No, it was “the doing of that young fool, Leonard Murray.” The judge had returned to his home that momentous Saturday in a passionate temper of hatred to England and her old tyrannies. He had been irritated by the lukewarmness and doleful prophecies of the majority of his friends and associates, and by the fact that every newspaper in the city was opposed to the war. And then, while his wife and daughter were stimulating his feverish mood of disapproval, he had suddenly been called to the front to stand by the opinions of others and to declare his own. He felt that somehow he had been tricked by circumstances, and his hand forced; and that young Leonard Murray was to blame for the whole affair. He had never liked the lad’s father, and having been twice obliged to decide important cases against him, the elder Murray had shown his resentment in ways that had been both irritating and injurious. They had also been distinctly opposed in politics, and, moreover, in their youth had been rivals for the love of the pretty Carlita Duprey. Now, the son of this disagreeable man had apparently taken up his father’s power to be at least unfavourable to him. He worked himself into a still, hot passion against the youth, and determined then and there to have nothing more to do with him. Not that he intended to recede from any word he had uttered. He told himself instantly that he had only declared the truth, and that he would stand for, and by, every letter of his speech. But he wished that he had made that speech voluntarily, in some regularly called meeting, and not in response to a request voiced by young Leonard Murray. That was the sore point of the hurt, so that he hardly touched it, even in thought, but reverted at once to his speech, which struck him now as grandiloquent, turgid, and bombastic--not the kind of speech he would have made in the City Hall or at the Common Council by any means, and a tingling sense of chagrin answered this conviction. It was thoughts similar to these which surged with passionate strength through his mind as he stood on the following Wednesday afternoon on the steps of the City Hall. There had just been a public meeting in the park, called to approve the war measure, but it had been very scantily attended; and as the noisy crowd scattered, mainly up and down Broadway, he hardly knew whether he was glad or sorry for the failure. The uproarious conduct of the youth of the city offended him, and as a general thing the men of experience, of solid wealth and political power, had not answered the call for this meeting. For it was a Democratic call, and New York at that day was the very stronghold of the Federalists.