The heat of silent middays found them lounging beside shady pools, where the ripple of fretted waters filled the pauses in their talk.  It was then that the judge and Mahaffy exchanged views on literature and politics, on religion and politics, on the public debt and politics, on canals and national roads and more politics.  They could and did honestly differ at great length and with unflagging energy on these vital topics, especially politics, for they were as far apart mentally as they were close together morally.

Mahaffy, morose and embittered, regarded the life they were living as an unmixed hardship.  The judge entered upon it with infinite zest.  He displayed astonishing adaptability, while he brought all the resources of a calm and modest knowledge to bear on the vexed problem of procuring sustenance for himself and for his two companions.

“To an old campaigner like me, nothing could be more delightful than this holiday, coming as it does on the heels of grinding professional activity,” he observed to Mahaffy.  “This is the way our first parents lived—­close to nature, in touch with her gracious beneficence!  Sir, this experience is singularly refreshing after twenty years of slaving at the desk.  If any man can grasp the possibilities of a likely looking truck-patch at a glance, I am that man, and as for getting around in the dark and keeping the lay of the land—­well, I suppose it’s my military training.  Jackson always placed the highest value on such data as I furnished him.  He leaned on me more than any other man, Solomon—­”

“I’ve heard he stood up pretty straight,” said Mahaffy affably.  The judge’s abandoned conduct distressed him not a little, but his remonstrances had been in vain.

“I consider that when society subjected me to the indignity of arrest, I was relieved of all responsibility.  Injustice must bear its own fruit,” the judge had answered him sternly.

His beginnings had been modest enough:  a few ears of corn, a few hills of potatoes, and the like, had satisfied him; then one night he appeared in camp with two streaks of scarlet down the side of his face.

“Are you hurt, Price?” demanded Mahaffy, betraying an anxiety of which he was instantly ashamed.

“Let me relieve your apprehension, Solomon; it’s only a trickle of stewed fruit.  I folded a couple of pies and put them in the crown of my hat,” explained the judge.

“You mean you’ve been in somebody’s springhouse ?”

“It was unlocked, Solomon, This will be a warning to the owner.  I consider I have done him a kindness.”

Thus launched on a career of plunder, the judge very speedily accumulated a water bucket—­useful when one wished to milk a cow —­an ax from a woodpile, a kettle from a summer kitchen, a tin of soft soap, and an excellent blanket from a wash-line.

“For the boy, Solomon,” he said gently, when he caught Mahaffy’s steady disapproving glance fixed upon him as he displayed this last trophy.