ing
his seat.

"Strictly speaking, he ain't none. That he come to live with me is all
owing to Mr. Crenshaw, who's a good man when left to himself, but he's
got a wife, so a body may say he never is left to himself," began Yancy;
and then briefly he told the story of the woman and the child much as
he had told it to Bladen at the Barony the day of General Quintard's
funeral.

The judge, his back to the light and his face in shadow, rested his
left elbow on the desk and with his chin sunk in his palm, followed the
Scratch Hiller's narrative with the closest attention.

"And General Quintard never saw him--never manifested any interest in
him?" the words came slowly from the judge's lips, he seemed to gulp
down something that rose in his throat. "Poor little lad!" he muttered,
and again, "Poor little lad!"

"Never once, sir. He told the slaves to keep him out of his sight.
We-all wondered, fo' you know how niggers will talk. We thought maybe he
was some kin to the Quintards, but we couldn't figure out how. The old
general never had but one child and she had been dead fo' years. The
child couldn't have been hers no how." Yancy paused.

The judge drummed idly on the desk.

"What implacable hate--what iron pride!" he murmured, and swept his hand
across his eyes. Absorbed and aloof, he was busy with his thoughts
that spanned the waste of years, years that seemed to glide before him in
review, each bitter with its hideous memories of shame and defeat. Then
from the smoke of these lost battles emerged the lonely figure of the
child as he had seen him that June night. His ponderous arm stiffened
where it rested on the desk, he straightened up in his chair and his
face assumed its customary expression of battered dignity, while a smile
at once wistful and tender hovered about his lips.

"One other question," he said. "Until this man Murrell appeared you
had no trouble with Bladen? He was content that you should keep the
child--your right to Hannibal was never challenged?"

"Never, sir. All my troubles began about that time."

"Murrell belongs in these parts," said the judge.

"I'd admire fo' to meet him," said Yancy quietly.

The judge grinned.

"I place my professional services at your disposal," he said. "Yours is
a clear case of felonious assault."

"No, it ain't, sir--I look at it this-a-ways; it's a clear case of my
giving him the damnedest sort of a body beating!"

"Sir," said the judge, "I'll hold your ha