After that Judge Priest bowed his head again and spoke the benediction.
It turns out that I was right a while back when I predicted this chapter of this book might end with Judge Priest sitting at his desk in his room at the old courthouse. On the morning of the day following the day of this funeral he sat there, putting the last words to his decision touching upon the merits of the existing controversy in the congregation of the True Believers' Afro-American Church of Zion. The door opened and in walked Beck Giltner, saloon keeper, sure-thing gambler, handy-man-with-a-gun, and, according to the language of a resolution unanimously adopted at a mass meeting of the Law and Order League, force-for-evil.
Beck Giltner was dressed in his best. He wore his wide-brimmed, black soft hat, with its tall crown carefully dented in, north, east, south and west; his long black coat; his white turn-down collar; his white lawn tie; and in the bosom of his plaited shirt of fine white linen his big diamond pin, that was shaped like an inverted banjo. This was Beck Giltner's attire for the street and for occasions of ceremony. Indoors it was the same, except that sometimes he took the coat off and turned back his shirt cuffs.
“Good mornin', Beck,” said the judge. “Well?”
“Judge Priest,” said Giltner, “as a rule I don't come to this courthouse except when I have to come. But to-day I've come to tell you something. You made a mistake yesterday!”
“A mistake, suh?” The judge's tone was sharp and quick.
“Yes, suh, that's what you did,” returned the tall gambler. “I don't mean in regards to that funeral you held for that dead girl. You probably don't care what I think one way or the other, but I want to tell you I was strong for that, all the way through. But you made a mistake just the same, Judge; you didn't take up a collection.
“It had been a good many years since I was inside of a church, until I walked with you and the others to that little nigger meetin'-house yesterday—forty-odd years I reckon; not since I was a kid, anyway. But to the best of my early recollections they always took a collection for something or other every time I did go to church. And yesterday you overlooked that part altogether.
“So last night I took it on myself to get up a collection for you. I started it with a bill or so off my own roll. Then I passed the hat round at several places where you wouldn't scarcely care to go yourself. And I didn't run across a single fellow that failed to contribute. Some of 'em don't move in the best society, and there's some more of 'em that you'd only know of by reputation. But every last one of 'em put in something. There was one man that didn't have only seven cents to his name—he put that in. So here it is—four hundred and seventy-five dollars and forty-two cents, accordin' to my count.”
From one pocket he fetched forth a rumpled packet of paper money and from the other a small cloth sack, which gave off metallic clinking sounds. He put them down together on the desk in front of Judge Priest.