e step
of the low porch. The visitor took one of two creaky wooden rockers that
stood in the narrow space behind the balsam vines, and for a minute or
two he sat without speech, fanning himself. Evidently these neighborly
calls between these two old men were not uncommon; they could enjoy the
communion of silence together without embarrassment.

The town clocks struck--first the one on the city hall struck eight
times sedately; and then, farther away, the one on the county
courthouse. This one struck five times slowly, hesitated a moment,
struck eleven times with great vigor, hesitated again, struck once with
a big, final boom, and was through. No amount of repairing could cure
the courthouse clock of this peculiarity. It kept the time, but kept it
according to a private way of its own. Immediately after it ceased the
bell on the Catholic church, first and earliest of the Sunday bells,
began tolling briskly. Judge Priest waited until its clamoring had died
away.

"Goin' to be good and hot after while," he said, raising his voice.

"What say?"

"I say it's goin' to be mighty warm a little later on in the day,"
repeated Judge Priest.

"Yes, suh; I reckon you're right there," assented the host. "Just a
minute ago, before you came over, I was telling Liddie she'd find it
middlin' close in church this morning. She's going, though--runaway
horses wouldn't keep her away from church! I'm not going myself--seems
as though I'm getting more and more out of the church habit here
lately."

Judge Priest's eyes squinted in whimsical appreciation of this
admission. He remembered that the other man, during the lifetime of his
second wife, had been a regular attendant at services--going twice on
Sundays and to Wednesday night prayer meetings too; but the second wife
had been dead going on four years now--or was it five? Time sped so!

The deaf man spoke on:

"So I just thought I'd sit here and try to keep cool and wait for that
Ledbetter boy to come round with the Sunday paper. Did you read last
Sunday's paper, judge? Colonel Watterson certainly had a mighty fine
piece on those Northern money devils. It's round here somewhere--I cut
it out to keep it. I'd like to have you read it and pass your opinion on
it. These young fellows do pretty well, but there's none of them can
write like the colonel, in my judgment."

Judge Priest appeared not to have heard him.

"Ed Tilghman," he said abruptly in his high, fine voice, that seeme