No misconception was possible
about either.
"May I offer you a glass of liquor?" asked Fentress, breaking the
silence. He stepped to the walnut centertable where there was a
decanter and glasses. By a gesture the judge declined the
invitation. Whereat the colonel looked surprised, but not so
surprised as Mahaffy. There was another silence.
"I don't think we ever met before?" observed Fentress. There was
something in the fixed stare his visitor was bending upon him
that he found disquieting, just why, he could not have told.
But that fixed stare of the judge's continued. No, the man had
not changed--he had grown older certainly, but age had not come
ungracefully; he became the glossy broadcloth and spotless linen
he wore. Here was a man who could command the good things of
life, using them with a rational temperance. The room itself was
in harmony with his character; it was plain but rich in its
appointments, at once his library and his office, while the
well-filled cases ranged about the walls showed his tastes to be
in the main scholarly and intellectual.
"How long have you lived here?" asked the judge abruptly.
Fentress seemed to hesitate; but the judge's glance, compelling
and insistent, demanded an answer.
"Ten years."
"You have known many men of all classes as a lawyer and a
planter?" said the judge. Fentress inclined his head. The judge
took a step nearer him. "People have a great trick of coming and
going in these western states--all sorts of damned riffraff drift
in and out of these new lands.
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