“What implacable hate—what iron pride!” he murmured, and swept his hand across his eyes. Absorbed and aloof, he was busy with his thoughts that spanned the waste of years, years that seemed to glide before him in review, each bitter with its hideous memories of shame and defeat. Then from the smoke of these lost battles emerged the lonely figure of the child as he had seen him that June night. His ponderous arm stiffened where it rested on the desk, he straightened up in his chair and his face assumed its customary expression of battered dignity, while a smile at once wistful and tender hovered about his lips.
“One other question,” he said. “Until this man Murrell appeared you had no trouble with Bladen? He was content that you should keep the child—your right to Hannibal was never challenged?”
“Never, sir. All my troubles began about that time.”
“Murrell belongs in these parts,” said the judge.
“I'd admire fo' to meet him,” said Yancy quietly.
The judge grinned.
“I place my professional services at your disposal,” he said. “Yours is a clear case of felonious assault.”
“No, it ain't, sir—I look at it this-a-ways; it's a clear case of my giving him the damnedest sort of a body beating!”
“Sir,” said the judge, “I'll hold your hat while you are about it!”
Hicks had taken his time in responding to the judge's summons, but now his step sounded in the hall and throwing open the door he entered the room. Whether consciously or not he had acquired something of that surly, forbidding manner which was characteristic of his employer. A curt nod of the head was his only greeting.