ustache and goatee turned his head in the opposite direction,
wrinkled his nose, which was naturally Roman and cynical, and grunted.
This was Colonel Marshall Adams. He and the Judge did not "speak." They
had not spoken to one another in thirty years. This requires great
firmness of character when you live within speaking distance in a town
where talking is the chief occupation. They both had that--firmness. It
was always one of the agreeable sensations in Jordantown to see these
two old men come near enough together to exchange a word or a
salutation. The sensation consisted in the fact that they never did it.

The Judge tucked his gold-headed cane under his arm and ascended the
stairs which led to his office on the floor above the bank. The Colonel
went off, rumbling through his Roman nose, down the street. He did not
walk, he paced, as if he were stepping upon pismires, with his feet wide
apart. This was due to the fact that so much of the time walking was a
matter of carefully balancing himself against the strange unsteadiness,
the heaving and rolling of the ground beneath him. And this was due in
turn to the fact that the Colonel was never himself except when he was
"not himself," but had been exalted about four fingers in a glass above
the level of the common man--a condition which has always affected the
flat permanency of the earth, often causing it to rise unaccountably
before such persons, to meet them even more than halfway. The Colonel
had had long experience in this matter, and he walked warily from force
of habit even when he was sober.

The difference between Judge Regis and Colonel Adams was this: when the
Judge perceived that he was about to meet the Colonel face to face, he
never turned aside. But when the Colonel perceived that he was about to
meet the Judge, he always did. It was the way each of them had of
expressing his contempt for the other.

As the Colonel negotiated himself around the next corner with the rotary
motion of a slightly inebriate straddle-legged old planet, he almost
collided with another body which was more nearly spherical and which
had apparently no legs at all, only two wide-toed "Old Lady's Comforts"
showing beneath the hem of her dress. These toes were now set far apart.
The very short old lady above them seemed to have caved in above the
waistline, but below it she was globular to a remarkable degree. Her
face was wrinkled like fine script and very florid. Her upper lip was