deeply to see him so gloomy.

Bradley found a quiet and comfortable home with Judge Brown and his odd
old wife, who manifested her growing regard for him by little touches
of adornment in his room, and by infrequent confidences. As for the
Judge, he took an immense delight in the young fellow, he made such a
capital listener. Between Bradley and the grocery he really found
opportunity to tell all his old stories and philosophize upon every
conceivable subject. He talked a deal of politics, quoting Jefferson
and Jackson. He criticised members of Congress, and told what he would
have done in their places. He criticised, also, the grange movement,
from what he considered to be a lofty plane.

"They profess to have for a motto 'equal rights to all and special
privileges to none,' and then they go off into class legislation. It's
easy to talk that principle, but it means business when you stand by
it. I haint got the sand to stand by that principle myself. It goes too
deep for me, but it's something you young politicians ought to study
on. One o' these days that principle will get life into it, and when it
does things will tumble. The Democratic party used to be a party that
meant that, and if it ever succeeds again it must head that way. That's
the reason I want to get you young fellows into it."

These talks didn't mean as much to Bradley as they should have done. He
was usually at work at something and only half listened while the Judge
wandered on, his heels in the air, his cheek full of tobacco. Old
Colonel Peavy dropped in occasionally, and Dr. Carver, and then the air
was full of good, old-time Democratic phrases. At such times the Judge
even went so far as to quote Calhoun.

"As a matter of fact, Calhoun was on the right track. If he hadn't got
his States' Rights doctrine mixed up with slavery, he'd 'a' been all
right. What he really stood for was local government as opposed to
centralized government. We're just comin' around back to a part of
Calhoun's position."

This statement of the Judge stuck in Bradley's mind; months afterward
it kept coming up and becoming more significant each time that he
talked upon it.

He thought less often of Miss Wilbur now, and he could hear her name
mentioned without flushing. She had become a vaguer but no less massive
power in his life. That beautiful place in his soul where she was he
had a strange reverence for. He loved to have it there. It was an
inspiration to him, and