“Think of that!” murmured Yancy softly.  He was deeply moved.  So was Mr. Cavendish, who was gifted with a wealth of ready sympathy.  He thrust out a hardened hand to the judge.

“Shake!” he said.  “You’re a heap better than you look.”  A thin ripple of laughter escaped Mahaffy, but the judge accepted Chills and Fever’s proffered hand.  He understood that here was a simple genuine soul.

“Price, isn’t it important for us to know why Mr. Yancy thinks the boy has been taken back to North Carolina?” said Mahaffy.

“Just what kin is Hannibal to you, Mr. Yancy?” asked the judge resuming his seat.

“Strictly speaking, he ain’t none.  That he come to live with me is all owing to Mr. Crenshaw, who’s a good man when left to himself, but he’s got a wife, so a body may say he never is left to himself,” began Yancy; and then briefly he told the story of the woman and the child much as he had told it to Bladen at the Barony the day of General Quintard’s funeral.

The judge, his back to the light and his face in shadow, rested his left elbow on the desk and with his cbin sunk in his palm, followed the Scratch Hiller’s narrative with the closest attention.

“And General Quintard never saw him—­never manifested any interest in him?” the words came slowly from the judge’s lips, he seemed to gulp down something that rose in his throat.  “Poor little lad!” he muttered, and again, “Poor little lad!”

“Never once, sir.  He told the slaves to keep him out of his sight.  We-all wondered, fo’ you know how niggers will talk.  We thought maybe he was some kin to the Quintards, but we couldn’t figure out how.  The old general never had but one child and she had been dead fo’ years.  The child couldn’t have been hers no how.”  Yancy paused.

The judge drummed idly on the desk.

“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 yearsyears 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 felonous assault.”