and threw back his prematurely whitened head,
and he lifted his face that was all scarified with
the blighting flames of dissipation, and he shut
his eyes that long since had wearied of looking
upon a trivial world, and Ashby Corwin prayed.
There are prayers that seem to circle round and
round in futile rings, going nowhere; and then
again there are prayers that are like sparks
struck off from the wheels of the prophet's
chariot of fire, coursing their way upward in
spiritual splendour to blaze on the sills of the
Judgment Seat. This prayer was one of those
prayers.

After that Judge Priest bowed his head again
and spoke the benediction.

It turns out that I was right a while back
when I predicted this chapter of this book
might end with Judge Priest sitting at his desk
in his room at the old courthouse. On the morn
ing of the day following the day of this funeral
he sat there, putting the last words to his deci-
sion touching upon the merits of the existing
[44]



THE LORD PROVIDES



controversy in the congregation of the True
Believers' Afro-American Church of Zion. The
door opened and in walked Beck Giltner, saloon
keeper, sure-thing gambler, handy-man-with-a-
gun, and, according to the language of a resolu
tion unanimously adopted at a mass meeting of
the Law and Order League, force-for-evil.

Beck Giltner was dressed in his best. He
wore his wide-brimmed, black soft hat, with
its tall crown carefully dented in, north, east,
south and west; his long black coat; his white
turn-down collar; his white lawn tie; and in the
bosom of his plaited shirt of fine white linen his
big diamond pin, that was shaped like an
inverted banjo. This was Beck Giltner's attire
for the street and for occasions of ceremony.
Indoors it was the same, except that sometimes
he took the coat off and turned back his shirt
cuffs.

"Good mornin', Beck," said the judge.
"Well?"

"Judge Priest," said Giltner, "as a rule I
don't come to this courthouse except when I
have to come. But to-day I've come to tell
you something. You made a mistake yester
day!"

"A mistake, suh?" The judge's tone was
sharp and quick.

"Yes, suh, that's what you did," returned
the tall gambler. "I don't mean in regards to
that funeral you held for that dead girl. You
probably don't care what I think one way or



OLD JUDGE PRIEST



the other, but I want to tell you I was strong
for that, all the way through. But you made a
mistake just the same, Judge; you didn't take
up a collection.

"It had been a good many years since I was
inside of a church, until I walked with you and
the others to that little nigger meetin'-house yes
terday forty-odd years I reckon; not since I
was a kid, anyway. But to the best of my early
recollections they always took a collection for
something or other every time I did go^ to
church. And yesterday you overlooked that
part altogether.

"So last night I took it on myself to get up a
collection for you. I started it with a bill or so
off my own roll. Then I passed the hat round
at several places where you wouldn't scarcely
care to go yourself. And I didn't run across a
single fellow that failed to contribute. Some of
'em don't move in the best society, and there's
some more of 'em that you'd only know of by
reputation. But every last one of 'em put in
something. There was one man that didn't
have only seven cents to his name he put that
in. So here it is four hundred and seventy-
five dollars and forty-two cents, accordin' to
my count."

From one pocket he fetched forth a rumpled
packet of paper .money and from the other a
small cloth sack, which gave off metallic clinking
sounds. He put them down together on the

desk in front of Judge Priest.

[46]



THE LORD PROVIDES



"I appreciate this, ef I am right in my
assumption of the motives which actuated you
and the purposes to which you natchally
assumed this here money would be applied,"
said Judge Priest as the other man waited for
his response. "But, son, I can't take your
money. It ain't needed. Why, I wouldn't
know whut to do with it. There ain't no out-
standin' bills connected with that there funeral.
All the expense entailed was met privately.
So you see "

"Wait just a minute before you say no!"
interrupted Giltner. "Here's my idea and it's
the idea of all the others that contributed: We-
all want you to take this money and keep it
keep it in a safe, or in your pocket, or in the
bank to your credit, or anywheres you please,
but just keep it. And if any girl that's gone
wrong should die and not have any friends to
help bury her, they can come to you and get the
cash out of this fund to pay for puttin' her away.
And if any other girl should want to go back to
her people and start in all over again and try to
lead a better life, why you can advance her
the railroad fare out of that money too. You
see, Judge, we are aimin' to make a kind of a
trust fund out of it, with you as the trustee.
And when the four seventy-five forty-two is all
used up, if you'll just let me know I'll guarantee
to rustle up a fresh bank roll so you'll always
have enough on hand to meet the demands.

Now then, Judge, will you take it?"

[47]



OLD JUDGE PRIEST



Judge Priest took it. He stretched out and
scooped in currency and coin sack, using therefor
his left hand only. The right was engaged in
reaching for Beck Giltner's right hand, the pur
pose being to shake it.



[48]



II

BLENDING OF THE
PARABLES



NEARLY every week weather permit
ting the old judge went to dinner
somewhere. To a considerable extent
he kept up his political fences going to
dinners. Usually it was of a Sunday that he
went.

By ten o'clock almost any fair Sunday morn
ing spring, summer or early fall Judge
Priest's Jeff would have the venerable side-bar
buggy washed down, and would be leading forth
from her stall the ancient white lady-sheep, with
the unmowed fetlocks and the intermittent
mane, which the judge, from a spirit of
prideful affection and in the face of all visual
testimony to the contrary, persisted in re
garding as an authentic member of the equine
kingdom.

Presently, in their proper combination and
alignment, the trio would be stationed at the
front gate, thus: Jeff in front, bracing the for
ward section of the mare-creature; and the

[49]



OLD JUDGE PRIEST



buggy behind, its shafts performing a similar
office for the other end of this unique quadruped.
Down the gravelled walk that led from the house,
under the water maples and silver-leaf poplars,
which arched over to make a shady green tunnel
of it, the judge would come, immaculate but
rumply in white linens. The judge's linens had
a way of getting themselves all rumpled even
before he put them on. You -might say they
were born rumpled.

Beholding his waddlesome approach out of
the tail of her eye, the white animal would
whinny a dignified and conservative welcome.
She knew her owner almost as well as he knew
her. Then, while Jeff held her head that is to
say, held it up the old man would heave his
frame ponderously in and upward between the
dished wheels and settle back into the deep nest
of the buggy, with a wheeze to which the ago
nised rear springs wheezed back an anthemlike
refrain.

"All right, Jeff!" the judge would say, be
stowing his cotton umbrella and his palm-leaf
fan in their proper places, and working a pair
of wrinkled buckskin gloves on over his chubby
hands. "I won't be back, I reckin, till goin' on
six o'clock this evenin', and I probably won't
want nothin' then fur supper except a cold
snack. So if you and Aunt Dilsey both put out
from the house fur the day be shore to leave the
front-door key under the front-door mat, where
I kin find it in case I should git back sooner'n I
[50]



A BLENDING OF THE PARABLES

expect. And you be here in due time yourse'f ,
to unhitch. Hear me, boy?"

"Yas, suh," Jeff would respond. "I hears
you."

"All right, then!" his employer would com
mand as he gathered up the lines. " Let loose of
Mittie May."

Conforming with the accepted ritual of the
occasion, Jeff would let loose of Mittie May and
step ceremoniously yet briskly aside, as though
fearing instant annihilation in the first resistless
surge of a desperate, untamable beast. Judge
Priest would slap the leathers down on Mittie
May's fat back; and Mittie May, sensing the
master touch on those reins, would gather her
four shaggy legs together with apparent intent
of bursting into a mad gallop, and then, un-
gathering them, step out in her characteristic
gentle amble, a gait she never varied under any
circumstances. Away they would go, then,
with the dust splashing up from under Mittie
May's flat and deliberative feet, and the loose
rear curtain of the buggy flapping and slapping
behind like a slatting sail.

Jeff would stand there watching them until
they had faded away in the deeper dust where
Clay Street merged, without abrupt transition,
into a winding country road; and, knowing the
judge was definitely on his way, Jeff would be
on his way, too, but in a different direction. Of
his own volition Jeff never fared countryward
on Sundays. Green fields and running brooks
[51]



OLD JUDGE PRIEST



laid no spell of allurement on his nimble fancy.
He infinitely preferred metropolitan haunts and
pastimes such, for instance, as promenades
along the broken sidewalks of the Plunkett's
Hill section and crap games behind the coloured
undertaker's shop on Locust Street.

The judge's way would be a pleasant way a
peaceful, easy way, marked only by small dis
putes at each crossroads junction, Mittie May
desiring always to take the turn that would
bring them back home by the shortest route,
and the judge stubborn in his intention of push
ing further on. The superior powers of human
obstinacy having triumphed over four-legged in
stinct, they would proceed. Now they would
clatter across a wooden bridge spanning a
sluggish amber-coloured stream, where that im
pertinent bird, the kingfisher, cackled derisive
imitations of the sound given off by the warped
axles of the buggy, and the yonkerpins which
Yankees, in their ignorance, have called water
lilies spread their wide green pads and their
white-and-yellow cusps of bloom on the face
of the creek water.

Now they would come to cornfields and
tobacco patches that steamed in the sunshine,
conceding the season to be summer; or else old,
abandoned clearings, grown up rankly in shoe-
make bushes and pawpaw and persimmon and
sassafras. And the pungent scent of the wayside
pennyroyal would rise like an incense, saluting
their nostrils as they passed, and the grassy

[*]



A BLENDING OF THE PARABLES

furrows of long-harvested grain crops were like
the lines of graves on old battlegrounds.

Now they would come into the deep woods;
and here the sunlight sifted down through the
tree tops, making cathedral aisles among the
trunks and dim green cloisters of the thickets;
and in small open spaces the yellowing double
prongs of the mullein stalks stood up stiff and
straightly like two-tined altar candles. Then
out of the woods again and along a stretch of
blinding hot road, with little grey lizards racing
on the decayed fence rails as outriders, and
maybe a pair of those old red-head peckerwoods
flickering on from snag to snag just ahead, keep
ing company with the judge, but never quite
permitting him to catch up with them.

So, at length, after five miles, or maybe ten, he
would come to his destination, which might be a
red-brick house set among apple trees on a low
hill, or a whitewashed double cabin of logs in a
bare place down in the bottoms. Here, at their
journey's end, they would halt, with Mittie May
heaving her rotund sides in and out in creditable
simulation of a thoroughbred finishing a hard
race; and Judge Priest would poke his head out
from under the buggy hood and utter the custo
mary hail of "Hello the house!" At that, nine
times out of ten from under the house and
from round behind it would boil a black-and-
tan ground swell of flap-eared, bugle-voiced
hound dogs, all tearing for the gate, with every
apparent intention of devouring horse and har-



OLD JUDGE PRIEST



ness, buggy and driver, without a moment's
delay. And behind them, in turn, a shirt-sleeved
man would emerge from the shelter of the gal
lery and hurry down the path toward the fence,
berating the belling pack at every step he
took:

"You Sounder, you Ring, you Queen con-
sarn your mangy pelts! Go on back yonder
where you belong! You Saucer come on back
here and behave yourse'f ! I bet I take a chunk
some of these days and knock your fool head
off!"

As the living wave of dogs parted before his
advance and his threats, and broke up and
turned about and vanished with protesting
yelps, the shirt-sleeved one, recognising Mittie
May and the shape of the buggy, would speak a
greeting something after this fashion:

"Well, suh ef it ain't Jedge Priest! Jedge,
suh, I certainly ani proud to see you out this
way. We was beginnin' to think you'd furgot
us we was, fur a fact!"

Over his shoulder he would single out one of
a cluster of children who magically appeared on
the gallery steps, and bid Tennessee or Virgil or
Dora- Virginia or Albert-Sidney, as the name of
the chosen youngster might be, to run and tell
their ma that Judge Priest had come to stay for
dinner. For the judge never sent any advance
"notice of his intention to pay a Sunday visit;
neither did he wait for a formal invitation. He
just dropped in, being assured of a welcome
[54]



A BLENDING OF THE PARABLES

under any rooftree, great or humble, in his entire
judicial district.

Shortly thereafter the judge, having been
welcomed in due state, and provision made for
Mittie May's stabling and sustenance, would be
established on the gallery in the rocking-chair of
honour, which was fetched out from the parlour
for his better comfort. First, a brimming gourd
of fresh spring water would be brought, that he
might take the edge off his thirst and flush the
dust out of his throat and moisten up his palate;
and then would follow a certain elaborated rite
in conjunction with sundry sprigs of young mint
and some powdered sugar and outpourings of
the red-brown contents of a wicker demijohn.

Very possibly a barefooted and embarrassed
namesake would be propelled forward, by par
ental direction, to shake hands with the guest;
for, except old Doctor Saunders, Judge Priest
had more children named for him than anybody
in our county. And very probably there would
come to^his ears from somewhere rearward the
frenzied clamour of a mighty barnyard commo
tion squawkings and cacklings and flutterings
closely followed by the poignant wails of a
pair of doomed pullets, which grew fainter and
fainter as the captives were borne to the sacri
ficial block behind the woodpile certain signs,
all these, that if fried chicken had not been in
cluded in the scope and plan of Sunday dinner,
fried chicken would now be, most assuredly.

When dinner was over, small messengers
[55]



OLD JUDGE PRIEST



would be sent up the road and down to spread
the word; and various oldsters of the vicinity
would leave their own places to foregather in the
dooryard of the present host and pass the time
of day with Judge Priest. Sooner or later,
somehow, the talk would work backward to war
times. Overhearing what passed to and fro, a
stranger might have been pardoned for suppos
ing that it was only the year before, or at most
two years before, when the Yankees came
through under Grant; while Forrest's Raid was
spoken of as though it had taken place within
the current month.

Anchored among the ancients the old judge
would sit, doing his share of the talking and more
than his share of the listening; and late in the
afternoon, when the official watermelon, all
dripping and cool, had been brought forth from
the springhouse, and the shadows were begin
ning to stretch themselves slantwise across the
road, as though tired out completely by a hard
day's work in the broiling sun, he and Mittie
May would jog back toward town, meeting
many an acquaintance on the road, but rarely
passing one. And the upshot would be that at
the next Democratic primary the opposing can
didate for circuit judge if there was any op
posing candidate got powerfully few votes
out of that neighbourhood.

Such Sunday excursions as these and such a
Sunday dinner as this typical one formed a regu-
lar part of Judge Priest's weekly routine through
[56]



A BLENDING OF THE PARABLES

at least nine months of the year. If unforeseen
events conspired to rob him of his trip to the
country he felt the week had not rightly rounded
itself out; but once a year he attended a dinner
beside which all other dinner occasions were, in
his estimation, as nothing at all. With regard
to this particular affair, he used to say it took
him a week to get primed and ready for it, one
whole night to properly enjoy it, and another
week to recover from the effects of it. I am
speaking now of the anniversary banquet of the
survivors of Company B first and foremost of
the home companies which was and still is
held always on a given date and at a given
place, respectively, to wit: The evening of the
twelfth of May and the dining room of the
Richland House.

Company B held the first of its annual dinners
at the Richland House away back in '66. That
time sixty and more men young men, mostly,
in their mid-twenties and their early thirties
sat down together to meat and drink, and no less
a personage than General Grider presided that
same Meriwether Grider who, going out in the
first year of the war as company commander,
came back after the Surrender, bringing with
him the skeleton remnants of a battered and a
shattered brigade.

General Meriwether Grider has been dead this

many a year now. He gave his life for the

women and the children when the Belle of the

Bends burned up at Cottonwood Bar; and that

[57]



OLD JUDGE PRIEST



horror befell so long ago that the present genera
tion down our way knows it only as a thing of
which those garrulous and tiresome creatures,
the older inhabitants, are sometimes moved to
speak. But the rules for the regulation and
conduct of subsequent banquets which were
adopted on that long-ago night, when the gen
eral sat at the head of the table, hold good, even
though all else in our town has changed.

Of the ardent and youthful sixty-odd who
dined with him then, a fading and aging and
sorely diminished handful is left. Some in the
restless boom days of the eighties moved away
to other and brisker communities, and some
have marched down the long, lone road that
leads to a far country. Yet it abides as a by
law and a precedent that only orthodox mem
bers of the original company shall have covers
and places provided for them when anniversary
night rolls round. The Bichland House-
always must be the place of dining; this, too,
in spite of the fact that the Richland House
has been gnawed by the tooth of time into a
shabby old shell, hardly worthy to be named in
the same printed page with the smart Hotel
Moderne strictly European plan; rates, three
dollars a day and upward which now figures
as our leading hotel.

Near the conclusion of the feast, when the

cloth has been cleared of the dishes and only the

glasses are left, the roll is called by the acting

top-sergeant cholera having taken off the real

[58]



A BLENDING OF THE PARABLES

top-sergeant in '75. Those who are present
answer for themselves, and for those who are
absent some other voice answers. And then at
the very last, after the story-telling is done, they
all stand and drink to Company B its men, its
memories, its most honourable record, and its
most honourable dead.

They tell me that this last May just seven met
on the evening of the twelfth to sit beneath the
crossed battle-flags in the Richland House din
ing room, and that everything was over and
done with long before eleven o'clock. But the
annual dinner which I especially have in mind to
describe here took place on a somewhat more
remote twelfth of May, when Company B still
might muster better than the strength of a cor
poral's guard. If I remember correctly, eighteen
grizzled survivors were known to be alive that
year.

In saying that, though, I would not have you
infer that there were no more than eighteen
veterans in our town. Why, in those times
there must have been two hundred easily. Gid
eon K. Irons Camp could turn out upward of a
hundred members in good standing for any
large public occasion; but you understand this
was a dinner limited to Company B alone, which
restriction barred out a lot of otherwise highly
desirable individuals.

It barred out Sergeant Jimmy Bagby, for the
sergeant had served with King's Hellhounds;
and Captain Shelby Woodward, who belonged
[59]



OLD JUDGE PRIEST



to the Orphan Brigade, as you would have
learned for yourself at first hand had you ever
enjoyed as much as five minutes of uninter
rupted conversation with the captain; and Mr.
Wolfe Hawley, our leading grocer, who was a
gunner in Lyon's Battery and many another it
barred out. Indeed, Father Minor got in only
by the skin of his teeth. True enough he was a
Company B man at the beginning; but he trans
ferred early to another branch of the service and
for most of the four years he rode with Morgan's
men.

The committee in charge looked for a full
attendance. It was felt that this would be one of
the most successful dinners of them all. Cer
tainly it would be by long odds the best adver
tised. It would seem that the Sunday editor of
the Courier- Journal, while digging through his
exchanges, came on a preliminary announcement
in the columns of the Daily Evening News,
which was our home paper; and, sensing a
feature story in it, he sent one of his young
men down from Louisville to spend two days
among us, compiling facts, names and photo
graphs. The young man did a page spread
in the Sunday Courier- Journal, thereby un
consciously enriching many family scrapbooks
in our town.

This was along toward the middle of April.

Following it, one of the Eastern syndicates

rewrote the piece and mailed it out to its con-

stituent papers over the country. The Asso-

[60]



A BLENDING OF THE PARABLES

dated Press saw fit to notice it too; and after
that the tale got into the boiler-plate shops
which means it got into practically all the
smaller weeklies that use patent insides. It
must have been a strictly non-newspaper-read
ing community of this nation which did not
hear that spring about the group of old soldiers
who for forty years without a break had held a
dinner once a year with no outsiders present, and
who were now, for the forty-first time, about to
dine again.

Considering this publicity and all, the com
mittee naturally counted on a fairly complete
turnout. To be sure, Magistrate Matt Dallam,
out in the country, could not hope to be present
except in the spirit, he having been bedridden
for years. Garnett Hinton, the youngest en
listed member of Company B, was in feeble
health away off yonder in the Panhandle of
Texas. It was not reasonable to expect him to
make the long trip back home. On the tenth
Mr. Napoleon B. Crump was called to Birming
ham, Alabama, where a ne'er-do-well son-in-law
had entangled himself in legal difficulties, arising
out of a transaction involving a dubious check,
with a yet more dubious signature on it. He
might get back in time and then again he
might not.

On the other hand, Second Lieutenant Char
ley Garrett wrote up from his plantation down
in Mississippi that he would attend if he had to
walk a mere pleasantry of speech, inasmuch as
[61]



OLD JUDGE PRIEST



Lieutenant Garrett had money enough to char
ter for himself a whole railroad train should he
feel so inclined. And, from his little farm in
Minis County, Chickasaw Reeves sent word he
would be there, too, no matter what happened.
The boys could count on him, he promised.

Tallying up twenty-four hours or so ahead of
the big night, the arrangements committee,
consisting of Doctor Lake, Professor Lycurgus
Reese and Mr. Herman Felsburg, made certain
of fifteen diners, and possibly sixteen, and gave
orders accordingly to the proprietor of the Rich-
land House; but Mr. Nap Crump was detained
in Birmingham longer than he had expected, and
Judge Priest received from Lieutenant Charley
Garrett a telegram reading as follows :

"May the Lord be with you! because I
can't. Rheumatism in that game leg of mine,
it!"

The excisions, it developed, were the work of