The judge regarded his walking-stick meditatively for a moment, and continued his way.  The smile with which he had followed the vanishing figure of Juliet Burwell returned to his face, and his features softened from their usual chilly serenity.

He had gone but a short distance and was passing the iron gate of the churchyard, when the droning of a voice came to him, and looking beyond the bars, he saw little Nicholas Burr lying at full length upon a marble slab, his head in his hands and his feet waving in the air.

Entering the gate, the judge followed the walk of moss-grown stones leading to the church steps, and paused within hearing of the voice, which went on in an abstracted drawl.

“The most cel-e-bra-ted sys-tem of juris-pru-dence known to the world begins, as it ends, with a code—­” He was not reading, for the book was closed.  He seemed rather to be repeating over and over again words which had been committed to memory.

“With a code.  From the commencement to the close of its history, the ex-posi-tors of Ro-man Law con-sistently em-ployed lan-guage which implied that the body of their sys-tem rested on the twelve De-cem-viral Tables—­Dec-em-vi-ral—­De-cem-vi-ral Tables.”

“Bless my soul!” said the judge.  The boy glanced up, blushed, and would have risen, but the judge waved him back.

“No—­no, don’t get up.  I heard you as I was going by.  What are you doing?”

“Learnin’.”

“Learning!  Dear me!  What do you mean by learning?”

“I’m learnin’ by heart, sir—­and—­and, if you don’t mind, sir, what does j-u-r-i-s-p-r-u-d-e-n-c-e mean?”

The judge started, returning the boy’s eager gaze with one of kindly perplexity.

“Bless my soul!” he said again.  “You aren’t trying to understand that, are you?”

The boy grew scarlet and his lips trembled.  “No, sir,” he answered.  “I’m jest learnin’ it now.  I’ll know what it means when I’m bigger—­”

“And you expect to remember it?” asked the judge.

“I don’t never forget,” said the boy.

“Bless my soul!” exclaimed the judge for the third time.

For a moment he stood looking silently down upon the marble slab with its defaced lettering.  Of the wordy epitaph which had once redounded to the honour of the bones beneath there remained only the words “who departed,” but he read these with a long abstracted gaze.

“Let me see,” he said at last, speaking with his accustomed dignity.  “Did you ever go to school, Nicholas?”

“Yes, sir.”

“When?”

“I went ‘most three winters, sir, but I had to leave off on o’count o’ pa’s not havin’ any hand ’cep’n me.”

The judge smiled.

“Ah, well,” he returned.  “We’ll see if you can’t begin again.  My boy has a tutor, you know, and his playmates come to study with him.  He’s about your age, and it will give you a start.  Come in to-morrow at nine, and we’ll talk it over.  No, don’t get up.  I am going.”