The man did it. At the finish the Judge was silent a minute, turning over in his mind the shameful picture of Tom’s flight over the footlights; then he said, as if musing aloud—“H’m—I don’t understand it. I was asleep at home. He didn’t wake me. Thought he was competent to manage his affair without my help, I reckon.” His face lit up with pride and pleasure at that thought, and he said with a cheery complacency, “I like that—it’s the true old blood—hey, Pembroke?”
Howard smiled an iron smile, and nodded his head approvingly. Then the news-bringer spoke again—
“But Tom beat the twin on the trial.”
The Judge looked at the man wonderingly, and said—
“The trial? What trial?”
“Why, Tom had him up before Judge Robinson for assault and battery.”
The old man shrank suddenly together like one who has received a death-stroke. Howard sprang for him as he sank forward in a swoon, and took him in his arms, and bedded him on his back in the boat. He sprinkled water in his face, and said to the startled visitor—
“Go, now—don’t let him come to and find you here. You see what an effect your heedless speech has had; you ought to have been more considerate than to blurt out such a cruel piece of slander as that.”
“I’m right down sorry I did it now, Mr. Howard, and I wouldn’t have done it if I had thought: but it ain’t slander; it’s perfectly true, just as I told him.”
He rowed away. Presently the old Judge came out of his faint and looked up piteously into the sympathetic face that was bent over him.