"Why, where would Judge Price get so much money, Hannibal?" she
asked, greatly astonished.
"He won't have to get it, Miss Betty; Mr. Mahaffy says he don't
reckon no one will ever tell who wrote the letter--he 'lows the
man who done that will keep pretty mum--he just dassent tell!"
the boy explained.
"No, I suppose not--" and Betty saw that perhaps, after all, the
judge had not assumed any very great financial responsibility.
"He can't be a coward, though, Hannibal!" she added, for she
understood that the risk of personal violence which he ran was
quite genuine. She had formed her own unsympathetic estimate of
him that day at Boggs' race-track; Mahaffy in his blackest hour
could have added nothing to it. Twice since then she had met him
in Raleigh, which had only served to fix that first impression.
"Miss Betty, he's just like my Uncle Bob was- he ain't afraid of
nothing! He totes them pistols of his--loaded--if you notice
good you can see where they bulge out his coat!" Hannibal's
eyes, very round and big, looked up into hers.
"Is he as poor as he seems, Hannibal?" inquired Betty.
"He never has no money, Miss Betty, but I don't reckon he's what
a body would call pore."
It might have baffled a far more mature intelligence than
Hannibal's to comprehend those peculiar processes by which the
judge sustained himself and his intimate fellowship with
adversity--that it was his magnificence of mind which made the
squalor of his daily life seem merely a passing phase--but the
boy had managed to point a delicate distinction, and Betty
grasped something of the hope and faith which never quite died
out in Slocum Price's indomitable breast.
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