"Confound it, John, don't you suppose I know?"
"I hope so, William," said the Judge.
William snorted. "You don't do anything of the sort, and you know it."
"Well, if I don't I know it, of course, but—"
"Oh, you be confound. You are all the time—"
"Go ahead with your story."
"I'll do nothing of the sort, sir; I'll do nothing of the sort. You are all the time trying to put it on me, and I'll do nothing of the sort; and the first thing you know, I'll pick up and leave here. I was simply going to tell of something that took place on the—Mr. Bradley, did I say the tenth?"
The preacher had not been able to keep a straight face, but with reasonable gravity he managed to say that the tenth was the final date agreed upon. "By all parties concerned," said the Judge, puffing at his cigar. William scratched his head. "But, after all, it must have been on the eleventh."
"Knocks out my favorite again," the Judge muttered, but William took no notice of the interruption. It is the duty of a family joke to be forbearing.
"Ab Tollivar came to me on that day," William began, "and said that there was to be—"