church on his
way home, and the general, declining an invitation to dinner, went on to
the post-office, where he awaited his carriage.

From this time Dudley Webb attended classes at the judge's house and
became the popular tyrant of his little schoolroom. He was a dark,
high-bred looking boy, with a rich voice and a nature that was generous
in small things and selfish in large ones. There was a convincing air of
good-fellowship about him, which won the honest heart of slow-witted Tom
Bassett, and a half-veiled regard for his own youthful pleasures, which
aroused the wrath of Eugenia.

"I can't abide him," she had once declared passionately to Sally
Burwell. "Somehow, he always gets the best of everything."

When, after the first few years, Nicholas Burr entered the schoolroom
and took his place upon one of the short green benches, Mrs. Webb called
upon the judge in person and demanded an explanation.

"My boy has been carefully brought up," she said; "he is a gentleman,
and he will not submit to association with his inferiors. His
grandfather would not have done so before him."

The judge quailed, but it was an uncompromising quailing--a surrender of
the flesh, not the spirit.

"My dear lady," he began in his softest voice, "your son is a fine,
spirited fellow, but he is a boy, and he doesn't care a--a--pardon me,
madam--a continental whether anybody else is his inferior or not. No
wholesome boy does. He doesn't know the meaning of the word--nor does
Tom--and I shan't be the one to teach him. Amos Burr's son is a clever,
hard-working boy, and if he will take an education from me, he shall
have it."

The judge was firm. Mrs. Webb was firm also.

The judge assumed his legal manner; she assumed her hereditary one.

"It is folly to educate a person above his station," she said.

"Men make their stations, madam," replied the judge.

He sat in his great arm-chair and looked at her with reverent but
determined eyes. His head was slightly bent, in deference to her
dissenting voice, and his words wavered, but his will did not. In his
attitude his respect for her sexually and individually was expressed,
but he had argued the opposing interests in his mind, and his decision
was judicial.

"I am deeply pained, my dear lady," he said, "but I cannot turn the boy
away."

Mrs. Webb did not reply. She gathered up her stiff skirt and departed
with folded lips.

After she had gone the judge paced his study nervously fo