ained, "is short of taxes on his Fawquear
lands. It's a desperate moment with him." Yet in two days the Judge was
shooting blue-winged teal at the mouth of the Acco-tink, and his entire
indifference to his family set Reybold to thinking whether the Virginia
husband and father was anything more than a forgetful savage. The
boarders, however, made very merry over the absent unknown. If the
beefsteak was tough, threats were made to send for "the Judge," and let
him try a tooth on it; if scant, it was suggested that the Judge might
have paid a gunning visit to the premises and inspected the larder. The
daughter of the house kept such an even temper, and was so obliging
within the limitations of the establishment, that many a boarder went
to his department without complaint, though with an appetite only
partly satisfied. The boy, Uriel, also was the guardsman of the
household, old-faced as if with the responsibility of taking care of
two women. Indeed, the children of the landlady were so well behaved
and prepossessing that, compared with Mrs. Basil's shabby _hauteur_ and
garrulity, the legend of the Judge seemed to require no other
foundation than offspring of such good spirit and intonation.

Mrs. Tryphonia Basil was no respecter of persons. She kept boarders,
she said, as a matter of society, and to lighten the load of the Judge.
He had very little idea that she was making a mercantile matter of
hospitality, but, as she feelingly remarked, "the old families are
misplaced in such times as these yer, when the departments are filled
with Dutch, Yankees, Crackers, Pore Whites, and other foreigners." Her
manner was, at periods, insolent to Mr. Reynold, who seldom protested,
out of regard to the daughter and the little Page; he was a man of
quite ordinary appearance, saying little, never making speeches or
soliciting notice, and he accepted his fare and quarters with little or
no complaint.

"Crutch," he said one day to the little boy, "did you ever see your
father?"

"No, I never saw him, Mr. Reybold, but I've had letters from him."

"Don't he ever come to see you when you are sick?"

"No. He wanted to come once when my back was very sick, and I laid in
bed weeks and weeks, sir, dreaming, oh! such beautiful things. I
thought mamma and sister and I were all with papa in that old home we
are going to some day. He carried me up and down in his arms, and I
felt such rest that I never knew anything like it, when I woke up, and