ntain the shock of a new experience. He
had fought and lost all his battles--bitter struggles to think of even
now, after the lapse of years, and the little he had to tell of
himself was an intricate mingling of truth and falsehood, grotesque
exaggeration, purposeless mendacity.

He and Mahaffy had met exactly one month before, on the deck of the
steamer from which they had been put ashore at the river landing two
miles from Pleasantville. Mahaffy's historic era had begun just there.
Apparently he had no past of which he could be brought to speak. He
admitted having been born in Boston some sixty years before, and was a
printer by trade; further than this, he had not revealed himself, drunk
or sober.

At the judge's elbow Mr. Mahaffy changed his position with nervous
suddenness. Then he folded his long arms.

"You asked if there was any news, Price; while we were waiting for the
boat a raft tied up to the bank; the fellow aboard of it had a man he'd
fished up out of the river, a man who'd been pretty well cut to pieces."

"Who was he?" asked the judge.

"Nobody knew, and he wasn't conscious. I shouldn't be surprised if he
never opens his lips again. When the doctor had looked to his cuts, the
fellow on the raft cast off and went on down the Elk."

It occurred to the judge that he himself had news to impart. He must
account for the boy's presence.

"While you've been taking your whiff of life down at the steamboat
landing, Mahaffy, I've been experiencing a most extraordinary
coincidence." The judge paused. By a sullen glare in his deep-sunk eyes
Mr. Mahaffy seemed to bid him go on. "Back east--" the judge jerked
his thumb with an indefinite gesture "back east at my ancestral
home--" Mahaffy snorted harshly. "You don't believe I had an ancestral
home?--well, I had! It was of brick, sir, with eight Corinthian columns
across the front, having a spacious paneled hall sixty feet long. I had
the distinguished honor to entertain General Andrew Jackson there."

"Did you get those dimensions out of the jug?" inquiry Mahaffy, with a
frightful bark that was intended for a sarcastic laugh.

"Sir, it is not in your province to judge me by my present degraded
associates. Near the house I have described--my father's and his
father's before him, and mine now--but for the unparalleled misfortunes
which have pursued me--lived a family by the name of Hazard. And when I
went to the war of '12--"

"What were you in that bloody ti