"I heard what you said." "I don’t know whether you did or not. There’s no living in the house with you. And last night, after I had been knocked down in the street—and I’m going to kill him if detectives can find him—last night when I merely intimated that something had taken place on the fourteenth of September, you—" "William, are you going to begin all that over again?" "I don’t know what you mean by again. John, you talk in riddles. I can’t for the life of me get at your meaning. Yes, sir, and last night you flew off like a jug handle when I told you that Carl Miller—" "Oh, damn Carl Miller." "That’s all right. I don’t care how much you damn him. He deserves it—broke a pair of boots for me and made ’em so kidney footed that I couldn’t walk in ’em. But I am positive about that other date, John. It was the tenth." The Judge looked at him, drew a long breath, and said: "William, you are an old fool." "An old fool, John—old? Did you say old?" "That is what I said. Old." William sighed. "Then, that settles it. It isn’t so bad to be simply a fool—for we may grow out of that as time goes on—but to be an old fool—John, I’ll leave your house. I can’t stand your abuse any longer. I am without means, broke, you might say, and I don’t know which way to turn, except to turn my back on your ill-treatment of me. I may starve to death or be killed in the street or on some freight car, stealing a ride from misery to misery, but I am going." "William, sit down and behave yourself." "Never again will I sit down in your house. I have joked with you, I know, and have said a great many things that I didn’t mean, but I am in deadly earnest this time. I am going away." The Judge put his hand on William’s shoulder. "Look at me," he said. "Don’t leave me. I need you. I am mean, and I know it, but I beg of you not to leave me." "Mean!" William cried. "Who the deuce said you were mean? Show the villain to me. Show him to me, I tell you." "There, now, sit down; it is all right." "No, sir, it is not all right, and it never will be till I find the scoundrel that called you mean. Was it Bradley? Tell me, and I’ll choke him till his eyes pop out. Was it Bradley?" The Judge smiled. "Bradley," said he, "is one of my props. He is the son of my old friend, and I think the world of him." "Well, let him congratulate himself on his escape, for before the Lord I would choke him. It is all right, yes, sir—but, really, John, if I tell you earnestly it was on the tenth won’t you believe—" "Yes, yes; let it be the tenth." "Let it be! Why, confound it, I tell you it was the tenth." "All right. When you go out I wish you would tell Florence to come here." William grunted. "Oh, I can go out. By the way, John, Howard asked me a pertinent question this morning. And it staggered me a little. He wanted to know whether there had ever been any insanity in our family."