But Judge Priest never heard a word of what Doctor Lake was saying. His old blue eyes stared at the stranger's left hand. On the back of that hand, standing out upon the corded tendons and the wrinkled brown skin, blazed a red spot, shaped like a dumb-bell, a birthmark of most unusual pattern. Judge Priest stared and stared; and as he stared a memory that was nearly as old as he was crept out from beneath a neglected convolution in the back part of his brain, and grew and spread until it filled his amazed, startled, scarce-believing mind. So it was no wonder he did not hear Doctor Lake; no wonder he did not see black Tobe Emery stealing up behind him, with popped eyes likewise fixed on that red dumb-bell-shaped mark. No; Judge Priest did not hear a word. As Doctor Lake faced about the other way to spread his wonderful discovery down the table and across it, the judge bent forward and touched the fourteenth guest on the shoulder very gently. “Pardner,” he asked, apparently apropos of nothing that had happened since the dinner started--“Pardner, when was the first time you heard about this here meetin' of Company B--the first time?” Through the interlaced fingers of the other the answer came haltingly: “I read about it--in a Chicago Sunday paper--three weeks ago.” “But you knew before that there was a Company B down here in this town?” Without raising his head or baring his face, the other nodded. Judge Priest overturned his coffee cup as he got to his feet, but took no heed of the resultant damage to the cloth on the table and the fronts of his white trouser legs. “Boys,” he cried out so shrilly, so eagerly, so joyously, that they all jumped, “when you foller after Holy Writ you can't never go fur wrong. You're liable to breed a miracle. A while ago we took a lesson from the Parable of the Rich Man that give a dinner; and--lo and behold!--another parable and a better parable--yes, the sweetest parable of 'em all--has come to pass and been repeated here 'mongst us without our ever knowin' it or even suspectin' it. The Prodigal Son didn't enjoy the advantage of havin' a Chicago Sunday paper to read, but in due season he came back home--that other Prodigal did; and it stands written in the text that he was furgiven, and that a feast was made fur him in the house of his fathers.” His tone changed to one of earnest demand: “Lycurgus Reese, finish the roll call of this company--finish it right now, this minute--the way it oughter be finished!” “Why, Judge Priest,” said Professor Reese, still in the dark and filled with wonderment, “it is already finished!” As though angered almost beyond control, the judge snapped back: “It ain't finished, neither. It ain't been rightly finished from the very beginnin' of these dinners. It ain't finished till you call the very last name that's on that list.” “But, Judge----” “But nothin'! You call that last name, Ly-curgus Reese; and you be almighty quick about it!”