ne that was now beginning to slant across his path and
dapple his back with checkerings of shadow and light.

This maneuver was inexplicable--a stranger would have puzzled to make it
out. The shade was as plentiful upon one side of Clay Street as upon the
other; each sagged wooden sidewalk was in as bad repair as its brother
over the way. The small, shabby frame house, buried in honeysuckles and
balsam vines, which stood close up to the pavement line on the opposite
side of Clay Street, facing Judge Priest's roomy and rambling old home,
had no flag of pestilence at its door or its window. And surely to this
lone pedestrian every added step must have been an added labor. A
stranger would never have understood it; but Judge Priest understood
it--he had seen that same thing repeated countless times in the years
that stretched behind him. Always it had distressed him inwardly, but on
this particular morning it distressed him more than ever. The toiling
grim figure in black had seemed so feeble and so tottery and old.

Well, Judge Priest was not exactly what you would call young. With an
effort he heaved himself up out of the depths of his hickory chair and
stood at the edge of his porch, polishing a pink bald dome of forehead
as though trying to make up his mind to something. Jefferson Poindexter,
resplendent in starchy white jacket and white apron, came to the door.

"Breakfus' served, suh!" he said, giving to an announcement touching on
food that glamour of grandeur of which his race alone enjoys the
splendid secret.

"Hey?" asked the judge absently.

"Breakfus'--hit's on the table waitin', suh," stated Jeff. "Mizz Polks
sent over her houseboy with a dish of fresh razberries fur yore
breakfus'; and she say to tell you, with her and Mistah Polkses'
compliments, they is fresh picked out of her garden--specially fur you."

The lady and gentleman to whom Jeff had reference were named Polk, but
in speaking of white persons for whom he had a high regard Jeff always,
wherever possible within the limitations of our speech, tacked on that
final s. It was in the nature of a delicate verbal compliment, implying
that the person referred to was worthy of enlargement and pluralization.

Alone in the cool, high-ceiled, white-walled dining room, Judge Priest
ate his breakfast mechanically. The raspberries were pink beads of
sweetness; the young fried chicken was a poem in delicate and flaky
browns; the spoon bread could not have be