“I want to be out of my troubles!” He was trembling like a leaf.
“But you’re not so much of a coward, Judge, that you’ll shift off all of your troubles on to your family, along with the awful one you were just about to shove on them! I know you’re not. I have always looked up to you, sir.”.
“But nobody can look up to me from now on, young man!”
“I always shall, sir. We all get rattled some time in our lives.” I knew I was making pretty poor talk to a man like Judge Kingsley, but I was trembling as badly as he was and I did not know what to say to him.
“I’m only poor Ross Sidney, sir. You know I don’t amount to much, but won’t you consider that I have done a little something for you this night? I stopped you when you didn’t know what you were doing.”
“I did know what I was doing,” he groaned. “I was doing it because I couldn’t go home. I walked up the road to the woods—to my woods on purpose to do it!”
It came to me that fate, or whatever rules human actions, had set me to play quite a part in Judge Kingsley’s life, for his private woods were not there—and I was.
“Will you consider me enough of a man, sir, so that I can ask a man-to-man promise that you’ll sleep on this thing and have a talk with me to-morrow? I have helped you on one matter. I’ll do my best to help you in other ways!”
“There’s no help for me.”
“But let me have a talk to-morrow with you! I beg you, Judge Kingsley. Give me your promise till tomorrow!”