“That’s what Jackson remembers if he remembers anything!” he muttered, as with trembling fingers he broke the seal.  Almost instantly a smile overspread his battered features.  He hitched his chin higher and squared his ponderous shoulders.  “I am not forgotten—­no, damn it—­no!” he exulted under his breath, “recalls me with sincere esteem and considers my services to the country as well worthy of recognition—­” the judge breathed deep.  What would Mahaffy find to say now!  Certainly this was well calculated to disturb the sour cynicism of his friend.  His bleared eyes brimmed.  After all his groping he had touched hands with the realities at last!  Even a federal judgeship, though not an office of the first repute in the south. had its dignity—­it signified something!  He would make Solomon his clerk!  The judge reached for his hat.  Mahaffy must know at once that fortune had mended for them.  Why, at that moment he was actually in receipt of an income!

He sat down, the better to enjoy the unique sensation.  Taxes were being levied and collected with no other end in view than his stipend—­his ardent fancy saw the whole machinery of government in operation for his benefit.  It was a singular feeling he experienced.  Then promptly his spendthrift brain became active.  He needed clothes—­so did Mahaffy—­so did his grandson; they must take a larger house; he would buy himself a man servant; these were pressing necessities as he now viewed them.

Once again he reached for his hat, the desire to rush off to Belle Plain was overmastering.

“I reckon I’d be justified in hiring a conveyance from Pegloe,” he thought, but just here he had a saving memory of his unfinished task; that claimed precedence and he resumed his pen.

An hour later Pegloe’s black boy presented himself to the judge.  He came bearing a gift, and the gift appropriately enough was a square case bottle of respectable size.  The judge was greatly touched by this attention, but he began by making a most temperate use of the tavern-keeper’s offering; then as the formidable document he was preparing took shape under his hand he more and more lost that feeling of Spartan fortitude which had at first sustained him in the presence of temptation.  He wrote and sipped in complete and quiet luxury, and when at last he had exhausted the contents of the bottle it occurred to him that it would be only proper personally to convey his thanks to Pegloe.  Perhaps he was not uninspired in this by ulterior hopes; if so, they were richly rewarded.  The resources of the City Tavern were suddenly placed at his disposal.  He attributed this to a variety of causes all good and sufficient, but the real reason never suggested itself, indeed it was of such a perfidious nature that the judge, open and generous-minded, could not have grasped it.

By six o’clock he was undeniably drunk; at eight he was sounding still deeper depths of inebriety with only the most confused memory of impending events; at ten he collapsed and was borne up-stairs by Pegloe and his black boy to a remote chamber in the kitchen wing.  Here he was undressed and put to bed, and the tavernkeeper, making a bundle of his clothes, retired from the room, locking the door after him, and the judge was doubly a prisoner.