On Friday, after Jim Weeks had told Harvey that he was free to go to Truesdale, he followed the young man almost fondly with his eyes and he did not at once resume the work which awaited him. For Harvey's request had set him thinking. During years that passed after the day when he took his last drive with Ethel Harvey, he had not dared to think of her. Later when he heard of her death, he did not try to analyze the impulse which led him to offer a position to Harvey. As he grew to know the young fellow he gradually admitted to himself his fondness for him, and now that he believed that Harvey was in love, he allowed himself for the first time the luxury of reminiscence.
The old Louisville days came back to him when he and Ethel rode together through country lanes and he loved her. The wound was healed; it had lost its sting a score of years ago, but his mood was still tender, and as he stared at the pile of papers on his desk, thoughts of C. & S.C. were far away. At last, however, the consciousness of this came upon him and he thought, “I reckon I need exercise,” and then a moment later, “It'll be quite a trick, though, to find a horse that's up to my weight.”
He had hardly taken up his work when Pease appeared and told him that a man wanted to see him. The man was a deputy sheriff, and he came to serve on James Weeks the injunction which Judge Black had signed in Porter's office two hours before.
It may be that his earlier mood had something to do with it; for as Jim laid the paper on his desk, his thoughts went back half a century to one of his boyhood days. It was a summer afternoon, and Jim and some of his friends had been in swimming; somehow it became necessary for him to fight Thomas Ransome. Jim had never been in a fight before, and he had no theories whatever, but he found that he could hit hard, and it never occurred to him to try to parry. Thomas was forced to give back steadily until his farther retreat was cut off by the river and he saw that more vigorous tactics were required. With utter disregard of the laws of war he drove a vicious kick at Jim's stomach. Had it landed, its effect would probably have been serious, but Jim, for the first time since the fight began, stepped back, and with both hands gave additional impetus to the foot, so that Thomas kicked much higher than he had intended, and losing his balance, he toppled into the river with a very satisfactory splash.
Jim smiled at the recollection and then read the injunction again to see if it were possible to catch Porter's foot. His eye rested long on the sputtery signature at the bottom, and he thought, “I might have known that Porter wouldn't go into this business without owning a Judge.”
He put the paper in his pocket, then locked his desk, and with a word to Pease he left the office. Jim dined down town, and not until after dinner did he think of Harvey and his leave of absence. He would need his secretary to-morrow, and it would not do to have him out of reach. But the moments of reminiscence that afternoon came to Harvey's rescue, and Jim in the most unbusinesslike way decided to get on without his secretary. “He can't go through that but once,” thought Jim.
He left the restaurant and walked rapidly to the Northern Station, and for the second time that week the Northern Limited took Jim to Manchester.
Jim was going to see Judge Grey. He had already decided what he wanted the Judge to do; whether he could get him to do it was another question, which Jim was going to put to the test as soon as possible.
The trains on the Northern in coming into Manchester run down the middle of one of the main business streets, and engineers are compelled by city statutes to run slowly. As the Limited slowed down, Jim walked out on the rear platform and stood gazing at the brightly lighted shop windows. At an intersecting street he saw a trolley car waiting for the train to pass; the blue light it showed told Jim it was the car he wanted, so he swung quickly off the train and stepped aboard the car as it came bumping over the crossing. It was evidently behind its schedule, for once on clear track again it sped along rapidly. A man was running to catch the car, and Jim watched him with amused interest. At first he gained, but as the speed of the car increased he gave up the race; but he had come near enough for Jim to recognize him as the man who had dined only a few tables from him that evening in Chicago and who had sat a few seats behind him on the Limited. Jim smiled. “They're mighty anxious to know what I'm doing,” he thought.
Judge Grey did not go away on vacations. He was a homely man, with a large family, and he took serious views of life. He was country bred, and he had never outgrown a certain rusticity of appearance. It was said that his wife always cut his hair, and the concentric circles made by the neatly trimmed ends lent verisimilitude to the tale that she began at the crown with a butter dish to guide her scissors, then extended the diameter of her circle by using next a saucer, and last a soup bowl.