on from any
quarter, but I've studied this matter in its many-sided aspect. I won't
say we might not do better in Memphis, but we must consider the boy. No;
if I can find a vacant house in Raleigh, I wouldn't ask a finer spot in
which to spend the afternoon of my life."

"Afternoon?" snapped Mahaffy irritably.

"That's right--carp--! But you can't relegate me! You can't shove me
away from the portal of hope--metaphorically speaking, I'm on the
stoop; it may be God's pleasure that I enter; there's a place for gray
heads--and there's a respectable slice of life after the meridian is
passed."

"Humph!" said Mahaffy.

"I've made my impression; I've been thrown with cultivated minds quick
to recognize superiority; I've met with deference and consideration."

"Aren't you forgetting the boy?" inquired Mahaffy. "No, sir! I regard my
obligations where he is concerned as a sacred trust to be administered
in a lofty and impersonal manner. If his friends--if Miss Malroy, for
instance--cares to make me the instrument of her benefactions, I'll not
be disposed to stand on my dignity; but his education shall be my care.
I'll make such a lawyer of him as America has not seen before! I don't
ask you to accept my own opinion of my fitness to do this, but two
gentlemen with whom I talked this evening--one of them was the justice
of the peace--were pleased to say that they had never heard such
illuminating comments on the criminal law. I quoted the Greeks and
Romans to 'em, sir; I gave 'em the salient points on mediaeval law; and
they were dumfounded and speechless. I reckon they'd never heard such an
exposition of fundamental principles; I showed 'em the germ and I showed
'em fruition. Damn it, sir, they were overwhelmed by the array of facts
I marshaled for 'em. They said they'd never met with such erudition--no
more they had, for I boiled down thirty years of study into ten minutes
of talk! I flogged 'em with facts, and then we drank--" The judge
smacked his lips. "It is this free-handed hospitality I like; it's this
that gives life its gala aspect."

He forgot former experiences; but without this kindly refusal of memory
to perform its wonted functions, the world would have been a chill place
indeed for Slocum Price. But Mahaffy, keen and anxious, with doubt in
every glass he drained, a lurking devil to grin at him above the rim,
could see only the end of their brief hour of welcome. This made the
present moment as bitter as the