“What is it, Hannibal; what is it, dear?”

“Nothing, only I’m so glad to find you!”

“I am glad to see you, too!” said Betty, as she wiped his tears away.  “When did you get here, dear?”

“We got here just to-day, Miss Betty,” said Hannibal.

Mr. Ware, careless as to dress, with a wiry black beard of a week’s growth decorating his chin and giving an unkempt appearance which his expression did not mitigate, it being of the sour and fretful sort; scowled down on the child.  He had favored Boggs’ with his presence, not because he felt the least interest in horse-racing, but because he had no faith in girls, and especially had he profound mistrust of Betty.  She was so much easily portable wealth, a pink-faced chit ready to fall into the arms of the first man who proposed to her.  But Charley Norton had not seemed disturbed by the planter’s forbidding air.  Between those two there existed complete reciprocity of feeling, inasmuch as Tom’s presence was as distasteful to Norton as his own presence was distressing to Ware.

“Where is your Uncle Bob, Hannibal?” Betty asked, glancing about, and at her question a shadow crossed the child’s face and the tears gathered again in his eyes.

“Ain’t you seen him, Miss Betty?” he whispered.  He had been sustained by the belief that when he found her he should find his Uncle Bob, too.

“Why, what do you mean, Hannibal—­isn’t your Uncle Bob with you?” demanded Betty.

“He got hurt in a fight, and I got separated from him way back yonder just after we came out of the mountains.”  He looked up piteously into Betty’s face.  “But you think he’ll find me, don’t you?”

“Why, you poor little thing!” cried Betty compassionately, and again she sank on her knees at Hannibal’s side, and slipped her arms about him.  The child began to cry softly.

“What ragamuffin’s this, Betty?” growled Ware disgustedly.

But Betty did not seem to hear.

“Did you come alone, Hannibal?” she asked.

“No, ma’am; the judge and Mr. Mahaffy, they fetched me.”

The judge had drawn nearer as Betty and Hannibal spoke together, but Mahaffy hung back.  There were gulfs not to be crossed by him.  It was different with the judge; the native magnificence of his mind fitted him for any occasion.  He pulled up his stock, and coaxed a half-inch of limp linen down about his wrists, then very splendidly he lifted his napless hat from his shiny bald head and pressing it against his fat chest with much fervor, elegantly inclined himself from the hips.

“Allow me the honor to present myself, ma’am—­Price is my name —­Judge Slocum Price.  May I be permitted to assume that this is the Miss Betty of whom my young protege so often speaks?” The judge beamed benevolently, and rested a ponderous hand on the boy’s head.