“Yes, sir,” he declared, shifting his position, his stalwart figure tense and alert, “none like ’em now. I couldn’t holp thinkin’, whenst I war a witness in the court down yander in Glaston, what pore shakes that thar jedge war compared ter Sol’mon. Sol’mon, now, would hev put Jake Baintree through,—he’d hev fund out a way ter fix his guilt on the sinner. ’Member the time,” he cried vivaciously, “Sol’mon hed ter jedge ’twixt them two wimmin ez claimed one baby?” She nodded doubtfully. The event was not to her in the nature of a reminiscence. “Lord!” he exclaimed excitedly. “I war afeard fur about three minits ez that thar leetle critter would git cut in half! I never war so all-fired skeered.” He fell into silence, revolving in his mind the animation of the scene,—the splendid hall in which the kingly judge pronounced sentence, the crowds of soldiers and priests, the tumult of applause at this vindication of his wisdom, this brilliant exploit of his administrative genius. How the spectacle allured the mountaineer! How vacant the modern voids! Once more he stirred and sighed. “Yer dad’s runnin’ agin fur constable,” he said, a trifle wistfully; to such interests, forsooth, he must turn. There came a shade of anxiety into her face. “Yes, sir,” she replied, the title a tribute to his arrogations of seniority and to his piety, of a strange quality though she felt it to be. She took one of the ears of the old hound in her fingers and pleated it, as she looked consciously away. The sleeping dog, vaguely discommoded, now and again lifted his head with a vigorous shake, and then dropped it. The face of Isabel suddenly seemed less youthful. It too bore that anxiety so troublous and pathetic in women and children when they can only suffer, and cannot help. “They think Eli ain’t goin’ ter be ’lected agin,” he said sagely to himself. “Suthin’ ’s bruk.” “Waal, Eli’s a mighty good man,” he observed aloud, his kindlier impulses uppermost. “He’s apt ter do his best, an’ that’s all the fur we kin go in this life. He stayed up on the mounting along o’ we-uns one night, not long ago, an’ he bruk the lonesomeness astonishin’.” The face of the elder sister was suddenly irradiated; a triumph was in her eyes all tenderly shining. “Dad air a mos’ survigrous talker, sure,” she assented warmly. “Dad air powerful good comp’ny. ’Tain’t often dad ain’t got suthin’ ter say. I tell ye, it air wuth while ter stop an’ cock yer ears, whenst dad begins ter talk. Dad air ekal ter enny pa’son, ef the truth war knowed, ain’t he, Is’bel?” Isabel seemed almost profane in the eager precipitancy of her assent. But it was only “Laws-a-massy, yes!” that she said with so emphatic an accent. The child’s face had flushed beneath its freckles. She sat upright, bending steadily on Jepson her concentrated gaze, its intensity redoubled in effect by the very close juxtaposition of her small, piercing dark eyes.