One of his first acts after taking possession of the property was to have Mahaffy reinterred in the grove of oaks below his bedroom windows, and he marked the spot with a great square of granite.  The judge, visibly shaken by his emotions, saw the massive boulder go into place.

“Harsh and rugged like the nature of him who lies beneath it—­but enduring, too, as he was,” he murmured.  He turned to Yancy and Hannibal, and added

“You will lay me beside him when I die.”

Then when the bitter struggle came and he was wrenched and tortured by longings, his strength was in remembering his promise to the dead man, and it was his custom to go out under the oaks and pace to and fro beside Mahaffy’s grave until he had gained the mastery of himself.  Only Yancy and Hannibal knew how fierce the conflict was he waged, yet in the end he won that best earned of all victories, the victory over himself.

“My salvation has been a costly thing; it was bought with the blood of my friend,” he told Yancy.

It was Hannibal’s privilege to give Cavendish out of the vast Quintard tract such a farm as the earl had never dreamed of owning even in his most fervid moments of imagining; and he abandoned all idea of going to England to claim his title.  At the judge’s suggestion he named the place Earl’s Court.  He and Polly were entirely satisfied with their surroundings, and never ceased to congratulate themselves that they had left Lincoln County.  They felt that their friends the Carringtons at Belle Plain, though untitled people, were still of an equal rank with themselves; while as for the judge, they doubted if royalty itself laid it any over him.

Mr. Yancy accepted his changed fortunes with philosophic composure.  Technically he filled the position of overseer at The Oaks, but the judge’s activity was so great that this position was largely a sinecure.  The most arduous work he performed was spending his wages.

Certain trifling peculiarities survived with the judge even after he had entered what he had once been prone to call the Portal of Hope; for while his charity was very great and he lived with the splendid air of plenty that belonged to an older order, it required tact, patience, and persistence to transact business with him; and his creditors, of whom there were always a respectable number, discovered that he esteemed them as they were aggressive and determined.  He explained to Yancy that too great certainty detracted from the charm of living, for, after all, life was a game—­a gamble—­he desired to be reminded of this.  Yet he was held in great respect for his wisdom and learning, which was no more questioned that his courage.

Thus surrounded by his friends, who were devoted to him, he began Hannibal’s education and the preparation of his memoirs, intended primarily for the instruction of his grandson, and which he modestly decided to call The History of My Own Times, which clearly showed the magnificence of his mind and its outlook.