ost people give you truth in small quantities; but Vetch pours
it out in a torrent. He offers it to you as Powhatan used to take his
Bourbon in the good old days before the Eighteenth Amendment--straight
and strong. I used to tell Powhatan that he'd get the name of a drunkard
simply because he could stand what the rest of the world couldn't--and
I'll say as much for our friend Gideon."

"Do you mean, my dear," inquired Corinna placidly, "that the Governor is
honestly dishonest?"

The Judge's suavity clothed him like velvet. "I know nothing about his
honesty. I doubt if any one does. He may be a liar and yet speak the
truth, I suppose, from unscrupulous motives. But I am not maintaining
that he is entirely right, you understand--merely that like the rest of
us he is not entirely wrong. I am not taking sides, you know. I am too
old to fight anybody's battles--even distressed Virtue's."

"Then you think--you really think that he is sincere?" asked Stephen.

"Sincere? Well, yes, in a measure. Nothing advertises one so widely as a
reputation for sincerity; and the man has a positive genius for
self-advertisement. He has found that it pays in politics to speak the
truth, and so he speaks it at the top of his voice. It takes courage, of
course, and I am ready to admit that he is a little more courageous
than the rest of us. To that extent, I should say that he has the
advantage of us."

"Do you mean to imply," demanded the General wrathfully, "that a common
circus rider like that, a rascally revolutionist into the bargain, is
better than this lady and myself, sir?"

"Well, hardly better than Corinna," replied the Judge. "Indeed, I was
about to add that the two most candid persons I know are Corinna and
Vetch. There is a good deal about Vetch, by the way, that reminds me of
Corinna."

"Father!" gasped Corinna. "Stephen, do you think he has gone out of his
mind?"

"That is the first sign that wisdom has broken its cage," commented her
father. "No, my dear, I did not mean that you look like him; you are far
handsomer. I meant simply that you both habitually speak the truth, and
because you speak the truth the world mistakes you for a successful
comedian and Vetch for a kind of political Robin Hood."

"Well, he is trying to hold us up in highwayman fashion, isn't he?"
asked Corinna.

"Does it look that way?" inquired the Judge, with his beaming smile
which cast an edge of genial irony on everything that he said. "On th