as though it were a silken robe.
And, as has been heretofore remarked, he had for his official and his
private lives two different modes of speech. As His Honor, presiding,
his language was invariably grammatical and precise and as carefully
accented as might be expected of a man whose people never had very much
use anyway for the consonant "r." As William Pitman Priest, Esq.,
citizen, taxpayer, and Confederate veteran he mishandled the king's
English as though he had but small personal regard for the king or his
English either.

Similarly he always showed respect, outwardly at least, for the written
letter of the statute as written and cited. But when it seemed to him
that justice tempered with mercy stood in danger of being choked in a
lawyer's loop of red tape he sheared through the entanglements with a
promptitude which appealed more strongly, perhaps, to the lay mind than
to the professional. And if, from the bench, he might not succor the
deserving litigant or the penitent offender without violation to the
given principles of the law, which, aiming ever for the greater good to
the greater number, threatened present disaster for one deserving, he
very often privily would busy himself in the matter. This, then, was why
they had that saying about him.

It largely was in a private capacity that Judge Priest figured in the
various phases relating to the Millsap case, with which now we are about
to deal. The beginning of this was the ending of Felix Millsap, but from
its start to its finish he alone held the secrets of all its aspects.
The best people in town, those who made up the old families, knew the
daughter of this Felix Millsap; the people whose families were not so
old perhaps, but by way of compensation more likely to be large ones,
the common people, as the word goes, knew the father. The best people
commiserated decorously with the daughter when her father was abruptly
taken from this life; the others wondered what was going to become of
his widow. For, you see, the daughter moved in very different circles
from the one in which her parents moved. Their lines did not touch. But
Judge Priest had the advantage on his side of moving at will in both
circles. Indeed he moved in all circles without serious impairment to
his social position in the community at large.

Briefly, the case of her who had been Eleanor Millsap was the case of a
child who, diligently climbing out of the environment of her childhood,
has