the heart and tap the unfailing springs of human gratitude—I must step down to the tavern—when I return, please God, we shall know more of each other.” While he was still speaking he had produced a jug from behind the quilt that screened his bed, and now, bareheaded, and with every indication of haste, took himself off into the night.
Left alone, Hannibal gravely seated himself at the table. What the judge's larder lacked in variety it more than made up for in quantity, and the boy was grateful for this fact. He was half famished, and the coarse, abundant food was of the sort to which he was accustomed. Presently he heard the judge's heavy, shuffling step as he came up the path from the road, and a moment later his gross bulk of body filled the doorway. Breathing hard and perspiring, the judge entered the shanty, but his eagerness, together with his shortness of breath, kept him silent until he had established himself in his chair beside the table, with the jug and a cracked glass at his elbow. Then, bland and smiling, he turned toward his guest.
“Will you join me?” he asked.
“No, sir. Please, I'd rather not,” said Hannibal.
“Do you mean that you don't like good liquor?” demanded the judge. “Not even with sugar and a dash of water?—say, now, don't you like it that way, my boy?”
“I ain't learned to like it no ways,” said Hannibal.
“You amaze me—well—well—the greater the joy to which you may reasonably aspire. The splendid possibilities of youth are yours. My tenderest regards, Hannibal!” and he nodded over the rim of the cracked glass his shaking hand had carried to his lips. Twice the glass was filled and emptied, and then again, his roving, watery eyes rested meditatively on the child, who sat very erect in his chair, with his brown hands crossed in his lap. “Personally, I can drink or not,” explained the judge. “But I hope I am too much a man of the world to indulge in any intemperate display of principle.” He proved the first clause of his proposition by again filling and emptying his glass. “Have you a father?” he asked suddenly. Hannibal shook his head. “A mother?” demanded the judge.
“They both of them done died years and years ago,” answered the boy. “I can't tell you how long back it was, but I reckon I don't know much about it. I must have been a small child.”
“Ho—a small child!” cried the judge, laughing. He cocked his head on one side and surveyed Hannibal Wayne Hazard with a glance of comic seriousness. “A small child and in God's name what do you call yourself now? To hear you talk one would think you had dabbled your feet in the Flood!”
“I'm most ten,” said Hannibal, with dignity.
“I can well believe it,” responded the judge. “And with this weight of years, where did you come from and how did you get here?”
“From across the mountains.”
“Alone?”
“No, sir. Mr. Yancy fetched me—part way.” The boy's voice broke when he spoke his Uncle Bob's name, and his eyes swam with tears, but the judge did not notice this.
“And where are you going?”
“To West Tennessee.”
“Have you any friends there?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You've money enough to see you through?” and what the judge intended for a smile of fatherly affection became a leer of infinite cunning.
“I got ten dollars.”
“Ten dollars—” the judge smacked his lips once. “Ten dollars” he repeated, and smacked his lips twice. There was a brief silence, in which he seemed to give way to pleasant reveries.
From beyond the open door of the shanty came a multitude of night sounds. The moon had risen, and what had been a dusty country road was now a streak of silver in the hot light. The purple flush on the judge's face, where the dignity that belonged to age had gone down in wreck, deepened. The sparse, white frost above his ears was damp with sweat. He removed his stock, opened his shirt at the neck, and cast aside his coat; then he lighted a blackened pipe, filled his glass, and sank back in his chair. The long hours of darkness were all before him, and his senses clothed themselves in rich content. Once more his glance rested on the boy. Here, indeed, was a guest of whom one might make much and not err—he felt all the benevolence of his nature flow toward him. Ten dollars!
“Certainly the tavern would have been no place for you! Well, thank God, it wasn't necessary for you to go there. You are more than welcome here. I tell you, when you know this place as I know it, you'll regard every living soul here with suspicion. Keep 'em at arm's length!” he sank his voice to an impressive whisper. “In particular, I warn you against a certain Solomon Mahaffy. You'll see much of him; I haven't known how to rebuff the fellow without being rude—he sticks to me like my shadow. He's profited by my charity and he admires my conversation and affects my society, but don't tell him you have so much as a rusty copper, for he will neither rest nor eat nor sleep until he's plucked you—tell him nothing—leave him to me. I keep him—there—” the judge extended his fat hands, “at arm's length. I say to him metaphorically speaking—'so close, but no closer. I'll visit you when sick, I'll pray with you when dying, I'll chat with you, I'll eat with you, I'll smoke with you, and if need be, I'll drink with you—but be your intimate? Never! Why? Because be's a damned Yankee! These are the inextinguishable feelings of a gentleman. I am aware they are out of place in this age, but what's bred in the bone will show in the flesh. Who says it won't, is no gentleman himself and a liar as well! My place in the world was determined two or three hundred years ago, and my ancestors spat on such cattle as Mahaffy and they were flattered by the attention!” The judge, powerfully excited by his denunciation of the unfortunate Mahaffy, quitted his chair and, lurching somewhat as he did so, began to pace the floor.
“Take me for your example, boy! You may be poor, you may possibly be hungry you'll often be thirsty, but through it all you will remain that splendid thing—a gentleman! Lands, niggers, riches, luxury, I've had 'em all; I've sucked the good of 'em; they've colored my blood, they've gone into the fiber of my brain and body. Perhaps you'll contend that the old order is overthrown, that family has gone to the devil? You are right, and there's the pity of it! Where are the great names? A race of upstarts has taken their place—sons of nobody—nephews of nobody—cousins of nobody—I observe only deterioration in the trend of modern life. The social fabric is tottering—I can see it totter—” and he tottered himself as he said this.
The boy had watched him out of wide eyes, as ponderous and unwieldy he shuffled back and forth in the dim candlelight; now shaking his head and muttering, the judge dropped into his chair.
“Well, I'm an old man-the spectacle won't long offend me. I'll die presently. The Bench and Bar will review my services to the country, the militia will fire a few volleys at my graveside, here and there a flag will be at half-mast, and that will be the end—” He was so profoundly moved by the thought that he could not go on. His voice broke, and he buried his face in his arms. A sympathetic moisture had gathered in the child's eyes. He understood only a small part of what his host was saying, but realized that it had to do with death, and he had his own terrible acquaintance with death. He slipped from his chair and stole to the judge's side, and that gentleman felt a cool hand rest lightly on his arm.
“What?” he said, glancing up.
“I'm mighty sorry you're going to die,” said the boy softly.
“Bless you, Hannibal!” cried the judge, looking wonderfully cheerful, despite his recent bitterness of spirit. “I'm not experiencing any of the pangs of mortality now. My dissolution ain't a matter of to-night or to-morrow—there's some life in Slocum Price yet, for all the rough usage, eh? I've had my fun—I could tell you a thing or two about that, if you had hair on your chin!” and the selfish lines of his face twisted themselves into an exceedingly knowing grin.
“You talked like you thought you were going to die right off,” said Hannibal gravely, as he resumed his chair. The judge was touched. It had been more years than he cared to remember since he had launched a decent emotion in the breast of any human being. For a moment he was silent, struck with a sense of shame; then he said:
“You are sure you are not running away, Hannibal? I hope you know that boys should always tell the truth—that hell has its own especial terrors for the boy who lies? Now, if I thought the worst of you, I might esteem it my duty to investigate your story.” The judge laid a fat forefinger against the side of his nose, and regarded him with drunken gravity. Hannibal shook with terror. This was what he had feared. “That's one aspect of the case. Now, on the other hand, I might draw up a legal instrument which could not fail to be of use to you on your travois, and would stop all questions. As for my fee, it would be trifling, when compared with the benefits I can see accruing to you.”
“No, I ain't running away. I ain't got no one to run away from,” said the boy chokingly. He was showing signs of fatigue. His head drooped and he met the judge's glance with tired, sleepy eyes. The latter looked at him and then said suddenly:
“I think you'd better go to bed.”
“I reckon I had,” agreed Hannibal, slipping from his chair.
“Well, take my bed back of the quilt. You'll find a hoe there. You can dig up the dirt under the shuck tick with it—which helps astonishingly. What would the world say if it could know that judge Slocum Price makes his bed with a hoe! There's Spartan hardihood!” but the boy, not knowing what was meant by Spartan hardihood, remained silent. “Nearing threescore years and ten, the allotted span as set down by the Psalmist—once man of fashion, soldier, statesman and lawgiver—and makes his bed with a hoe! What a history!” muttered the judge with weary melancholy, as one groping hand found the jug while the other found the glass. There was a pause, while he profited by this fortunate chance. “Well, take the bed,” he resumed hospitably.
“I can sleep most anywhere. I ain't no ways particular,” said Hannibal.
“I say, take the bed!” commanded the judge sternly. And Hannibal quickly retired behind the quilt. “Do you find it comfortable?” the judge asked, when the rustling of the shuck tick informed him that the child had lain down.
“Yes, sir,” said the boy.
“Have you said your prayers?” inquired the judge.
“No, sir. I ain't said 'em yet.”
“Well, say them now. Religion is as becoming in the young as it is respectable in the aged. I'll not disturb you to-night, for it is God's will that I should stay up and get very drunk.”
Some time later the judge was aware of a step on the path beyond his door, and glancing up, saw the tall figure of a man pause on his threshold. A whispered curse slipped from between his lips. Aloud he said:
“Is that you, Mr. Mahaffy?” He got no reply, but the tall figure, propelled by very long legs, stalked into the shanty and a pair of keen, restless eyes deeply set under a high, bald head were bent curiously upon him.
“I take it I'm intruding,” the new-comer said sourly.
“Why should you think that, Solomon Mahaffy? When has my door been closed on you?” the judge asked, but there was a guilty deepening of the flush on his face. Mr. Mahaffy glanced at the jug, at the half-emptied glass within convenient reach of the judge's hand, lastly at the judge himself, on whose flame-colored visage his eyes rested longest.
“I've heard said there was honor among thieves,” he remarked.
“I know of no one better fitted to offer an opinion on so delicate a point than just yourself, Mahaffy,” said the judge, with a thick little ripple of laughter.
But Solomon Mahaffy's long face did not relax in its set expression.
“I saw your light,” he explained, “but you seem to be raising first-rate hell all by yourself.”
“Oh, be reasonable, Solomon. You'd gone down to the steamboat landing,” said the judge plaintively. By way of answer, Mahaffy shot him a contemptuous glance. “Take a chair—do, Solomon!” entreated the judge.
“I don't force my society on any man, Mr. Price,” said Mahaffy, with austere hostility of tone. The judge winced at the “Mr.” That registered the extreme of Mahaffy's disfavor.
“You feel bitter about this, Solomon?” he said.
“I do,” said Mahaffy, in a tone of utter finality.
“You'll feel better with three fingers of this trickling through your system,” observed the judge, pushing a glass toward him.
“When did I ever sneak a jug into my shanty?” asked Mahaffy sternly, evidently conscious of entire rectitude in this matter.
“I deplore your choice of words, Solomon,” said the judge. “You know damn well that if you'd been here I couldn't have got past your place with that jug! But let's deal with conditions. Here's the jug, with some liquor left in it—here's a glass. Now what more do you want?”
“Have I ever been caught like this?” demanded Mahaffy.
“No, you've invariably manifested the honorable disabilities of a gentleman. But don't set it all down to virtue. Maybe you haven't had the opportunity, maybe the temptation never came and found you weak and thirsty. Put away your sinful pride, Solomon—a sot like you has no business with the little niceties of selfrespect.”
“Do I drink alone?” insisted Mahaffy doggedly.
“I never give you the chance,” retorted his friend. Mr. Mahaffy drew near the table. “Sit down,” urged the judge.
“I hope you feel mean?” said Mahaffy.
“If it's any satisfaction to you, I do,” admitted the judge.
“You ought to.” Mahaffy drew forward a chair. The judge filled his glass. But Mr. Mahaffy's lean face, with its long jaws and high cheek-bones, over which the sallow skin was tightly drawn, did not relax in its forbidding expression, even when he had tossed off his first glass.
“I love to see you in a perfectly natural attitude like that, Solomon, with your arm crooked. What's the news from the landing?”
Mahaffy brought his fist down on the table.
“I heard the boat churning away round back of the bend, then I saw the lights, and she tied up and they tossed off the freight. Then she churned away again and her lights got back of the trees on the bank. There was the lap of waves on the shore, and I was left with the half-dozen miserable loafers who'd crawled out to see the boat come in. That's the news six days a week!”
By the river had come the judge, tentatively hopeful, but at heart expecting nothing, therefore immune to disappointment and equipped for failure. By the river had come Mr. Mahaffy, as unfit as the judge himself, and for the same reason, but sour and bitter with the world, believing always in the possibility of some miracle of regeneration.
Pleasantville's weekly paper, The Genius of Liberty, had dwelt at length upon those distinguished services judge Slocum Price had rendered the nation in war and peace, the judge having graciously furnished an array of facts otherwise difficult of access. That he was drunk at the time had but added to the splendor of the narrative. He had placed his ripe wisdom, the talents he had so assiduously cultivated, at the services of his fellow citizens. He was prepared to represent them in any or all the courts. But he had remained undisturbed in his condition of preparedness; that erudite brain was unconcerned with any problem beyond financing his thirst at the tavern, where presently ingenuity, though it expressed itself with a silver tongue, failed him, and he realized that the river's spent floods had left him stranded with those other odds and ends of worthless drift that cumbered its sun-scorched mud banks.
Something of all this passed through his mind as he sat there sodden and dreamy, with the one fierce need of his nature quieted for the moment. He had been stranded before, many times, in those long years during which he had moved steadily toward a diminishing heritage; indeed, nothing that was evil could contain the shock of a new experience. He had fought and lost all his battles—bitter struggles to think of even now, after the lapse of years, and the little he had to tell of himself was an intricate mingling of truth and falsehood, grotesque exaggeration, purposeless mendacity.
He and Mahaffy had met exactly one month before, on the deck of the steamer from which they had been put ashore at the river landing two miles from Pleasantville. Mahaffy's historic era had begun just there. Apparently he had no past of which he could be brought to speak. He admitted having been born in Boston some sixty years before, and was a printer by trade; further than this, he had not revealed himself, drunk or sober.
At the judge's elbow Mr. Mahaffy changed his position with nervous suddenness. Then he folded his long arms.
“You asked if there was any news, Price; while we were waiting for the boat a raft tied up to the bank; the fellow aboard of it had a man he'd fished up out of the river, a man who'd been pretty well cut to pieces.”
“Who was he?” asked the judge.
“Nobody knew, and he wasn't conscious. I shouldn't be surprised if he never opens his lips again. When the doctor had looked to his cuts, the fellow on the raft cast off and went on down the Elk.”
It occurred to the judge that he himself had news to impart. He must account for the boy's presence.
“While you've been taking your whiff of life down at the steamboat landing, Mahaffy, I've been experiencing a most extraordinary coincidence.” The judge paused. By a sullen glare in his deep-sunk eyes Mr. Mahaffy seemed to bid him go on. “Back east—” the judge jerked his thumb with an indefinite gesture “back east at my ancestral home—” Mahaffy snorted harshly. “You don't believe I had an ancestral home?—well, I had! It was of brick, sir, with eight Corinthian columns across the front, having a spacious paneled hall sixty feet long. I had the distinguished honor to entertain General Andrew Jackson there.”
“Did you get those dimensions out of the jug?” inquiry Mahaffy, with a frightful bark that was intended for a sarcastic laugh.
“Sir, it is not in your province to judge me by my present degraded associates. Near the house I have described—my father's and his father's before him, and mine now—but for the unparalleled misfortunes which have pursued me—lived a family by the name of Hazard. And when I went to the war of '12—”
“What were you in that bloody time, a sutler?” inquired Mahaffy insultingly.
“No, sir—a colonel of infantry!—I say, when I went to the war, one of these Hazards accompanied me as my orderly. His grandson is back of that curtain now—asleep—in my bed!” Mahaffy put down his glass.
“You were like this once before,” he said darkly. But at that instant the shuck tick rattled noisily at some movement of the sleeping boy. Mahaffy quitted his chair, and crossing the room, drew the quilt aside. A glance sufficed to assure him that in part, at least, the judge spoke the truth. He let the curtain fall into place and resumed his chair.
“He's an orphan, Solomon; a poor, friendless orphan. Another might have turned him away from his door—I didn't; I hadn't the heart to. I bespeak your sympathy for him.”
“Who is he?” asked Mahaffy.
“Haven't I just told you?” said the judge reproachfully. Mahaffy laughed.
“You've told me something. Who is he?”
“His name is Hannibal Wayne Hazard. Wait until he wakes up and see if it isn't.”
“Sure he isn't kin to you?” said Mahaffy.
“Not a drop of my blood flows in the veins of any living creature,” declared the judge with melancholy impressiveness. He continued with deepening feeling, “All I shall leave to posterity is my fame.”
“Speaking of posterity, which isn't present, Mr. Price, I'll say it is embarrassed by the attention,” observed Mahaffy.
There was a long silence between them. Mr. Mahaffy drank, and when he did not drink he bit his under lip and studied the judge. This was always distressing to the latter gentleman. Mahaffy's silence he could never penetrate. What was back of it—judgment, criticism, disbelief—what? Or was it the silence of emptiness? Was Mahaffy dumb merely because he could think of nothing to say, or did his silence cloak his feelings-and what were his feelings? Did his meditations outrun his habitually insulting speech as he bit his under lip and glared at him? The judge always felt impelled to talk at such times, while Mahaffy, by that silence of his, seemed to weigh and condemn whatever he said.
The moon had slipped below the horizon. Pleasantville had long since gone to bed; it was only the judge's window that gave its light to the blackness of the night. There was a hoofbeat on the road. It came nearer and nearer, and presently sounded just beyond the door. Then it ceased, and a voice said:
“Hullo, there!” The judge scrambled to his feet, and taking up the candle, stepped, or rather staggered, into the yard. Mahaffy followed him.
“What's wanted?” asked the judge, as he lurched up to horse and rider, holding his candle aloft. The light showed a tail fellow mounted on a handsome bay horse. It was Murrell.
“Is there an inn hereabouts?” he asked.
“You'll find one down the road a ways,” said Mahaffy. The judge said nothing. He was staring up at Murrell with drunken gravity.
“Have either of you gentlemen seen a boy go through here to-day? A boy about ten years old?” Murrell glanced from one to the other. Mr. Mahaffy's thin lips twisted themselves into a sarcastic smile. He turned to the judge, who spoke up quickly.
“Did he carry a bundle and rifle?” he asked. Murrell gave eager assent.
“Well,” said the judge, “he stopped here along about four o'clock and asked his way to the nearest river landing.” Murrell gathered up his reins, and then that fixed stare of the judge's seemed to arrest his attention.
“You'll know me again,” he observed.
“Anywhere,” said the judge.
“I hope that's a satisfaction to you,” said Murrell.
“It ain't—none whatever,” answered the judge promptly. “For I don't value you—I don't value you that much!” and he snapped his fingers to illustrate his meaning.