gan Henderson, his voice shaking.
"I didn't think this of you."

"There's a lot of things people never thought of me," smiled Hod Brooks.
"I'm something of a trader my own self. Here's where we trade again.

"Listen. I didn't have the start that you had. I started far back beyond
the flag, and I have had to run hard to get into any place. Maybe I'll
lose all my place through this, I don't know. But I never got anywhere
in my life by shirking or sidestepping."

"You have some hidden interest in this."

"Yes! Now you have come to it! I'm not so much thinking of myself, not
so much thinking of you. I'm thinking of that woman."

He could not find Henderson's eyes now, for Henderson's face was buried
in his hands.

"I was thinking of something of the sort," Brooks went on slowly, "in
that other case, in Blackman's court last Saturday. Why didn't you try
that case, Judge? Didn't you know then he was your boy?"

The suddenly aged man before him did not make any reply. His full eyes
seemed to protrude yet more. "I felt something--I wasn't sure. She'd
told me years ago the boy was dead. How could I believe I was his
father? Don't ask me."

"I wish to God _I_ could have been the father of that boy!" said Hod
Brooks deliberately.

"We seem to be talking freely enough!" said Henderson. The perspiration
was breaking out on his forehead. But Horace Brooks took no shame to
himself for what he had said.

"The mother of that boy," he went on, "is the one woman I ever cared
for, Judge. I'll admit that to you. If there were any way in the world
so that I could take that woman's troubles on my own shoulders, I'd do
it.... So, you see, this wasn't blackmail after all, Judge. It wasn't
really politics after all. I was doing this for _her_."

"For her?"

"Yes. Now listen. You met her as a girl, when she didn't know much. I
never met her really to know much about her until she was a grown woman,
with a character--a splendid character whose like you'll not find
anywhere in this town, nor in many another town. You never had the
courage to come out and say that she was your wife--you never had the
courage to make her your wife. You thought you could last her out in
this town, because she was a person of no consequence--because she was a
woman. And all the time she was the grandest woman in this town. But she
didn't have any friends. Now, it seemed to me, she ought to have a
friend.

"Do you call it blackmail now, Judge?" he asked