"Judge Priest," said Tilghman, looking down at him, "I've listened to what you've had to say; and I didn't stop you, because you are my friend and I know you mean well by it. Besides, you're my guest, under my own roof." He stumped back and forth in the narrow confines of the porch. Otherwise he gave no sign of any emotion that might be astir within him, his face being still set and his voice flat. "What's between me and my--what's between me and that man you just named always will be between us. He's satisfied to let things go on as they are. I'm satisfied to let them go on. It's in our breed, I guess. Words--just words--wouldn't help mend this thing. The reason for it would be there just the same, and neither one of us is going to be able to forget that so long as we both live. I'd just as soon you never brought this--this subject up again. If you went to him I presume he'd tell you the same thing. Let it be, Judge Priest--it's past mending. We two have gone on this way for fifty years nearly. We'll keep on going on so. I appreciate your kindness, Judge Priest; but let it be--let it be!" There was finality miles deep and fixed as basalt in his tone. He checked his walk and called in at a shuttered window. "Liddie," he said in his natural up-and-down voice, "before you put off for church, couldn't you mix up a couple of lemonades or something? Judge Priest is out here on the porch with me." "No," said Judge Priest, getting slowly up, "I've got to be gittin' back before the sun's up too high. If I don't see you again meanwhile be shore to come to the next regular meetin' of the Camp--on Friday night," he added. "I'll be there," said Tilghman. "And I'll try to find that piece of Colonel Watterson's and send it over to you. I'd like mightily for you to read it." He stood at the opening in the vines, with one slightly palsied hand fumbling at a loose tendril as the judge passed down the short yard-walk and out at the gate. Then he went back to his chair and sat down again. All those little muscles in his jowls were jumping. Clay Street was no longer empty. Looking down its dusty length from beneath the shelter of his palmleaf fan, Judge Priest saw here and there groups of children--the little girls in prim and starchy white, the little boys hobbling in the Sunday torment of shoes and stockings; and all of them were moving toward a common center--Sunday school. Twice again that day would the street show life--a little later when grown-ups went their way to church, and again just after the noonday dinner, when young people and servants, carrying trays and dishes under napkins, would cross and recross from one house to another. The Sunday interchange of special dainties between neighbors amounted in our town to a ceremonial and a rite; but after that, until the cool of the evening, the town would simmer in quiet, while everybody took Sunday naps.