the
room, "I wonder whut a man sixty-odd-year old is goin' to do with the
fust whole dollar he ever had in his life!"

It was characteristic of our circuit judge that he should have voiced
his curiosity aloud. Talking to himself when he was alone was one of his
habits. Also, it was characteristic of him that he had refrained from
betraying his inquisitiveness to his late caller. Similar motives of
delicacy had kept him from following the other man to watch the
sequence.

However, at secondhand, the details very shortly reached him. They were
brought by no less a person than Deputy Sheriff Quarles, who, some
twenty minutes or possibly half an hour later, obtruded himself upon
Judge Priest's presence.

"Judge," began Mr. Quarles, "you'd never in the world guess whut Old
Peep O'Day done with the first piece of money he got his hands on out of
that there forty thousand pounds of silver dollars he's come into from
his uncle's estate."

The old man slanted a keen glance in Mr. Quarles' direction.

"Tell me, son," he asked softly, "how did you come to hear the glad
tidin's so promptly?"

"Me?" said Mr. Quarles innocently. "Why, Judge Priest, the word is all
over this part of town by this time. Why, I reckin twenty-five or fifty
people must 'a' been watchin' Old Peep to see how he was goin' to act
when he come out of this courthouse."

"Well, well, well!" murmured the Judge blandly. "Good news travels
almost ez fast sometimes ez whut bad news does--don't it, now? Well,
son, I give up the riddle. Tell me jest whut our elderly friend did do
with the first installment of his inheritance."

"Well, suh, he turned south here at the gate and went down the street,
a-lookin' neither to the right nor the left. He looked to me like a man
in a trance, almost. He keeps right on through Legal Row till he comes
to Franklin Street, and then he goes up Franklin to B. Weil & Son's
confectionery store; and there he turns in. I happened to be followin'
'long behind him, with a few others--with several others, in fact--and
we-all sort of slowed up in passin' and looked in at the door; and
that's how I come to be in a position to see what happened.

"Old Peep, he marches in jest like I'm tellin' it to you, suh; and Mr.
B. Weil comes to wait on him, and he starts in buyin'. He buys hisself a
five-cent bag of gumdrops; and a five-cent bag of jelly beans; and a
ten-cent bag of mixed candies--kisses and candy mottoes, and sech ez
them, you