ently, as if it
had been invented for him.

"What do you get out of this?" the Judge demanded, coming upon Neil late
one afternoon, poring over the uninspired pages of Mr. Thayer by the
fading light. "What do you hope to get?"

"All there is in it," said the boy simply, and without oratorical
intent.

"Suppose you do pass your bar examinations. What then? What will you do
with it?"

"I'll wait and see then. I had to begin somewhere."

"Why?" said the Judge, and as he asked the question, the answer to it,
which he had once known so well and forgotten, looked at him in the
boy's pale face and glowing eyes, the great answer not to be silenced,
youth, and the wonderful, wasteful urge of youth. "Don't you know this
town's sick?" he demanded abruptly. "It's dirty. You can't clean it up.
Don't you ever try. Don't you stir things up. Don't you dig in too deep.
I suppose you know the town's got no room for you?"

"Yes, sir, I know."

"Where do you expect to end?" the Judge began irritably, "in the
poorhouse? You're so damn young," he grumbled. "It's a good thing I
didn't know you when I was young. I'd have listened to you then."

"You will now, sir," said the boy, and the Judge did not contradict him,
but instead, under shy pretence of groping for the switch of the desk
lamp, found the boy's hand and gripped it.

"You're a good boy," he remarked irrelevantly. "Mind what I said, and
don't dig in too deep."

The Judge did not explain whose secrets he hoped to protect by this
vague warning. Probably he could not have explained. It was one of those
instinctive pronouncements which shape themselves in rare moments when
two people are close and mean more than either of them know. Certainly
if the key to any secret was to be found within the Judge's dingily
decorated walls or in his battered safe, or learned from his partner,
the boy had exceptional opportunities to unearth it. Theodore Burr's
intimacy with Neil developed rapidly. He stuck to it obstinately, in
spite of his wife, showing more independence about it than he had in
years. The two had tramped and snow-shoed together through long winter
hours of intimate talk and more intimate silence, and they found the
first Mayflowers of the year together. Only the week before he had
committed the crowning indiscretion of giving up a poker game at the
Everards' to go shooting with Neil.

The Judge, in the strenuous days of Colonel Everard's summer campaign,
had no time to