those activities
by means of which Slocum Price had striven to distinguish himself,
and he had a certain curiosity respecting the man. It was immediately
satisfied. The judge had reached a degree of shabbiness seldom equaled,
and but for his mellow, effulgent personality might well have passed
for a common vagabond; and if his dress advertised the state of his
finances, his face explained his habits. No misconception was possible
about either.

"May I offer you a glass of liquor?" asked Fentress, breaking the
silence. He stepped to the walnut centertable where there was a decanter
and glasses. By a gesture the judge declined the invitation. Whereat
the colonel looked surprised, but not so surprised as Mahaffy. There was
another silence.

"I don't think we ever met before?" observed Fentress. There was
something in the fixed stare his visitor was bending upon him that he
found disquieting, just why, he could not have told.

But that fixed stare of the judge's continued. No, the man had
not changed--he had grown older certainly, but age had not come
ungracefully; he became the glossy broadcloth and spotless linen he
wore. Here was a man who could command the good things of life, using
them with a rational temperance. The room itself was in harmony with
his character; it was plain but rich in its appointments, at once his
library and his office, while the well-filled cases ranged about the
walls showed his tastes to be in the main scholarly and intellectual.

"How long have you lived here?" asked the judge abruptly. Fentress
seemed to hesitate; but the judge's glance, compelling and insistent,
demanded an answer.

"Ten years."

"You have known many men of all classes as a lawyer and a planter?" said
the judge. Fentress inclined his head. The judge took a step nearer
him. "People have a great trick of coming and going in these western
states--all sorts of damned riffraff drift in and out of these new
lands." A deadly earnestness lifted the judge's words above mere
rudeness. Fentress, cold and distant, made no reply. "For the
past twenty years I have been looking for a man by the name of
Gatewood--David Gatewood." Disciplined as he was, the colonel started
violently. "Ever heard of him, Fentress?" demanded the judge with a
savage scowl.

"What's all this to me?" The words came with a gasp from Fentress'
twitching lips. The judge looked at him moody and frowning.

"I have reason to think this man Gatewood came to w