"I can't tell you how long back it was, but I reckon I
don't know much about it. I must have been a small child."
"Ho--a small child!" cried the judge, laughing. He cocked his
head on one side and surveyed Hannibal Wayne Hazard with a glance
of comic seriousness. "A small child and in God's name what do
you call yourself now? To hear you talk one would think you had
dabbled your feet in the Flood!"
"I'm most ten," said Hannibal, with dignity.
"I can well believe it," responded the judge. "And with this
weight of years, where did you come from and how did you get
here?"
"From across the mountains."
"Alone?"
"No, sir. Mr. Yancy fetched me--part way." The boy's voice
broke when he spoke his Uncle Bob's name, and his eyes swam with
tears, but the judge did not notice this.
"And where are you going?"
"To West Tennessee."
"Have you any friends there?"
"Yes, sir."
"You've money enough to see you through?" and what the judge
intended for a smile of fatherly affection became a leer of
infinite cunning.
"I got ten dollars."
"Ten dollars--" the judge smacked his lips once. "Ten dollars"
he repeated, and smacked his lips twice. There was a brief
silence, in which he seemed to give way to pleasant reveries.
From beyond the open door of the shanty came a multitude of night
sounds. The moon had risen, and what had been a dusty country
road was now a streak of silver in the hot light. The purple
flush on the judge's face, where the dignity that belonged to age
had gone down in wreck, deepened.
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