The old Judge moved to his place on the platform and mounted it heavily. As he sat down, he gave a little grunting sigh. An old man's tired sigh carries a lot of meaning sometimes; this one did.
“Jimmy,” he said, “if you will act as adjutant and take the desk, we'll open without music, for this onc't. This is about the smallest turn-out we ever had for a regular meetin', but we can go ahead, I reckin.”
Sergeant Bagby came forward and took a smaller desk off at the side of the platform. Adjusting his spectacles, just so, he tugged a warped drawer open and produced a flat book showing signs of long wear and much antiquity. A sheet of heavy paper had been pasted across the cover of this book, but with much use it had frayed away so that the word “Ledger” showed through in faded gilt letters. The Sergeant opened at a place where a row of names ran down the blue lined sheet and continued over upon the next page. Most of the names had dates set opposite them in fresher writing than the original entries. Only now and then was there a name with no date written after it. He cleared his throat to begin.
“I presume,” the Commander was saying, “that we might dispense with the roll call for tonight.”
“That's agreeable to me,” said the acting adjutant, and he shut up the book.
“There is an election pendin' to fill a vacancy, but in view of the small attendance present this evenin'—”
The Judge cut off his announcement to listen. Some one walking with the slow, uncertain gait of a very tired or a very feeble person was climbing up the stairs. The shuffling sound came on to the top and stopped, and an old negro man stood bareheaded in the door blinking his eyes at the light and winking his bushy white tufts of eyebrows up and down. The Judge shaded his own eyes the better to make out the new comer.
“Why, it's Uncle Ike Copeland,” he said heartily. “Come right in, Uncle Ike, and set down.”
“Yes, take a seat and make yourself comfortable,” added the Sergeant. In the tones of both the white men was a touch of kindly but none the less measurable condescension—that instinctive turn of inflection by which the difference held firmly to exist between the races was expressed and made plain, but in this case it was subtly warmed and tinctured with an essence of something else—an indefinable, evasive something that would probably not have been apparent in their greetings to a younger negro.
“Thanky, gen'l'men,” said the old man as he came in slowly. He was tall and thin, so thin that the stoop in his back seemed an inevitable inbending of a frame too long and too slight to support its burden. And he was very black. His skin must have been lustrous and shiny in his youth, but now was overlaid with a grayish aspect, like the mould upon withered fruit. His forehead, naturally high and narrow, was deeply indented at the temples and he had a long face with high cheek bones, and a well developed nose and thin lips. The face was Semitic in its suggestion rather than Ethiopian. The whites of his eyes showed a yellow tinge, but the brown pupils were blurred by a pronounced bluish cast. His clothes were old but spotlessly clean, and his shoes were slashed open along the toes and his bare feet showed through the slashed places. He made his way at a hobbling gait toward the back row of chairs.