“Think alike about fiddlesticks!” spluttered the General, while he spilled over his waistcoat the water Corinna had given him.  “Why, the fellow ain’t even in your class, sir!”

“I said we had thoughts, not habits, in common, Powhatan,” rejoined the Judge blandly.  “The same habits make a class, but the same thoughts make a friendship.”

“He told me he had talked to you,” said Stephen eagerly, “and I wanted to know what your impression was.  He called you a great old boy, by the way.”

The Judge, who could wear at will the face either of Brutus or of Antony, became at once the genial friend of humanity.  “That pleases me more than you realize,” he said.  “I have a suspicion that Gideon knows human nature about as thoroughly as our General here knows the battles of the Confederacy.”

“I confess the man rather gripped me,” rejoined Stephen.  “There’s something about him, personality or mere play-acting, that catches one in spite of oneself.”

The Judge appeared to acquiesce.  “I am inclined to think,” he observed presently, “that the quality you feel in Vetch is simply a violent candour.  Most people give you truth in small quantities; but Vetch pours it out in a torrent.  He offers it to you as Powhatan used to take his Bourbon in the good old days before the Eighteenth Amendment—­straight and strong.  I used to tell Powhatan that he’d get the name of a drunkard simply because he could stand what the rest of the world couldn’t—­and I’ll say as much for our friend Gideon.”

“Do you mean, my dear,” inquired Corinna placidly, “that the Governor is honestly dishonest?”

The Judge’s suavity clothed him like velvet.  “I know nothing about his honesty.  I doubt if any one does.  He may be a liar and yet speak the truth, I suppose, from unscrupulous motives.  But I am not maintaining that he is entirely right, you understand—­merely that like the rest of us he is not entirely wrong.  I am not taking sides, you know.  I am too old to fight anybody’s battles—­even distressed Virtue’s.”

“Then you think—­you really think that he is sincere?” asked Stephen.

“Sincere?  Well, yes, in a measure.  Nothing advertises one so widely as a reputation for sincerity; and the man has a positive genius for self-advertisement.  He has found that it pays in politics to speak the truth, and so he speaks it at the top of his voice.  It takes courage, of course, and I am ready to admit that he is a little more courageous than the rest of us.  To that extent, I should say that he has the advantage of us.”

“Do you mean to imply,” demanded the General wrathfully, “that a common circus rider like that, a rascally revolutionist into the bargain, is better than this lady and myself, sir?”

“Well, hardly better than Corinna,” replied the Judge.  “Indeed, I was about to add that the two most candid persons I know are Corinna and Vetch.  There is a good deal about Vetch, by the way, that reminds me of Corinna.”