expatiated; "and there must be
a great deal in that. I never heard a better story for gaining
sympathy--that fine old Southern aristocrat standing by the Union in a
red-hot secessionist town--actually persecuted on account of it. He _was_
persecuted, wasn't he?" he enquired of Rupert.

"Well," Rupert answered, "everybody was furious at him, of course--all
his friends. People who had known him all his life passed him in the
street without speaking. He'd been very popular, and he felt it terribly.
He never was the same man after it began. He was old, and his spirit gave
way."

"Just so!" exclaimed the Judge, stopping upon the pavement, elated even
to oratory by the picture presented. "Fine old Southern aristocrat--on
the brink of magnificent fortune--property turned into money that he may
realise it--war breaks out, ruins him--Spartan patriotism--one patriot in
a town of rebels hated and condemned by everybody--but faithful to his
country. Friends--_old_ friends--refuse to recognise him. Fortune
gone--friends lost--heart broken." He snatched Tom's big hand and shook
it enthusiastically. "Tom!" he said; "I'd like to make a speech to the
House about it myself. I believe they would listen to me. How set up
Jenny would be--how set up she'd be."

He left them all in a glow of enthusiasm; they could see him
gesticulating a little to himself as he walked down the avenue in the
moonlight.

"That's just like him," said Tom; "he'd rather please Jenny than set the
House of Representatives on fire. And he'd undertake the whole
thing--work to give a man a fortune for mere neighbourliness. We were a
neighbourly lot in Hamlin, after all."

The Judge went home to his boarding-house and sat late in his shabby
armchair, his legs stretched out, his hands clasped on the top of his
rough head. He was thinking the thing out, and as he thought it out his
excitement grew. Sometimes he unclasped his hands and rubbed his hair
with restless sigh; more than once he unconsciously sprang to his feet,
walked across the floor two or three times, and then sat down again. He
was not a sharp schemer, he had not even reached the stage of
sophistication which would have suggested to him that sharp scheming
might be a necessary adjunct in the engineering of such matters as
Government claims. From any power or tendency to diplomatise he was as
free as the illustrative bull in a china shop. His bucolic trust in the
simple justice and honest disinterestedn