Old Judge Priest

by Irvin S. Cobb

For once in his life, and once only, Sergeant Jimmy Bagby teetered just the least bit in his unquestioning allegiance to his life-long friend.

“Well, I don't know,” he said, shaking his head; “I don't know. You might be right in what you say, and then ag'in you might be wrong. It shore did look like he slipped a little, awhile ago, but you can't jest always tell whut's on Jedge Priest's mind,” he added, pluckily renewing his loyalty.

The Mims County man grunted his disgust. “Don't be foolin' yourself,” he stated morosely. “You take it frum me—when old men start goin' they don't never come back. And your old Jedge is plumb gone. A baby could 'a' seen that frum the way he acted jest now.” The object of this criticism ploughed his slow way outdoors, all the while shaking his head with the air of one who has abandoned hope. In the street he gently but firmly disengaged himself from those who would have speech with him, and with obvious gloom in his manner made a way across the square to the Mansard House, where he and Major Guest had adjoining rooms on the second floor. His gait briskened, though, as soon as he had passed through the lobby of the Mansard House and was hidden from the eyes of friend and enemy alike.

From the privacy of his room he sent out for certain men. With Cap'n Buck Owings, a small, greyish, resolute gentleman, and with Sheriff Giles Birdsong, a large, reddish, equally resolute gentleman, he was closeted perhaps ten minutes. They went away saying nothing to any one, for the gift of silence was an attribute that these two shared in common. Then the judge had brief audience with Major Guest, who emerged from the conference a crushed and diminished figure. Finally he asked to speak with Sergeant Bagby. The sergeant found him sitting in his shirt-sleeves, with his feet on a window ledge, looking out into the square and gently agitating a palm-leaf fan.

“Jimmy,” he said, “I want you to run an errand fur me. Will you go find Dabney Prentiss—I seen him down there on the street a minute ago—and tell him I say to git a speech ready?”

“Whut kind of a speech?” inquired Sergeant Bagby.

“Jimmy Bagby,” reproved Judge Priest, “ain't you knowed Dab Prentiss long enough to know that you don't have to tell him whut kind of a speech he's to make? He's got all kinds of speeches in stock at all times. I'll confide this much to you though—it'll be the kind of a speech that he would 'specially prefer to make. Jest tell him I say be ready to speak out and utter a few burnin' words when the proper time comes, ef it does come, which I certainly hope and trust it may.”

Not greatly informed in his mind by this somewhat cryptic explanation, the Sergeant withdrew, and Judge Priest, getting up on his feet, actually began humming a little wordless, tuneless tune which was a favourite of his. However, a thought of the melancholy interview that he had just had with Major Guest must have recurred to him almost immediately, for when he appeared in the open a bit later on his return to the opera house his head was bent and his form was shrunken and his gait was slow. He seemed a man weighed down with vain repinings and vainer regrets.

It would appear that the secretary in the interim had completed his appointed task, for no sooner had the convention reassembled than the chairman mounted to the stage and took his place alongside a small table behind the footlights and announced that nominations would now be in order; which statement was a cue for Attorney-at-Law Augustus Tate, of the County of Emmett, to get gracefully upon his feet and toss back his imposing sable mane and address the assemblage.

Attorney Tate was an orator of parts, as he now proceeded to prove beyond the slightest peradventure of a doubt. He was known as the Black Eagle of Emmett, for it had been said of him that he had an eye like that noble bird, the eagle. He had a chin like one, too; but that, of course, had no bearing upon his talents as displayed upon the stump, on the platform and in the forum, and in truth only a few malicious detractors had ever felt called upon to direct attention to the fact. In flowing and sonorous periods he placed in nomination the name of the Honourable Horace K. Maydew, concluding in a burst of verbal pin wheels and metaphorical skyrockets, whereat there was a great display of enthusiasm from floor and balcony.