It might have seemed even to others an arduous task to amuse with incidents a man whose every waking moment was occupied by principles. So completely had his rarefied, judicial ambition, his pride of office, his solicitous reverence of its dignity, attenuated his personality that he cared little for Gwinnan as a man; he respected him as a judge. He had held himself sedulously to his aspirations; as it were on his knees, he had served his vocation day and night. It was to him as essential an organic constituent of his being as the lungs; he could ill live without it, even for a time. Perhaps he might not have made the effort had not the physician warned him that he might never be fit for business, never again sit upon the bench, should he overexert himself now, before recovering from the effect of those terrible blows upon the skull. He became suddenly tractable, wistful, and turned mournfully to the search of light entertainment. He assented with a dreary docility to the prescription of a change of air and scene. He accepted without demur, with a dull sense of endurance, the plan briskly devised for him to spend a week or two in Nashville, and if he did not recuperate rapidly, to go thence South for the winter. He was not given to scanning his own mental poses and adjusting them to some theory of symmetry; he could but feel, however, as if he were already dead, stalking among scenes in which he had no interest, half-heartedly mingling with men whose every instinct was as far removed from the spirit that swayed him as if some essential condition of existence divided them. It was with a truly post-mortem indifference that he listened to the talk of his friends who sought him out during his stay in Nashville,—very interesting talk, doubtless, but purposeless, inefficacious; they cited neither case nor section. He preferred to sit alone and idle before the blazing coal fire in his own room,—expressionless with the stereotyped hotel furniture; now and then he roused himself, with a conscientious start, when he found his mind revolving like a moth around some _scintilla juris_ which had a special attraction for him.