above his forehead absently, then laid down the pad. That was the last finding of fact. He would dictate the whole and his conclusions of law before Court to-morrow.

It must be nearly five, he thought. The sunlight had shrunk to a dusty orange bar across the red carpet at his feet; through the open window he could hear the cooing of the pigeons, the soft rustle of their wings as they moved upon the stone sill. Against the opposite wall the yellow bindings of the books ran in converging rows to a well of still gray light that seemed to gather at the end of the room; the surface of the table in the centre shone like a ruddy disk above its dark carven legs; through the curtains that hung above the doorway to his right he could hear the voices of the tipstaves talking in the empty courtroom outside.

Rodenbaugh was late. Evidently he was going to finish the Minturn case this afternoon. A driving young man, Rodenbaugh — he swept uncommon clean for a new broom. The judge smiled a little grimly, glanced down at his knees, unpleasantly sharp and narrow beneath the neat fold of his trousers. Old age did queer tricks to the body, things that he did n't like. No doubt it did the same things to the mind. He was seventy-three. That was a warning in itself. He rose and walked to the window, sniffed the dusty May air. He was sorry he did n't get on better with Rodenbaugh. It was hard, at first, to like anyone who had taken Langdon's place on the bench.

There was a difference now, a very great difference. He shook his head, turned and walked stiffly to his chair. The fact that he felt the difference so keenly was a sign of his age. In his youth the old lawyers had always complained about the decay of the bar.

And he had laughed at them just as Rodenbaugh would laugh at him now if he heard him. Only Rodenbaugh did n't laugh, that was the trouble. He only smiled a slow spreading of unparted lips, a narrowing of his eyes, which-the judge sighed — was intensely distasteful. But — maybe it was just as well. If Rodenbaugh once began to laugh he might laugh at himself all day.

A step sounded on the marble outside, and the curtain was pushed tentatively back. Old Walrath appeared, his watery blue eyes searching the chamber with vague apology. 'Judge Rodenbaugh been here, Judge?' he asked. He moved forward, then hobbled down the steps. 'I looked in his room and he was n't there. He said he wanted to see Mr. Mercer at halfpast three. Mr. Mercer 's in the courtroom now.'

'He's still trying the Minturn case, Enoch. He's coming here, though, before he goes home. I don't know what he wants with Mercer. If he 's been waiting long I think you'd better let him go. You can call him when the judge gets back.'

'All right, sir.' The old man paused, and a look of doubt crept into his mildly truculent face. 'You think he won't mind? I should n't like to get him mad just after he's come off the bench. You know, Judge, he's got a way, when he 's mad, of smiling just like a Chessy cat, and passing that tongue of his over you fit to take off your skin!' He pulled at his long white walrus moustache and gazed at the judge. 'I've been thinking he acts pretty fiery for a young man that ain't seen too much of court before he become a judge. I reckon' - his eyes moved solemnly to and fro - 'I reckon that 's why.'

Judge Avery looked at his knees; it was difficult to conceal his smile. Of

course, he ought n't to let Walrath talk to him that way. He ought to reprove him sharply, and the fact that he could n't was clearly just another sign of his age. He straightened his face, looked up. Walrath was smiling at him in a curious way. Yes, by George, he was actually smiling at him paternally underneath that white walrus moustache. The old beggar! Really, he'd have to say something! 'Enoch!' He stroked his chin, gazed through his spectacles at the bent figure standing in the doorway. 'You 're becoming too philosophical, I'm afraid, in your later years. I have a suspicion you've taken to psychoanalysis.'

--

'No, sir!' Walrath grunted. 'I 'I never yet heard of it. Them experts talks of electrolysis in the accident cases, but I never yet heard of the sister you speak of. No, Judge - it ain't science you know that.' He shook his head and began climbing the steps. 'It's just putting a long time in the courtroom, the same as you and me's both done that, and a little looking round, as Judge Langdon used to say.' He paused, the curtain clasped in his big bony hand. 'I'm going out now and tell Mr. Mercer he can leave, and then I 'll come back and get what papers you want for your bag.'

Judge Avery watched the curtain settle behind him, heard the slow stump of his footsteps across the marble. Old Walrath had stumped up and down those steps and across that marble for nearly fifty years; he had been a tipstaff when the judge first came to the bar. A gay ribald young fellow, then, with a rough tongue and a surprising knowledge of human nature, but good company, sitting on a table in the clerk's office, swinging his legs and imitating Melchior Van Zandt blowing his nose at a jury. There was

VOL. 134 - NO. 4

time to linger in the clerk's office, in those days; time to do many things that were forgotten now. Law was a profession then, not a business; the lawyer reached out toward art and letters rather than toward certified public accounting. Then Bricknell translated Demosthenes and Judge Haynes wrote Horatian Echoes. Very faint but quite scholarly. And everyone, strangely enough, spoke and wrote English. It seemed to be the mother tongue. He sighed. Even the law had changed: it had lost its pattern, its design; the fine threads of continuity were gone. Nowadays you matched facts as you matched silk, and extracted legal principles like a dentist pulling teeth. He rose, straightened his coat across his slender shoulders. He was old, quite out of date. In the hurry and press of modern life there is no time, and so forth-Any young man could finish the sentence.

He gathered the papers from the chair, slipped an elastic about them, and thrust them into a green-baize bag. There was no use in waiting any longer for Rodenbaugh; he might as well take his walk and go home. The evening dreariness was coming over him; it made him peevish and irritable; he was likely to bite, to say something he did n't mean, if Rodenbaugh provoked him. He glanced at the table to see whether he had left any papers, then at the desk. For an instant he paused, a bent delicate figure, very clear against the square of ruddy light. The evening dreariness was, after all, a little more than age. He gazed at the pictures standing in leather frames within a shadowy recess of the desk. The bright knife-like sorrow of the past was gone, but in its place was a numb loneliness, a darkening vision, a dim sense of drifting with blurred, loosened feeling toward some unfathomable end. It would have been

different if they had lived. He would have understood these youngsters better then. Old age had always to look through others' eyes; the vistas of its own past were overwhelming.

A sharp footstep sounded outside and the curtain rings jangled angrily. Judge Rodenbaugh's body filled the doorway, descended with an abrupt heaviness into the room. 'I hope you have n't waited, Judge,' he said. His small eyes moved obscurely beneath his thin eyebrows, his tall clumsy presence seemed to permeate the place, to pervade it like a harsh dominating breath. 'I wanted counsel to finish their speeches this afternoon, so I could charge the jury the first thing in the morning.' He seated himself in the chair by the table, his thick shoulders thrown forward, his legs stretched out. "That little Kardos is a pitiful apology,' he said.

'Was he trying for the plaintiff?'

"Yes. He tries a case as if he were selling shoestrings on State Street. He's all tongue and no head. I've had to listen to him now for two days, fumbling and backing and filling, encumbering the record with all sorts of useless questions. Moran is against him you know what a good one he is! I think he was saying things to Kardos under his breath all through the trial. I was n't sure. Every now and then Kardos would stop and get sort of gray and ask his questions again. Each time he repeated he got worse, and then Moran would get up with that suave easy manner of his, and suggest that his friend first make known to himself what he wanted to ask, and, after a moment's silent communion, make it known to the witness, who, in spite of his lawyer, seemed like quite an intelligent man. He's a quick one, Moran.' The judge shook his head. 'I like him. He gives a case something - color, I guess you'd call it.'

"That, or atmosphere, answered Judge Avery. 'It's sometimes fatal to litigants, although we lawyers survive it. Well what did Kardos do?'

'Oh, he'd just smile that sickly smile of his, and move his hands to and fro and wipe his face, and begin again. He'd have been funny if he had n't taken up so much time. You know that fellow Moran is a great triallawyer! I never realized it so completely until to-day. I'd never tried against him- I did n't try cases, the way you did, before I came on the bench. It does n't bother me, though.' He smiled and his dark heavy face seemed to widen slowly. 'It's easy to handle things from back here, is n't it, Judge?'

'Yes,' said Judge Avery. His thin mouth closed, he leaned forward a little, his elbow upon the table, and surveyed his companion with still luminous eyes.

'Well!' Rodenbaugh stretched back his shoulders, ran his hand through the unparted hair that lay like a wig above his forehead. 'I put an oar in myself now and then. Yesterday, after Kardos had floundered about for a while, I told him he ought to get a lawyer to try his case. Up jumped Moran with that friendly manner of his and said he'd be delighted to furnish his learned friend with a list in case he were not acquainted with the bar. The jury laughed and Kardos stood there wiping his face and moving his lips like a fish and then sat down. I told him to go ahead and he pulled up his chair and began shooting questions at the witness as if he were crying a sale. It was awful!' He leaned back, took some cigars from his pocket and pushed one across the table. 'I don't know what we 're going to do with these fellows, Judge.'

'Neither do I.' Judge Avery ignored

there all the time, and the very thought of it seemed to give me a savage desire to show my strength. And yet I could n't when it came to the test. I was afraid to fight. The other boys knew I was and so I never made friends with boys of my own age. I always went about with the younger boys; they could n't destroy this image I had created; on the contrary, it seemed to grow larger the more I was with them. I used to bully them like a regular little cad. You know' - he shook his head-'what boys are, Judge. Queer little animals; just as eager to maintain their prestige as any full-grown man, and just as clever about it, too.' He leaned back, crossed his sharp narrow knees. 'Did that thought ever occur to you?'

'I can't say it has,' Judge Rodenbaugh answered. His eyes searched his companion's face with a veiled wavering glance, then fell away. Judge Avery lifted his hand to his mouth, smoothed his upper lip.

'I suppose old men, like dead men, should tell no tales.' His smile seemed to vanish into a lurking shadow. 'I must tell you a little story and then we 'll take up the matters you want to discuss. At boarding-school- I presume you went to Saint Thomas?'

The judge moved his head.

'It might have been better if I'd gone there, too. They sent me to Milford. Well, I was n't a great success. I was quick enough in class, but that did n't count; for some reason the boys did n't like me. I was n't good at athletics, I could n't play football, and the cold punishment of the track simply filled me with dread. There was nothing of that sort that I could do and, naturally, I did n't become a leader, and I did n't want friendship on any other terms. So I put up my image and looked around for some younger boy to keep it in place.

'It was little Immanuel Pleasants the last term. I seem to remember him better than any of the others. He was the son of Agamemnon Pleasants, the teacher of Latin-a thin, frightened, large-eared man with a white face and eyes like a Sealyham terrier. Immanuel's mother was named Lucilla, and, of course, we always called her Clytemnestra. They lived in a little house near the main building and were constantly asking unwilling boys in to tea. Even as youngsters we recognized their "inferiority complex," as I believe the psychologists nowadays call it. Old Aggie- I suppose he was thirtyfive used to call us "young barbarians" in a timid jocular voice, and give us little half-hearted pats on the shoulder and look at us with his doubtful evasive eyes. We thought he was n't much of a man, and I daresay he was n't; and as for Clytemnestra we liked her still less; there was something depressing about her red swollen eyelids and the soft pink of her nose -as if she were always having a cold. I think even Immanuel, at times, doubted the worldly value of his parents, and I know some of us used to encourage him in his attitude of unbelief. It was always easy to encourage Immanuel on any subject. He was susceptible to every influence about him; a pathetic, eager little fellow, filled with an unreasoning desire to please; one of those boys that hang about the older boys and do things for them and talk about them a little breathlessly. I thought him quite absurd, with his weasel face and his silly hat and his big translucent ears. I've often wondered' - the judge stared at the bookcase as if he had forgotten his companion - 'what became of Immanuel. He was manifestly unfitted for this world. I suppose' — he looked at Judge Rodenbaugh- 'you knew boys like that at school?'