After Ned had retired to the hall the vain old man, after looking all around him, stealthily arose from his seat and surveyed his person in an elaborate mirror over the mantle piece, arranging his hair, beard, and eyebrows in every detail of evenness and position, and was thus assaulted by the bewitching beauty of Ingleside without a picket or skirmish line, and with his back to the conqueror of hearts. The dilemma was excessively embarrassing and as he turned to speak to the queenly beauty he began to stammer and quite unconsciously to make apologies.
"I called this morning, madam," he began, "er, er, er, to inquire after the health of your father. You don't know er, er, er, how solicitous I have been about him of late. How is he this morning?"
"He is very much better, I thank you, sir," replied Alice with an effort at self control, "and if you will excuse me I will inform him that you are here."
"I beg you will er, er, er"—stammered the judge with an uncontrollable energy.
"Oh, I am sure it will do him so much good to see you," interrupted Alice, as she gracefully bowed herself out of the room, leaving the bewildered lover to destroy with huge battering rams the beautiful castle which his ardent fancy and old Ned's sycophancy had erected.
"In olden times," soliloquized the judge, as he brought his clenched hand with force upon his knee, "kings alone had their fools; and here I am playing the miserable fool in the presence of an unsophisticated maid. Father indeed! Why did I ask about her father, blasted idiot that I am?"
The old judge was still scourging himself with the thongs of emphatic rebuke, when to his surprise another judge entered the parlor with the beautiful Alice upon his arm.
Colonel Seymour and the two judges had met before in the court room, and were now enjoying themselves in an old-fashioned way in the elaborate parlor of the old mansion.
Judge Bonham was very delicate and refined in his compliments of his friend Judge Livingstone, who in the niceties of the law "could divide a hair 'twixt the north and north-west side." He was the judge who had extracted the poison sacs from the fangs of reconstruction; the judge who had stampeded the vile and vicious hordes that thronged and polluted the temple of justice. As Judge Bonham looked at the man, he felt that the entreaty of the South had been answered by the Power that rules in heaven and earth.
"God give us men; a time like this demands
Great minds, strong hearts, true faith and willing hands;
Men whom the lust of office cannot buy,
Men who have honor and will not lie."