ith the wife he had put away, told Margaret that Laura
was always puling about duty and getting her conscience pinched and
whining about it. They agreed sitting there under the lamp, that they
had been mates in some far-off jungle, that they had been parted and had
been seeking one another through eons, and that when their souls met one
of the equations of the physical universe was solved, and that their
happiness was the adjustment of ages of wrong. She thought him the most
brilliant of men; he deemed her the most wonderful of women, and the
devil checked off two drunken fools in his inventory.

It was in those halcyon days of his courtship of Margaret Fenn, when he
felt the pride of conquest of another soul and body strongly upon him,
that Judge Thomas Van Dorn began to acquire--or perhaps to exhibit
noticeably--the turkey gobbler gait, that ever afterward went with him,
and became famous as the Van Dorn Strut. It was more than mere knee
action--though knee action did characterize it prominently. The strut
properly speaking began at the tip of his hat--his soft, black hat that
sat so cockily upon his head. His head was thrown back as though he had
been pulled by a check-rein. His shoulders swung jauntily--more than
jauntily, call it insolently--as he walked, and his trunk swayed with
some stateliness as his proud hands and legs performed their grand
functions. But withal he bowed and smiled--with much condescension--and
lifted his hat high from his handsome head, and when women passed he
doffed it like a flag in a formal salute, and while his body spelled
complacence, his face never lost the charm and grace and courtesy that
drew men to him, and held them in spite of his faults.

One bitter cold December day, when the wind was blowing sleet down
Market Street, and hardly a passer-by darkened the doors of the stores,
the handsome Judge sailed easily into the Amen Corner, fumbled over the
magazines, picked out a pocketful of cigars from the case, without
calling Mr. Brotherton who was in the rear of the store working upon his
accounts, lighted a cigar, and stood looking out of the frosted window
at the deserted gray windy street, utterly ignoring the presence of
Captain Morton who was pretending to be deeply buried in the _National
Tribune_, but who was watching the Judge and trying to summon courage
to speak. The Judge unbuttoned his modish gray coat that nearly reached
his heels and put his hands behind him for a mome