Not a change came over Sir Brook's face during the delivery of this speech; and as he bowed reverentially and withdrew, his manner was all that courtesy could desire. “I see he's not going to visit Lucy,” muttered Haire, as Sir Brook passed the window. “I should think not, sir. There are few men would like to linger where they have been so ingloriously defeated.” He walked the room with a proud defiant look for some minutes, and then, sinking faintly into a chair, said, in a weak, tremulous tone, “Haire, these trials are too much for me. It is a cruel aggravation of the ills of old age to have a heart and a brain alive to the finest sense of injury.” Haire muttered something like concurrence. “What is it you say, sir? Speak out,” cried the Judge. “I was saying,” muttered the other, “I wish they would not provoke--would not irritate you; that people ought to see the state your nerves are in, and should use a little discretion how they contradict and oppose you.” The bland smile of the Chief-Justice, and an assenting gesture of his hand, emboldened Haire to continue, and he went on: “I have always said, Keep away such as excite him; his condition is not one to be bettered by passionate outbreaks. Calm him, humor him.” “What a pearl above price is a friend endowed with discretion! Leave me, Haire, to think over your nice words. I would like to ponder them alone and to myself. I 'll send for you by and by.” CHAPTER XXII. COMING-HOME THOUGHTS Had a mere stranger been a guest on that Sunday when the Chief Baron entertained at dinner Lady Lendrick, the Sewells, and his old schoolfellow Haire, he might have gone away under the impression that he had passed an evening in the midst of a happy and united family. Nothing could be more perfect than the blending of courtesy and familiarity. The old Chief himself was in his best of humors, which means that, with the high polish of a past age, its deference, and its homage, he combined all the readiness and epigrammatic smartness of a later period. Lady Lendrick was bland, courteous, and attentive. Colonel Sewell took the part assigned him by his host, alternate talker and listener; and Mrs. Sewell herself displayed, with true woman's wit, that she knew how to fall in with the Judge's humor, as though she had known him for years, and that, in each sally of his wit and each flash of his repartee he was but reviving memories of such displays in long-past years. As for Haire, no enchantment could be more complete; he found himself not only listened to but appealed to. The Chief asked him to correct him about some fact or other of recent history; he applied to him to relate some incident in a trial he had taken part in; and, greatest triumph of all, he was called on to decide some question about the dressing of Mrs. Sewell's hair, his award being accepted as the last judgment of connoisseurship.