o judge another?
_I_'ve made nothing of life."

"You have done no creature a wrong," Baird said. "And you have helped
some to happiness."

"Well," admitted Big Tom, "perhaps that's true. But I've been a lumbering
failure myself. I've just judgment enough now to know that there's
nothing a man can say about a thing like this--nothing--and just sense
enough not to try to say it."

"If you go back to North Carolina," asked Baird, "may I come to see
you--and to see her? She need never know."

"I shouldn't want her to know," Tom answered, "but you may come. We shall
go back, and I intend to let those two young ones set up a Garden of Eden
of their own. It will be a good thing to look on at. Yes, you may come."

"That is mercifulness," said Baird, and this time when he put out his
hand he did not withdraw it, and Tom gave it a strong, sober clasp which
expressed more than one emotion.

* * * * *

When Tom returned to the little house near Dupont Circle, Uncle Matt wore
a rigidly repressed air as he opened the door, and Miss Burford stood in
the hall as if waiting for something. Her ringlets were shaken by a light
tremor.

"We have either won the claim this afternoon or lost it," Tom said to
himself, having glanced at both of them and exchanged the usual greeting.

They had won it.

Judge Rutherford was striding up and down the sitting-room, but it was
Sheba who was deputed to tell the news.

She did it in a little scene which reminded him of her childhood. She
drew him to a chair and sat down on his knee, clasping both slim, tender
arms round his neck, tears suddenly rushing into her eyes.

"You and Rupert are rich men, Uncle Tom, darling," she said. "The claim
has passed. You are rich. You need never be troubled about mortgages
again."

He was conscious of a tremendous shock of relief. He folded her in his
arms as if she had been a baby.

"Thank the Lord!" he said. "I didn't know I should be so glad of it."

CHAPTER XLI

The unobtrusive funeral cortege had turned the corner of Bank Street and
disappeared from view almost an hour ago. In the front room of the house
in which had lived the man just carried to his grave, the gentle old
woman who had been his mother sat and looked with pathetic patience at
Miss Amory Starkweather as the rough winds of the New England early
spring rushed up the empty thoroughfare and whirled through the yet
unleafed trees. Mi