If Marley had known that there were men then in the Ohio penitentiary serving terms that were longer by years than they would have been had Judge Blair digested his breakfast, or been allowed to finish his afternoon nap, he would have chosen another hour to press his suit. But he had youth's sublime confidence, and its abiding faith in the abstract quality of justice. He had dreaded this moment, but it had forced itself upon his keen conscience as a duty, and when he heard that morning that Judge Blair had returned he resolved to have it out at once. "May I have a word with you?" he asked, advancing a little. The judge nodded, but slightly, as if it were necessary for him, as a fattening man advanced in middle life, to conserve his energies. His nod seemed to include not only an assent, however reluctant, but a permission as well, to take the other chair that stood, all ready to rock comfortably, on the veranda. Marley took the chair but he did not rock, nor did he yield himself to it, but sat somewhat tensely on its very edge. "It's warm this afternoon, isn't it?" he said, trying to keep up his smile. He felt hopeless about it, but the thought, darting through his mind, that Lavinia was near, braced his purpose. The judge sat hunched in his chair, with his short white hair tumbled rather picturesquely, and his chin low in his collar. His lips were set firmly, his brows contracted. He breathed heavily, and on his strong aquiline nose, Marley could see tiny drops of perspiration. "I have come," said Marley, "to speak to you, Judge Blair, on a matter of, that is, importance. That is, I have come to ask you if I might--ah--pay my addresses to your daughter." Marley thought this form of putting it rather fine, and he was glad that that much of it, at least, was over. And yet, much as he liked this old-fashioned formula about paying his addresses, he instantly felt its inadequacy, and so nerved himself to do it all over. "I mean Lavinia," he said hurriedly, as if to correct any error of identification he might have led the judge into. "I want to marry her." The judge, still breathing heavily, looked at Marley out of his narrowed eyes. "You know," Marley said, in an explanatory way, "I love her." He waited then, but the judge was motionless, even to the hand that hung at his side over the arm of his chair, still holding his paper. Now and then, at what seemed to be long, unequal intervals, his eyelids fell slowly in heavy winks. "How long have you and Lavinia known each other?" he asked finally.