Sprawled in his favourite porch chair, the Judge would talk and I would listen. Sometimes, the situation being reversed, I would talk and he listen. Under the spell of his sympathetic understanding I would be moved to do what that most sensitive and secretive of creatures--a small boy--rarely does do: I would bestow my confidences upon him. And if he felt like laughing--at least, he never laughed. And if he felt that the disclosures called for a lecture he rarely did that, either; but if he did the admonition was so cleverly sugar-coated by his way of framing it that I took it down without tasting it. As I see the vision now, it was at the close of a mighty warm day, when the sun went down as a red-hot ball and all the west was copper-plated with promise of more heat to-morrow, when Mr. Herman Felsburg passed. I don't know what errand was taking him up Clay Street that evening--he lived clear over on the other side of town. But, anyway, he passed; and as he headed into the sunset glow I was inspired by a boy's instinctive appreciation of the ludicrous to speak of the peculiar conformation of Mr. Felsburg's legs. I don't recall now just what it was I said, but I do recall, as clearly as though it happened yesterday, the look that came into Judge Priest's chubby round face. “Aha!” he said; and from the way he said it I knew he was displeased with me. He didn't scold me, though--only he peered at me over his glasses until I felt my repentant soul shrivelling smaller and smaller inside of me; and then after a bit he said: “Aha! Well, son, I reckin mebbe you're right. Old Man Herman has got a funny-lookin' pair of laigs, ain't he? They do look kinder like a set of hames that ain't been treated kindly, don't they? Whut was it you said they favoured--horse collars, wasn't it?” I tucked a regretful head down between my hunched shoulders, making no reply. After another little pause he went on: “Well, sonny, ef you should be spared to grow up to be a man, and there should be a war comin' along, and you should git drawed into it someway, jest you remember this: Ef your laigs take you into ez many tight places and into ez many hard-fit fights as I've saw them little crookedy laigs takin' that little man, you won't have no call to feel ashamed of 'em--not even ef yours should be so twisted you'd have to walk backward in order to go furward.” At hearing this my astonishment was so great I forgot my remorse of a minute before. I took it for granted that off yonder, in those far-away days, most of the older men in our town had seen service on one side or the other in the Big War--mainly on the Southern side. But somehow it never occurred to me that Mr. Herman Felsburg might also have been a soldier. As far back as I recalled he had been in the clothing business. Boylike, I assumed he had always been in the clothing business. So---- “Was Mr. Felsburg in the war?” I asked. “He most suttinly was,” answered Judge Priest.