It was all a matter of heredity. At middle age the judge and his wife were fully deserving of the high esteem in which they were held by the entire community. They were an honest, honorable, Christian couple, living fully up to the professions they made. In their youthful days they had been different--in some respects. Well off, handsome, and brilliant, they had both been among the most persistent and successful of pleasure-seekers. Reviewing those days, Mrs. Prency could say that utter selfishness and self-love had been her deepest sins. Her husband, looking back at his own life, could truthfully say the same, but the details were different. He had looked upon the wine-cup and every other receptacle in which stimulants were ever served. He had tried every game of chance and gone through all other operations collectively known as "sowing one's wild oats." Respect for his wife caused him to break from all his bad habits and associations, at first haltingly and with many relapses, but afterwards by joining the church and conforming his life to his faith. But the inheritance of the child was from her parents, as they were, not as they afterwards became. Therefore the couple became anxious anew when they discovered that their daughter had become very fond of Reynolds Bartram, for the young man forcibly reminded both of them of the judge himself in his early days, yet without Prency's strong and natural basis of character, while the daughter was entirely devoted to the pleasures of the day. If Bartram were to remain as he was, and his self-satisfaction to continue so strong as to be manifest upon all occasions and in all circumstances they foresaw a miserable life for their daughter. Hence Mrs. Prency's solicitude about young Bartram. One day Mrs. Prency made a business excuse to call again on the cobbler's assistant. "Mr. Kimper," said she after leaving a dainty boot with some instructions about repairs, "Reynolds Bartram came to see you, I suppose, as I warned you he would?" "Yes, ma'am, he came," said the cobbler, selecting some buttons from a box and beginning to affix them to one of the lady's boots. "Did he talk with you on the subject that I supposed he would." "Yes," said Sam, "he did; quite a long time." "Did you change your views at all under his arguments?" "Oh, no, ma'am," said the man, looking up with an eager expression of countenance. "How could I?" "I'm so glad," murmured the woman. "Well, what did he say?" "I can't repeat all his words, Mrs. Prency, because he talks a good deal better than I do, you know, an' maybe I wouldn't give them the sense that they had,--the way that he meant them." "How did he seem to take what you said to him?" "I'm afraid, ma'am," said Sam, "that what I said didn't entirely suit him; because when I got through all he said was, 'Pshaw!'" Mrs. Prency looked at the shoe through which the needle was rapidly passing back and forth, and finally said,-- "He hasn't come again, I suppose?"