“It were Captain Murrell.” The judge regarded him with a look of great steadiness. He saw his small face go white, he saw the look of abject terror in his eyes. The judge raised his fist and brought it down with a great crash on the table, so that the breakfast dishes leaped and rattled. “We don't know any boy ten years old with a rifle and bundle!” he said. “Please--you won't let him take me away, judge I want to stop with you!” cried Hannibal. He slipped from his chair, and passing about the table, seized the judge by the hand. The judge was visibly affected. “No!” he roared, with a great oath. “He shan't have you--I'll see him in the farthest corner of hell first! Is he kin to you?” “No,” said Hannibal. “Took you to raise, did he--and abused you--infernal hypocrite!” cried the judge with righteous wrath. “He tried to get me away from my Uncle Bob. He's been following us since we crossed the mountains.” “Where is your Uncle Bob?” “He's dead.” And the child began to weep bitterly. Much puzzled, the judge regarded him in silence for a moment, then bent and lifted him into his lap. “There, my son--” he said soothingly. “Now you tell me when he died, and all about it.” “He were killed. It were only yesterday, and I can't forget him! I don't want to--but it hurts--it hurts terrible!” Hannibal buried his head in the judge's shoulder and sobbed aloud. Presently his small hands stole about the judge's neck, and that gentleman experienced a strange thrill of pleasure. “Tell me how he died, Hannibal,” he urged gently. In a voice broken by sobs the child began the story of their flight, a confused narrative, which the judge followed with many a puzzled shake of the head. But as he reached his climax--that cry he had heard at the tavern, the men in the lane with their burden--he became more and more coherent and his ideas clothed themselves in words of dreadful simplicity and directness. The judge shuddered. “Can such things be?” he murmured at last. “You won't let him take me?” “I never unsay my words,” said the judge grandly. “With God's help I'll be the instrument for their destruction.” He frowned with a preternatural severity. Eh--if he could turn a trick like that, it would pull him up! There would be no more jeers and laughter.