im wince. He
had not read his father's books for nothing.

"God bless my soul!" exclaimed the judge in genuine surprise at this
answer; "and you want to be a lawyer!" The situation was so much worse
than he had suspected that even an old practitioner, case-hardened by
years of life at the trial table and on the bench, was startled for a
moment into a comical sort of consternation, so apparent that a lad
less stout-hearted would have weakened and fled at the sight of it.

"Yes, sir. Why not?" responded the boy, trembling a little at the
knees, but stoutly holding his ground.

"He wants to be a lawyer, and he asks me why not!" muttered the judge,
speaking apparently to himself. He rose from his chair, walked across
the room, and threw open a window. The cool morning air brought with
it the babbling of the stream below and the murmur of the mill near by.
He glanced across the creek to the ruined foundation of an old house on
the low ground beyond the creek. Turning from the window, he looked
back at the boy, who had remained standing between him and the door.
At that moment another lad came along the street and stopped opposite
the open doorway. The presence of the two boys in connection with the
book he had been reading suggested a comparison. The judge knew the
lad outside as the son of a leading merchant of the town. The merchant
and his wife were both of old families which had lived in the community
for several generations, and whose blood was presumably of the purest
strain; yet the boy was sallow, with amorphous features, thin shanks,
and stooping shoulders. The youth standing in the judge's office, on
the contrary, was straight, shapely, and well-grown. His eye was
clear, and he kept it fixed on the old gentleman with a look in which
there was nothing of cringing. He was no darker than many a white boy
bronzed by the Southern sun; his hair and eyes were black, and his
features of the high-bred, clean-cut order that marks the patrician
type the world over. What struck the judge most forcibly, however, was
the lad's resemblance to an old friend and companion and client. He
recalled a certain conversation with this old friend, who had said to
him one day:

"Archie, I'm coming in to have you draw my will. There are some
children for whom I would like to make ample provision. I can't give
them anything else, but money will make them free of the world."

The judge's friend had died suddenly before car