hat one of their worships should be dragged from
the bench and arraigned before the quarterly county court of which he
was a member. The result gave general satisfaction, although there were
those who found fault with the court's moderation, and complained that
the least possible cognizance had been taken of the offence.

"Ho! ho! ho!" laughed an old codger in the street. "I jes knowed that
hurt old Joel Quimbey wuss 'n ef a body hed druv a knife through him;
he's been so proud o' bein' jestice 'mongst his betters, an' bein'
'lected at las', many times ez he hev run. Waal, Abs'lom, ye hev
proved thar's law fur jestices too. I tell ye ye hev got sense in yer
skull-i-bone."

But Absalom hung his head before these congratulations; he found no
relish in the old man's humbled pride. Yet had he not cursed the baby,
lumping him among the Kittredges? Absalom went about for a time, with a
hopeful anxiety in his eyes, searching for one of the younger Quim-beys,
in order to involve him in a fight that might have a provocation and a
result more to his mind. Somehow the recollection of the quivering and
aged figure of his wife's father, of the smitten look on his old face,
of his abashed and humbled demeanor before the court, was a reproach
to him, vivid and continuously present with his repetitious thoughts
forever re-enacting the scene. His hands trembled; he wanted to lay hold
on a younger man, to replace this aesthetic revenge with a quarrel more
wholesome in the estimation of his own conscience. But the Quimbey sons
were not in town to-day. He could only stroll about and hear himself
praised for this thing that he had done, and wonder how he should
meet Evelina with his conscience thus arrayed against himself for her
father's sake. "Plumb turned Quimbey, I swear," he said, in helpless
reproach to this independent and coercive moral force within. His
dejection, he supposed, had reached its lowest limits, when a rumor
pervaded the town, so wild that he thought it could be only fantasy.

It proved to be fact. Joel Quimbey, aggrieved, humbled, and indignant,
had resigned his office, and as Absalom rode out of town toward the
mountains, he saw the old man in his crumpled brown jeans suit, mounted
on his white mare, jogging down the red clay road, his head bowed before
the slanting lines of rain, on his way to his cheerless fireside. He
turned off presently, for the road to the levels of the Cove was not the
shorter cut that Absalo