The Prodigal Judge Part 13

"You can't help it. I love you and that's all there is about it. I know I'm a fool to tell you now, Betty, but years wouldn't make any difference in my feeling; and I can't have you go, and perhaps never see you again, if I can help it. Betty--give me a chance--you don't hate me--"

"But I do--yes, I do--indeed--"

"I know you don't. Let me see you again and do what I can to make you care for me!" he implored. But he had a very indignant little aristocrat to deal with. She was angry with him, and angry with herself that in spite of herself his words moved her. She wouldn't have it so! Why, he wasn't even of her cla.s.s--her kind! "Betty, you don't mean--" he faltered.

"I mean--I am extremely annoyed. I mean just what I say." Betty regarded him with wrathful blue eyes. It proved too much for Carrington. His arm, dropped about her shoulders.

"You shall love me--" She was powerless in his embrace. She felt his breath on her cheek, then he kissed her. Breathless and crimson, she struggled and pushed him from her. Suddenly his arms fell at his side; his face was white. "I was a brute to do that!--Betty, forgive me! I am sorry--no, I can't be sorry!"'

"How do you dare! I hope I may never see you again--I hate you--" said Betty furiously, tears in her eyes and her pulses still throbbing from his fierce caress.

"Do you mean that?" he asked slowly, rising.

"Yes--yes--a million times, yes!"

"I don't believe you--I can't--I won't!" They were alongside the New Madrid wharf now, and a certain young man who had been impatiently watching The Naiad's lights ever since they became visible crossed the gang-plank with a bound.

"Betty--why in the name of goodness did you ever, choose this tub?--everything on the river has pa.s.sed it!" said the newcomer. Betty started up with a little cry of surprise and pleasure.

"Charley!"

Carrington stepped back. This must be the brother who had come up the river from Memphis to meet her--but her brother's name was Tom! He looked this stranger--this Charley--over with a hostile eye, offended by his good looks, his confident manner, in which he thought he detected an air of owners.h.i.+p, as if--certainly he was holding her hands longer than was necessary! Of course, other men were in love with her, such a radiant personality held its potent attraction for men, but for all that, she was going to belong to him--Carrington! She did like him; she had shown it in a hundred little ways during the last week, and he would give her up to no man--give her up?--there wasn't the least tie between them--except that kiss--and she was furious because of it. There was nothing for him to do but efface himself. He would go now, before the boat started--and an instant later, when Betty, remembering, turned to speak to him, his place by the rail was deserted.

CHAPTER IX. JUDGE SLOc.u.m PRICE

On that day Hannibal was haunted by the memory of what he had heard and seen at Slosson's tavern. More than this, there was his terrible sense of loss, and the grief he could not master, when his thin, little body was shaken by sobs. Marking the course of the road westward, he clung to the woods, where his movements were as stealthy as the very shadows themselves. He shunned the scattered farms and the infrequent settlements, for the fear was strong with him that he might be followed either by Murrell or Slosson. But as the dusk of evening crept across the land, the great woods, now peopled by strange shadows, sent him forth into the highroad. He was beginning to be very tired, and hunger smote him with fierce pangs, but back of it all was his sense of bitter loss, his desolation, and his loneliness.

"I couldn't forget Uncle Bob if I tried--" he told himself, with quivering lips, as he limped wearily along the dusty road, and the tears welled up and streaked his pinched face. Now before him he saw the scattered lights of a settlement. All his terrors, the terrors that grouped themselves about the idea of pursuit and capture, rushed back upon him, and in a panic he plunged into the black woods again.

But the distant lights intensified his loneliness. He had lived a whole day without food, a whole day without speech. He began to skirt the settlement, keeping well within the thick gloom of the woods, and presently, as he stumbled forward, he came to a small clearing in the center of which stood a log dwelling. The place seemed deserted. There was no sign of life, no light shone from the window, no smoke issued from the stick-and-mud chimney.

Tilted back in a chair by the door of this house a man was sleeping. The hoot of an owl from a near-by oak roused him. He yawned and stretched himself, thrusting out his fat legs and extending his great arms. Then becoming aware of the small figure which had stolen up the path as he slept and now stood before him in the uncertain light, he fell to rubbing his eyes with the knuckles of his plump hands. The pale night mist out of the silent depths of the forest had a.s.sumed shapes as strange.

"Who are you?" he demanded, and his voice rumbled thickly forth from his capacious chest. The very sound was sleek and unctuous.

"I'm Hannibal," said the small figure. He was meditating flight; he glanced over his shoulder toward the woods.

"No, you ain't. He's been dead a thousand years, more or less. Try again," recommended the man.

"I'm Hannibal Wayne Hazard," said the boy. The man quitted his chair.

"Well--I am glad to know you, Hannibal Wayne Hazard. I am Sloc.u.m Price--Judge Sloc.u.m Price, sometime major-general of militia and ex-member of congress, to mention a few of those honors my fellow countrymen have thrust upon me." He made a sweeping gesture with his two hands outspread and bowed ponderously.

The boy saw a man of sixty, whose gross and battered visage told its own story. There was a spa.r.s.e white frost about his ears; and his eyes, pale blue and prominent, looked out from under beetling brows. He wore a shabby plum-colored coat and tight, drab breeches. About his fat neck was a black stock, with just a suggestion of soiled linen showing above it. His figure was corpulent and unwieldy.

The man saw a boy of perhaps ten, barefoot, and clothed in homespun s.h.i.+rt and trousers. On his head was a ruinous hat much too large for him, but which in some mysterious manner he contrived to keep from quite engulfing his small features, which were swollen and tear-stained. In his right hand he carried a bundle, while his left clutched the brown barrel of a long rifle.

"You don't belong in these parts, do you?" asked the judge, when he had completed his scrutiny.

"No, sir," answered the boy. He glanced off down the road, where lights were visible among the trees. "What town is that?" he added.

"Pleasantville--which is a lie--but I am neither sufficiently drunk nor sufficiently sober to cope with the possibilities your question offers.

It is a task one should approach only after extraordinary preparation,"

and the sometime major-general of militia grinned benevolently.

"It's a town, ain't it?" asked Hannibal doubtfully. He scarcely understood this large, smiling gentleman who was so civilly given to speech with him, yet strangely enough he was not afraid of him, and his whole soul craved human companions.h.i.+p.

"It's got a name--but you'll excuse me, I'd much prefer not to tell you how I regard it--you're too young to hear. But stop a bit--have you so much as fifty cents about you?" and the judge's eyes narrowed to a slit above their folds of puffy flesh. Hannibal, keeping his glance fixed on the man's face, fell back a step. "I can't let you go if you are penniless--I can't do that!" cried the judge, with sudden vehemence.

"You shall be my guest for the night. They're a pack of thieves at the tavern," he lowered his voice. "I know 'em, for they've plucked me!" To make sure of his prey, he rested a fat hand on the boy's shoulder and drew him gently but firmly into the shanty. As they crossed the threshold he kicked the door shut, then with flint and steel he made a light, and presently a candle was sputtering in his hands. He fitted it into the neck of a tall bottle, and as the light flared up the boy glanced about him.

The interior was mean enough, with its rough walls, dirt floor and black, cavernous fireplace. A rude clapboard table did duty as a desk, a fact made plain by a horn ink-well, a notary's seal, and a rack with a half-dozen quill pens. Above the desk was a shelf of books in worn calf bindings, and before it a rickety chair. A shakedown bed in one corner of the room was tastefully screened from the public gaze by a tattered quilt.

"Boy, don't be afraid. Look on me as a friend," urged the judge, who towered above him in the dim candle-light. "Here's comfort without ostentation. Don't tell me you prefer the tavern, with its corrupt a.s.sociations!" Hannibal was silent, and the judge, after a brief moment of irresolution, threw open the door. Then he bent toward the small stranger, bringing his face close to the child's, while his thick lips wreathed themselves in a smile ingratiatingly genial. "You can't look me squarely in the eye and say you prefer the tavern to these scholarly surroundings?" he said banteringly.

"I reckon I'll be glad to stop," answered Hannibal. The judge clapped him playfully on the back.

"Such confidence is inspiring! Make yourself perfectly at home. Are you hungry?"

"Yes, sir. I ain't had much to eat to-day," replied Hannibal cautiously.

"I can offer you food then. What do you say to cold fish?" the judge smacked his lips to impart a relish to the idea. "I dare swear I can find you some corn bread into the bargain. Tea I haven't got. On the advice of my physician, I don't use it. What do you say--shall we light a fire and warm the fish?"

"I 'low I could eat it cold."

"No trouble in the world to start a fire. All we got to do is to go out, and pull a few palings off the fence," urged the judge.

"It will do all right just like it is," said Hannibal.

"Very good, then!" cried the judge gaily, and he began to a.s.semble the dainties he had enumerated. "Here you are!" he cleared his throat impressively, while benignity shone from every feature of his face. "A moment since you allowed me to think that you were solvent to the extent of fifty cents--" Hannibal looked puzzled. The judge dealt him a friendly blow on the back, then stood off and regarded him with a glance of great jocularity, his plump knuckles on his hips and his arms akimbo.

"I wonder"--and his eyes a.s.sumed a speculative squint "I wonder if you could be induced to make a temporary loan of that fifty cents? The sum involved is really such a ridiculous trifle I don't need to point out to you the absolute moral certainty of my returning it at an early date--say to-morrow morning; say to-morrow afternoon at the latest; say even the day after at the very outside. Meantime, you shall be my guest. The landlady's son has found my notarial seal an admirable plaything--she has had to lick the little devil twice for hooking it--my pens and stationery are at your disposal, should you desire to communicate to absent friends; you can have the run of my library!" the judge fairly trembled in his eagerness. It was not the loss of his money that Hannibal most feared, and the coin pa.s.sed from his possession into his host's custody. As it dropped into the latter's great palm he was visibly moved. His moist, blue eyes became yet more watery, while his battered old face a.s.sumed an expression indicating deep inward satisfaction. "Thank you, my boy! This is one of those intrinsically trifling benefits which, conferred at the moment of acute need, touch the heart and tap the unfailing springs of human grat.i.tude--I must step down to the tavern--when I return, please G.o.d, we shall know more of each other." While he was still speaking he had produced a jug from behind the quilt that screened his bed, and now, bareheaded, and with every indication of haste, took himself off into the night.

Left alone, Hannibal gravely seated himself at the table. What the judge's larder lacked in variety it more than made up for in quant.i.ty, and the boy was grateful for this fact. He was half famished, and the coa.r.s.e, abundant food was of the sort to which he was accustomed.

Presently he heard the judge's heavy, shuffling step as he came up the path from the road, and a moment later his gross bulk of body filled the doorway. Breathing hard and perspiring, the judge entered the shanty, but his eagerness, together with his shortness of breath, kept him silent until he had established himself in his chair beside the table, with the jug and a cracked gla.s.s at his elbow. Then, bland and smiling, he turned toward his guest.

"Will you join me?" he asked.

"No, sir. Please, I'd rather not," said Hannibal.

"Do you mean that you don't like good liquor?" demanded the judge. "Not even with sugar and a dash of water?--say, now, don't you like it that way, my boy?"

"I ain't learned to like it no ways," said Hannibal.

"You amaze me--well--well--the greater the joy to which you may reasonably aspire. The splendid possibilities of youth are yours. My tenderest regards, Hannibal!" and he nodded over the rim of the cracked gla.s.s his shaking hand had carried to his lips. Twice the gla.s.s was filled and emptied, and then again, his roving, watery eyes rested meditatively on the child, who sat very erect in his chair, with his brown hands crossed in his lap. "Personally, I can drink or not,"

explained the judge. "But I hope I am too much a man of the world to indulge in any intemperate display of principle." He proved the first clause of his proposition by again filling and emptying his gla.s.s. "Have you a father?" he asked suddenly. Hannibal shook his head. "A mother?"

demanded the judge.