tervals. "When I see you
sitting there, Tom, just as you used to sit in your chair on the
store-porch, it seems as if it could hardly be you that's talking. Why,
man, it'll mean a million!"

"If I get money enough to set the mines at work," said Tom, "it may mean
more millions than one."

The dingy square room, with its worn carpet, its turned-up bedstead,
shabby chairs, and iron stove, temporarily assumed a new aspect. That its
walls should contain this fairy tale of possible wealth and power and
magnificence made it seem quite soberly respectable, and that Big Tom,
sitting in the second-hand looking armchair, which creaked beneath his
weight, should, in matter-of-fact tones, be relating such a story, made
Judge Rutherford regard him with a kind of reverent trouble.

"Sheba, now," he said, "Sheba may be one of the biggest heiresses in the
States. Lord! what luck it was for her that fellow left her behind!"

"It was luck for me," said Tom. And a faint, contemplative grin showed
itself on his countenance. He was thinking, as he often did, of the
afternoon when he returned from Blair's Hollow and opened the door of the
room behind the store to find the wooden cradle stranded like a small ark
in the corner.

CHAPTER XXVI

Naturally Judge Rutherford gravitated towards the little house near
Dupont Circle. The first night he mounted the stairs and found himself in
the small room confronting the primitive supper he had been invited to
share with big Tom and his family, his honest countenance assumed a
cheerfulness long a stranger to it.

The room looked such a simple, homely place, with its Virginia made
carpet, its neat, scant furnishing, and its table set with the plain
little meal. The Judge's homesick heart expanded within him.

He shook hands with Tom with fervour. Rupert he greeted with friendly
affection. Sheba--on her entering the room with a plate of hot biscuits
which she had been baking in Miss Burford's stove--he almost kissed.

"Now this is something like," he said. "I didn't know there was anything
so like Barnesville in all Washington city. And there wasn't till you
people brought it. I don't know what it is, but, by thunder, it does a
man's heart good."

He sat down with the unconventional air of ease he wore in Barnesville
when he established himself in one of Jenny's parlour chairs for the
evening.

"Lord, Lord!" he said; "you're home folks, and you've got home ways,
that's what it is. A