high when the judge came out upon his porch, a smile
of indecision on his face and his hat in his hand. Pausing upon the
topmost step, he cast an uncertain glance sideways at the walk leading
past the church, and then looked straight ahead through the avenue of
maples, which began at the smaller green facing the ancient site of the
governor's palace and skirted the length of the larger one, which took
its name from the court-house. At last he descended the steps with his
leisurely tread, turning at the gate to throw a remonstrance to an old
negro whose black face was framed in the library window.

"Now, Caesar, didn't I--"

"Lord, Marse George, dis yer washed-out blue bowl, wid de little white
critters sprawlin' over it, done come ter pieces--"

"Now, Caesar, haven't I told you twenty times to let Delilah wash my
Wedgwood?"

"Fo' de Lord, Marse George, I ain't breck hit. I uz des' hol'n it in
bofe my han's same es I'se hol'n dis yer broom, w'en it come right ter
part. I declar 'twarn my fault, Marse George, 'twarn nobody's fault
'cep'n hit's own."

The judge closed the gate and waved the face from the window.

"Go about your business, Caesar," he said, "and keep your hands off my
china--"

Then his tone lost its asperity as he held out his hands to a pretty
girl who was coming across the green.

"So you are back from school, Miss Juliet," he said gallantly. "I was
telling your mother only yesterday that I didn't approve of sending our
fairest products away from Kingsborough. It wasn't done in my day. Then
the prettiest girls stayed at home and gave our young fellows a chance."

The girl shook her head until the blue ribbons on her straw hat
fluttered in the wind, and blushed until her soft eyes were like
forget-me-nots set in rose leaves. She possessed a serene, luminous
beauty, which became intensified beneath the gaze of the beholder.

"I have come back for good, now," she answered in a serious sweetness of
voice; "and I am out this afternoon looking up my Sunday-school class.
The children have scattered sadly. You will let me have Tom again, won't
you?"

"Have Tom! Why, you may have him every day and Sunday too--the lucky
scamp! Ah, I only wish I were a boy again, with a soul worth saving and
such a pair of eyes in search of it."

The girl dimpled into a smile and flushed to her low, white forehead, on
which the soft hair was smoothly parted before it broke into sunny curls
about the temples. She exhal