The Judge cut off his announcement to listen. Some one walking with the slow, uncertain gait of a very tired or a very feeble person was climbing up the stairs. The shuffling sound came on to the top and stopped, and an old negro man stood bareheaded in the door blinking his eyes at the light and winking his bushy white tufts of eyebrows up and down. The Judge shaded his own eyes the better to make out the new comer. “Why, it's Uncle Ike Copeland,” he said heartily. “Come right in, Uncle Ike, and set down.” “Yes, take a seat and make yourself comfortable,” added the Sergeant. In the tones of both the white men was a touch of kindly but none the less measurable condescension--that instinctive turn of inflection by which the difference held firmly to exist between the races was expressed and made plain, but in this case it was subtly warmed and tinctured with an essence of something else--an indefinable, evasive something that would probably not have been apparent in their greetings to a younger negro. “Thanky, gen'l'men,” said the old man as he came in slowly. He was tall and thin, so thin that the stoop in his back seemed an inevitable inbending of a frame too long and too slight to support its burden. And he was very black. His skin must have been lustrous and shiny in his youth, but now was overlaid with a grayish aspect, like the mould upon withered fruit. His forehead, naturally high and narrow, was deeply indented at the temples and he had a long face with high cheek bones, and a well developed nose and thin lips. The face was Semitic in its suggestion rather than Ethiopian. The whites of his eyes showed a yellow tinge, but the brown pupils were blurred by a pronounced bluish cast. His clothes were old but spotlessly clean, and his shoes were slashed open along the toes and his bare feet showed through the slashed places. He made his way at a hobbling gait toward the back row of chairs. “I'll be plenty comfor'ble yere, suhs,” he said in a voice which sounded almost like an accentuated mimicry of Judge Priest's high notes. He eased his fragile rack of bones down into a chair and dropped his old hat on the matting of the aisle beside him, seemingly oblivious to the somewhat puzzled glances of the two veterans. “What's the reason you ain't out sashaying round on the Eighth with your own people?” asked the Judge. The old negro began a thin, hen-like chuckle, but his cackle ended midway in a snort of disgust. “Naw suh,” he answered, “naw suh, not fur me. It 'pears lak most of de ole residenters dat I knowed is died off, and mo' over I ain't gittin' so much pleasure projectin' round 'mongst all dese brash young free issue niggers dat's growed up round yere. They ain't got no fitten respec' fur dere elders and dat's a fac', boss. Jes' now seen a passel of 'em ridin' round in one of dese yere ortermobiles.” He put an ocean of surging contempt to the word: “Huh--ortermobiles!”