Part 59 (1/2)

”My overcoat, Hiram, and my neck shawl,” ordered the judge. He turned to Morgan, who was standing on the hearth.

”Wait for me, I'll not be long away.”

”It's a bl.u.s.terin' and a blowin' mighty bad, Judge. I'll get my coat----”

”No, no, Hiram; there's something for you to do here. Watch that man; don't let him leave.”

”He ain't gwine a-leave, Judge, sah,” said Hiram with calm significance.

Hiram held up the great frieze coat, and the judge plunged his arms into it. Then the old negro adjusted the shawl about his master's shoulders, and tucked the ends of it inside the coat, b.u.t.toning that garment over them, to s.h.i.+eld the judge's neck from the driving rain.

The judge turned back into the room to throw another stick on the fire.

The lamp was burning low; he reached over to turn up the wick. The flame jumped, faltered, went out.

”Hah, I've turned it out, Morgan. Well, no matter. You'll not need more light than the fire throws. Make yourself comfortable, Morgan.”

With a word to Hiram, the judge opened the door and stepped out into the night.

On the pavement the wind met him rudely, and the rain drove its cold arrows against his kind old face. Wonderful are the ways of Providence, thought Judge Maxwell, bending his head to bring his broad hat-brim to s.h.i.+eld his face, and complete are the accounts of justice when it is given that men may see them down to the final word.

The wind laid hold of the judge's coat, and tugged at it like a vicious dog; it raged in the gaunt trees, and split in long sighs upon the gable-ends and eaves. There was n.o.body abroad. For Shelbyville the hour was late; Judge Maxwell had the street to himself as he held on his way.

Past the court-house he fought the wind, and a square beyond that. There he turned down a small street, where the force of the blast was broken, looking narrowly about him to right and left at the fronts of houses as he pa.s.sed.

Simeon Harrison, Ollie Chase's father, lately had given over his unprofitable struggle with the soil. He had taken a house near the Methodist church and gone into the business of teaming. He hauled the merchants' goods up from the railroad station, and moved such inhabitants of Shelbyville as once in a while made a change from one abode to another.

Sim had come to Shelbyville with a plan for setting up a general livery business, in which ambition he had been encouraged by Ollie's marriage to Isom Chase, to whom he looked, remotely, for financial backing. But that had turned out a lean and unprofitable dream.

Since Isom's death Ollie had returned to live with her parents, and Sim's prospects had brightened. He had put a big sign in front of his house, upon which he had listed the many services which he stood ready to perform for mankind, in consideration of payment therefor. They ranged from moving trunks to cleaning cisterns, and, by grace of all of them, Sim was doing very well.

When Sim Harrison heard of his daughter's public confession of shameful conduct with her book-agent boarder, he was a highly scornful man. He scorned her for her weakness in yielding to what he termed the ”dally-faddle” of the book-agent, and he doubly scorned her for repudiating her former testimony. The moral side of the matter was obscure to him; it made no appeal.

His sense of personal pride and family honor was not touched by his daughter's confession of shame, any more than his soul was moved to tenderness and warmth for her honest rescue of Joe Newbolt from his overhanging peril. He was voluble in his declarations that they would ”put the screws” to Ollie on the charge of perjury. Sim would have kept his own mouth sealed under like circ.u.mstances, and it was beyond him to understand why his daughter had less discretion than her parent. So he bore down on the solemn declaration that she stood face to face with a prison term for perjury.

Sim had made so much of this that Ollie and her mother were watching that night out in fear and trembling, sitting huddled together in a little room with the peak of the roof in the ceiling, a lamp burning between them on the stand. Their arms lay listlessly in their laps, they turned their heads in quick starts at the sound of every footfall on the board walk, or when the wind swung the loose-jointed gate and flung it against its anchorings. They were waiting for the sheriff to come and carry Ollie away to jail.

In front of Sim Harrison's house there was a little porch, not much bigger than a hand held slantingly against its weathered side, and in the shadow of it one who had approached unheard by the anxious watchers through the bl.u.s.tering night, stood fumbling for the handle of a bell.

But Sim Harrison's door was bald of a bell handle, as it was bare of paint, and now a summons sounded on its thin panel, and went roaring through the house like a blow on a drum.

Mrs. Harrison looked meaningly at Ollie; Ollie nodded, understandingly.

The summons for which they had waited had come. The older woman rose in resigned determination, went below and opened the door.

”It is Judge Maxwell,” said the dark figure which stood large and fearful in Mrs. Harrison's sight. ”I have come to see Mrs. Chase.”

”Yes, sir; I'll call her,” said the trembling woman.

Ollie had heard from the top of the stairs. She was descending in the darkness, softly. She spoke as her mother turned from the door.

”I was expecting you--some of you,” said she.