, lifting a wistful
little face to Yancy's.

"Oh, me?--well, you-all will go right on living with me."

"And what will come of Mr. Mahaffy?"

"I reckon you-all will go right on living with him, too."

"Uncle Bob, you mean you reckon we are all going to live in one house?"

"I 'low it will have to be fixed that-a-ways," agreed Yancy.

CHAPTER XXXIII. THE JUDGE RECEIVES A LETTER

After he had parted with Solomon Mahaffy the judge applied himself
diligently to shaping that miracle-working document which he was
preparing as an offset to whatever risk he ran in meeting Fentress. As
sanguine as he was sanguinary he confidently expected to survive the
encounter, yet it was well to provide for a possible emergency--had he
not his grandson's future to consider? While thus occupied he saw the
afternoon stage arrive and depart from before the City Tavern.

Half an hour later Mr. Wesley, the postmaster, came sauntering up the
street. In his hand he carried a letter.

"Howdy," he drawled, from just beyond the judge's open door.

The judge glanced up, his quill pen poised aloft.

"Good evening, sir; won't you step inside and be seated?" he asked
graciously. His dealings with the United States mail service were of the
most insignificant description, and in personally delivering a letter,
if this was what had brought him there, he felt Mr. Wesley had reached
the limit of official courtesy and despatch.

"Well, sir; it looks like you'd never told us more than two-thirds of
the truth!" said the postmaster. He surveyed the judge curiously.

"I am complimented by your opinion of my veracity," responded that
gentleman promptly. "I consider two-thirds an enormously high per cent
to have achieved."

"There is something in that, too," agreed Mr. Wesley. "Who is Colonel
Slocum Price Turberville?"

The judge started up from his chair.

"I have that honor," said he, bowing.

"Well, here's a letter come in addressed like that, and as you've been
using part of the name I am willing to assume you're legally entitled
to the rest of it. It clears up a point that off and on has troubled me
considerable. I can only wonder I wa'n't smarter."

"What point, may I ask?"

"Why, about the time you hung out your shingle here, some one wrote a
letter to General Jackson. It was mailed after night, and when I seen it
in the morning I was clean beat. I couldn't locate the handwriting and
yet I kept that letter back a couple of days a