rated and monstrous counterfeits of the
red-topped, scroll-fronted, brass-toed, stub-heeled, squeaky-soled
bootees that small boys of an earlier generation possessed.

Very proudly and seemingly unconscious of or, at least, oblivious to the
derisive remarks that the appearance of these new belongings drew from
many persons, the owner went clumping about in them, with the rumply
legs of his trousers tucked down in them, and ballooning up and out over
the tops in folds which overlapped from his knee joints halfway down his
attenuated calves.

As Deputy Sheriff Quarles said, the combination was a sight fit to make
a horse laugh. It may be that small boys have a lesser sense of humour
than horses have, for certainly the boys who were the old man's
invariable shadows did not laugh at him, or at his boots either.

Between the whiskered senior and his small comrades there existed a
freemasonry that made them all sense a thing beyond the ken of most of
their elders. Perhaps this was because the elders, being blind in their
superior wisdom, saw neither this thing nor the communion that
flourished. They saw only the farcical joke. But His Honour, Judge
Priest, to cite a conspicuous exception, seemed not to see the
lamentable comedy of it.

Indeed, it seemed to some almost as if Judge Priest were aiding and
abetting the befogged O'Day in his demented enterprises, his peculiar
excursions and his weird purchases. If he did not actually encourage him
in these constant exhibitions of witlessness, certainly there were no
evidences available to show that he sought to dissuade O'Day from his
strange course.

At the end of a fortnight one citizen, in whom patience had ceased to be
a virtue and to whose nature long-continued silence on any public topic
was intolerable, felt it his duty to speak to the Judge upon the
subject. This gentleman--his name was S. P. Escott--held, with others,
that, for the good name of the community, steps should be taken to abate
the infantile, futile activities of the besotted legatee.

Afterward Mr. Escott, giving a partial account of the conversation with
Judge Priest to certain of his friends, showed unfeigned annoyance at
the outcome.

"I claim that old man's not fittin' to be runnin' a court any longer,"
he stated bitterly. "He's too old and peevish--that's whut ails him! Fur
one, I'm certainly not never goin' to vote fur him again. Why, it's
gettin' to be ez much ez a man's life is worth to stop t