magnified in the
halo of tradition. His life had been one of high rectitude and dignity,
to which habits of unusual studiousness and a great work on Executors
had added a reputation for vast learning, and in his old age both in his
manner and his habit he preserved a distance and a dignity of demeanor
which lent dignity to the Bar, and surrounded him wherever he went
with a feeling akin to awe. Though he had given up the queue and short
clothes, he still retained ruffles, or what was so closely akin to them
that the difference could scarcely be discerned. Tall, grave, and with a
little bend, not in the shoulders but in the neck; with white hair just
long enough to be brushed behind in a way to suggest the knot which
had once appeared at the back; with calm, quiet eyes under bushy white
eyebrows; a face of pinkish red inherited from Saxon ancestors, who once
lived in the sun and on the brine, and a mouth and chin which bespoke
decision and self-respect in every line and wrinkle, wherever he moved
he produced an impression of one who had survived from a preceding age.
Moreover, he was a man of heroic ideals, of Spartan simplicity, and of
inflexible discipline.

If he had a weakness it was his susceptibility to feminine testimony.

The county was a secluded one--a fitting field for such a judge. And the
great meetings of the year were the sessions of the Circuit Court.

The Judge's name was then on every lip, and his passage to the
court-house was a procession.

Everyone except those unfortunates who had come under his ban, or might
be too far gone in drink to venture into his presence, drew up along
the path from the tavern to bow to him and receive his courteous bow in
return as he passed with slow and thoughtful step along, preceded by the
Sheriff and his deputies, and followed by the Bar and "the multitude."

Whenever he entered the court or rose from the bench the lawyers stood.

If he was impressive off the bench, on the bench he was imposing.

At heart one of the kindest of men, he added to great natural dignity a
high sense of the loft-iness of a position on the bench and preserved,
with impartial and inflexible rigor, the strictest order in his court,
ruling bar and attendants alike up to a high accountability.

No one would any more have thought of taking a liberty with Judge Lomax
than he would have done it with an old lion. Just one man, possibly,
might have thought of it, but he would not have done it-