indignantly. "Do you know what my
father would have called that fellow? He would have called him a common
scalawag--a common scalawag, sir!"

The Judge laughed softly. There was nothing, as he sometimes observed,
that flavoured life so deliciously as a keen appreciation of comedy.
"Now, I should call him a decidedly uncommon one," he remarked. "The
trouble with you, my dear Powhatan, is that you are still in the village
stage of the social instinct. In your proper period, when we Virginians
were merely one of the several tribes in these United States, you may
have served an excellent purpose; but the tribal instinct is dying out
with the village stage. If we are going to exist at all outside of the
archaeological department of a museum, we must learn to accept--. We
must let in new blood."

"Do you mean to tell me, Horatio," blustered the General, "that I've got
to let in the blood of a circus rider, sir?"

"Well, that depends. I haven't made up my mind about Vetch. He may be
only froth, or he may be the vital element that we need. I haven't made
up my mind, but I've met him and I like him. Indeed, I think I may say
that Gideon and I are friends. We have come to the same point of view,
it appears, by travelling on opposite roads. I had a long talk with him
the other day, and I found that we think alike about a number of
things."

"Think alike about fiddlesticks!" spluttered the General, while he
spilled over his waistcoat the water Corinna had given him. "Why, the
fellow ain't even in your class, sir!"

"I said we had thoughts, not habits, in common, Powhatan," rejoined the
Judge blandly. "The same habits make a class, but the same thoughts make
a friendship."

"He told me he had talked to you," said Stephen eagerly, "and I wanted
to know what your impression was. He called you a great old boy, by the
way."

The Judge, who could wear at will the face either of Brutus or of
Antony, became at once the genial friend of humanity. "That pleases me
more than you realize," he said. "I have a suspicion that Gideon knows
human nature about as thoroughly as our General here knows the battles
of the Confederacy."

"I confess the man rather gripped me," rejoined Stephen. "There's
something about him, personality or mere play-acting, that catches one
in spite of oneself."

The Judge appeared to acquiesce. "I am inclined to think," he observed
presently, "that the quality you feel in Vetch is simply a violent
candour. M