The judge plodded forward, his shoulders drooped, and his head
bowed. For once silence had fixed its seal upon his lips, no
inspiring speech fell from them. He had been suddenly swept back
into a past he had striven these twenty years and more to forget,
and his memories shaped themselves fantastically. Surely if ever
a man had quitted the world that knew him, he was that man! He
had died and yet he lived--lived horribly, without soul or heart,
the empty shell of a man.
A turn in the road brought them within sight of Boggs' racetrack,
a wide level meadow. The judge paused irresolutely, and turned
his bleared face on his friend.
"We'll stop here, Solomon," he said rather wearily, for the
spirit of boast and jest was quite gone out of him. He glanced
toward Carrington. "Are you a resident of these parts, sir?" he
asked.
"I've been in Raleigh three days altogether," answered
Carrington, falling into step at his side, and they continued on
across the meadow in silence.
"Do you observe the decorations of those refreshment booths?--the
tasteful disposition of our national colors, sir?" the judge
presently inquired.
Carrington smiled; he was able to follow his companion's train of
thought.
They were elbowing the crowd now. Here were men from the small
clearings in homespun and butternut or fringed hunting-shirts,
with their women folk trailing after them. Here, too, in lesser
numbers, were the lords of the soil, the men who counted their
acres by the thousand and their slaves by the score.
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