m.

CHAPTER IX

Old Jerry drove his route that morning in a numbed, trancelike
fashion; or, rather, he sat there upon the worn-out leather seat with
the reins looped over the dash, staring straight ahead of him, and
allowed the fat old mare to take her own pace. It was she who made the
customary stops; he merely dug absent-mindedly beneath the seat
whenever she fell to cropping grass at the roadside, and searched
mechanically for the proper packet of mail. And twice he was called
back to correct mistakes which he admitted were his own with an
humbleness that was alarming to the complainant. In all the days of
his service he had never before failed to plead extenuating
circumstances for any slip that might occur--and to plead with much
heat and staccato eloquence. But then, too, in all those years no day
had ever equalled the bitter awakening of that morning.

As he reviewed it all, again and again, Old Jerry began to understand
that it was not the public rebuff which had hurt so much; for there
was that one of the night previous, when the Judge had cut him off in
the middle of his eager corroboration of Jed The Red's history, which
had not left a trace of a sting twelve hours later. It was more than
wounded vanity, although hurt pride was still struggling for a place
in his emotions against a shamed, overwhelming realization of his own
trifling importance, which could not hold its own against the first
interloper, even after years of entrenchment. Judge Maynard's first
thrill had been staged without a hitch; he had paved the way for the
personal triumph which he meant to achieve that night, but he had
accomplished it only at a cost--the loyalty of him who had been, after
all, his stanchest supporter.

From that moment Old Jerry's defection from the ranks must be dated,
for it was in those bitter hours which followed the yellow-wheeled
buckboard's early morning flight down the main street that the old man
woke to the fact that his admiration for the Judge was made of
anything but immortal stuff. He weighed the Judge in the balance that
morning, and half forgot his own woe in marveling at the discrepancies
which he discovered.

Self-deceit may or may not be easy of accomplishment. Maybe it is
merely a matter of temperament and circumstance, after all. But it is
a certainty that the first peep at one's own soul is always the most
startling--the most illuminating, always hardest of all to bear. And
once strip