In corners, up against the ceiling, cobwebs hung down in separate tendrils or else were netted up together in little gray hammocks to catch the dust. The place had been baking under a low roof all day and the air was curdled with smells of varnish and glue drawn from the chairs and the mould from old oil cloth, with a lingering savor of coal oil from somewhere below. The back end of the hall was in a gloom, and it only lifted its mask part-way even after the Judge had completed his round and lit all the jets and was reaching for his pocket handkerchief. Maybe it was the poor light with its flickery shadows and maybe it was the effect of the heat, but standing there mopping his forehead, the old Judge looked older than common. His plump figure seemed to have lost some of its rotundness and under his eyes the flesh was pouchy and sagged. Or at least, that was the impression which Ed Gafford got. Ed Gafford was the odd jobs man of Kamleiter's Hall and he came now, and was profuse with apologies for his tardiness. “You'll have to excuse me, Judge Priest,” he began, “for bein' a little late about gettin' down here to light up and open up. You see, this bein' the Eighth of August and it so hot and ever'thing, I sort of jumped at the conclusion that maybe there wouldn't be none of your gentlemen show up here tonight.” “Oh, I reckin there'll be quite a lot of the boys comin' along pretty soon, son,” said Judge Priest. “It's a regular monthly meetin', you know, and besides there's a vacancy to be filled--we've got a color bearer to elect tonight. I should say there ought to be a purty fair crowd, considerin'. You better make a light on them stairs,--they're as black as a pocket.” “Right away, Judge,” said Gafford, and departed. Left alone, the Judge sat down in the place of the presiding officer on the little platform. Laboriously he crossed one fat leg on the other, and looked out over the rows of empty wooden chairs, peopling them with the images of the men who wouldn't sit in them ever again. The toll of the last few months had been a heavy one. The old Judge cast it up in his mind: There was old Colonel Horace Farrell, now, the Nestor of the county bar to whom the women and men of his own State had never been just plain women and men, but always noble womanhood and chivalric manhood, and who thought in rounded periods and even upon his last sick bed had dealt in well measured phrases and sonorous metaphor in his farewell to his assembled children and grandchildren. The Colonel had excelled at memorial services and monument unveilings. He would be missed--there was no doubt about that.