were out of everything clothes and shoes and
blankets and money ach, yes; money espe
cially! and how the orderly sergeant had no
book or papers whatsoever, and so he used to
make his report in the morning on a clean
shingle, with a piece of lead pencil not so gross
as that." He indicated a short and stubby finger
end.
* 'Long 'bout then we could 'a' kept all the
rations we drew on a clean shingle too eh,
[79]
OLD JUDGE PRIEST
Herman?" wheezed Judge Priest. "And the
shingle wouldn't 'a' been loaded down at that!
My, my! Ever' time I think of that winter of
'64 I find myse'f gittin' hongry all over agin!"
And the judge threw himself back in his chair
and laughed his high, thin laugh.
Then, noting the others had not yet rallied
back again to the point where the flow of remi
niscences had been checked by Press Harper's
labial slip-up, he had an inspiration.
"Speakin' of roll calls," he said, uncon
sciously parroting Mr. Felsburg, "seems to me
it's 'bout time we had ours. The vittles end of
this here dinner 'pears to be 'bout over. Zach"
throwing the suggestion across his shoulder
"you and your pardners'd better be fetchin' on
the coffee and the seegars, I reckin." He faced
front again, raising his voice: "Who's callin' the
roll to-night?"
"I am," answered Professor Reese; and at
once he got on his feet, adjusted his spectacles
just so, and drew from an inner breast pocket
of his long frock coat a stained and frayed scroll,
made of three sheets of tough parchment paper
pasted end to end.
He cleared his throat; and, as though the
sound had been a command, his fellow members
bent forward, with faces composed to earnest
ness. None observed how the stranger acted;
indeed, he had been quite out of the picture and
as good as forgotten for the better part of an
hour. Certainly nobody was interested in him
[80]
A BLENDING OF THE PARABLES
at this moment when there impended what, to
that little group, was a profoundly solemn,
highly sentimental thing.
Again Professor Reese cleared his throat, then
spoke the name that was written in faded letters
at the top of the roll the name of him who had
been their first captain and, at the last, their
brigade commander.
"Died the death of a hero in an effort to save
others at Cotton wood Bar, June 28, 1871," said
Judge Priest; and he saluted, with his finger
against his forehead.
One by one the old school-teacher called off
the list of commissioned and noncommissioned
officers. Squire Futrell, who had attained to
the eminence of a second corporal's place, was
the only one who answered for himself. For
each of the others, including Lieutenant Garrett
he of the game leg and the plantation in Mis
sissippi somebody else answered, giving the
manner and, if he remembered it, the date of
that man's death. For, excepting Garrett, they
were all dead.
The professor descended to the roster of
enlisted men:
"AbnerP.Ashbrook!"
"Died in Camp Chase as a prisoner of war."
"G. W. Ayres!"
"Killed at Baker's Creek."
"R. M. Bigger!"
"Moved to Missouri after the war, was
elected state senator, and died in '89. "
[81]
OLD JUDGE PRIEST
"Reuben Brame!"
"Honourably discharged after being wounded
at Corinth, and disappeared. Believed to be
dead."
" Robert Burnell!"
"Murdered by bushwhackers in East Ten
nessee on his way home after the Surrender."
So it went down the long column* of names.
They were names, many of them, which once
stood for something in that community but
which would have fallen with an unfamiliar
sound upon the ears of the oncoming generation
old family names of the old town. But the
old families had died out or had scattered, as is
the way with old families, and the names were
only pronounced when Company B met or when
some idler, dawdling about the cemetery, de
ciphered the lichen-grown lines on gray and
crumbly grave-stones. Only once in a while did
a voice respond, "Here!" But always the
"Here!" was spoken clearly and loudly and at
that, the remaining twelve would hoist their
voices in a small cheer.
By common consent certain survivors spoke
for certain departed members. For example,
when the professor came to one name down
among the L's, Peter J. Galloway, who was an
incorruptible and unshakable Roman of the
party of Jefferson and Jackson, blared out:
"Turn't Republikin in '96, and by the same
token died that same year!" And when he
reached the name of Adolph Ohlmann it was Mr.
[82]
A BLENDING OF THE PARABLES
Felsburg's place to tell of the honourable fate
of his fellow Jew, who fell before Atlanta.
The reader read on and on until his voice took
on a huskened note. He had heard "Here!"
for the thirteenth time; he had come to the very
bottomest lines of his roster. He called one
more name Vilas, it was and then he rolled
up his parchment and put it away.
"The records show that, first and last, Com
pany B had one hundred and seventy-two
members, all regularly sworn into the service of
the Confederate States of America under our
beloved President, Jefferson Davis," stated
Professor Reese sonorously. "Of those names,
in accordance with the custom of this organisa
tion, I have just called one hundred and seventy-
one. The roll call of Company B, of the Old
Regiment of mounted infantry serving under
General Nathan Bedford Forrest, is completed
for the current year." And down he sat.
As Judge Priest, with a little sigh, settled back
in his chair, his glance fell on the face of the man
next him. Perhaps the old judge's eyes were not
as good as once they had been. Perhaps the
light was faulty. At any rate, he interpreted
the look that was on the other's face as a look of
loneliness. Ordinarily the judge was a pretty
good hand at reading faces too.
"Looky here, boys!" he called out, with such
emphasis as to centre general attention on the
upper end of the table. "We oughter be
'shamed of ourselves carryin' on this way
[83]
OLD JUDGE PRIEST
'mongst ourselves and plum' furgittin' we had
an outsider with us ez a special guest. Our new
friend here is 'bout the proper age to have seen
service in the war his own se'f mebbe he did
see some. Of all the states that fought ag'inst
us, none of 'em turned out better soldiers than
old Illinoy did. If my guess is right I move we
hear frum Mr. Watts, frum Illinoy, on some of
his own wartime experiences." His hand
dropped, with a heartening thump, on the
shoulder of the stranger. "Come on, colonel!
We've had a word from ever'body exceptin' you.
It's your turn ain't it, boys?"
Before his question might be answered, Watts
had straightened to his feet. He stood rigidly,
his hands driven wrist-deep into his coat pock
ets; his weather-beaten face set in heavy, hard
lines; his deep eyes fixed on a spot in the blank
wall above their heads.
"You're right I was a soldier in the war
between the States," he said in a thickened,
quick voice, which trembled just a little; "but
I didn't serve with the Illinois troops. I didn't
move to Illinois until after the war. My regi
ment was as good a regiment, though, and as
game a regiment, as fought in that war on
either side."
Some six or eight broke generously into a
brisk patter of handclapping at this, and from
the exuberant Mr. Galloway came:
"Whirroo! That's right stick up for yer
own side always! Go on, me boy; go on!"
[84]
A BLENDING OF THE PARABLES
The urging was unnecessary. Watts was
going on as though he had not been interrupted,
as though he had not heard the friendly ap
plause, as though his was a tale which stood in
most urgent need of the telling:
"I'm not saying much of my first year as a
soldier. I wasn't satisfied well, I wasn't hap
pily placed; I'll put it that way. I had hopes at
the beginning of being an officer; and when the
company election was held I lost out. Possibly I
was too ambitious for my own good. I came to
know that I was not popular with the rest of the
company. My captain didn't like me, either, I
thought. Maybe I was morbid; maybe I was
homesick. I know I was disappointed. You
men have all been soldiers you know how
those things go. I did my duty after a fashion
I didn't skulk or hang back from danger but I
didn't do it cheerfully. I moped and I suppose
I complained a lot.
"Well, finally I left that company and that
regiment. I just quit. I didn't quit under
fire; but I quit in the night. I think I must
have been half crazy; I'd been brooding too
much. In a day or two I realised that I couldn't
go back home which was where I had started
for and I wouldn't go over to the enemy.
Badly as I had behaved, the idea of playing^ the
outright traitor never entered my mind. I
want you to know that. So I thought the thing
over for a day or two. I had time for thinking
it over alone there in that swamp where I was
[85]
OLD JUDGE PRIEST
hiding. I've never spoken of that shameful
thing in my life since then not until to-night.
I tried not to think of it but I always have
every day.
"Well, I came to a decision at last. I closed
the book on my old self; I wiped out the past.
I changed my name and made up a story to
account for myself; but I thank God I didn't
change flags and I didn't change sides. I was
wearing that new name of mine when I came
out of those woods, and under it I enlisted in a
regiment that had been recruited in a state two
hundred miles away from my own state. I
served with it until the end of the war as a
private in the ranks.
"I'm not ashamed of the part I played those
last three years. I'm proud of it ! As God is my
judge, I did my whole duty then. I was com
mended in general orders once; my name was
mentioned in despatches to the War Department
once. That time I was offered a commission;
but I didn't take it. I bear in my body the
marks of three wounds. I've got a chunk of
lead as big as your thumb in my shoulder.
There's a little scar up here in my scalp, under
the hair, where a splinter from a shell gashed me.
One of my legs is a little bit shorter than the
other. In the very last fight I was in a spent
cannon ball came along and broke both the
bones in that leg. I've got papers to prove that
from '62 to '65 I did my best for my cause and
my country. I've got them here with me now
[86]
A BLENDING OF THE PARABLES
I carry them with me in the daytime and I sleep
at night with them under my pillow."
With his right hand he fumbled in his breast
pocket and brought out two time-yellowed slips
of paper and held them high aloft, clenched and
crumpled up in a quivering fist.
"One of these papers is my honourable dis
charge. The other is a letter that the old colonel
of my regiment wrote to me with his own hand
two months before he died."
He halted and his eyes, burning like red coals
under the thick brows, ranged the faces that
looked up into his. His own face worked. When
he spoke again he spoke as a prisoner at the bar
might speak, making a last desperate appeal to
the jury trying him for his life:
"You men have all been soldiers. I ask you
this now, as a soldier standing among soldiers
I ask you if my record of three years of hard ser
vice and hard fighting can square me up for the
one slip I made when I was hardly more than a
boy in years? I ask you that?"
With one voice, then, the jury answered. Its
verdict was acquittal and not alone acquittal
but vindication. Had you been listening outside
you would have sworn that fifty men and not thir
teen were yelling at the tops of their lungs, beat
ing on the table with all the might in their arms.
The old man stood for a minute longer. Then
suddenly all the rigidity seemed to go out of
him. He fell into his chair and put his face in his
two cupped hands. The papers he had bran-
[87]
OLD JUDGE PRIEST
dished over his head slipped out of his fingers and
dropped on the tablecloth. Orfe of them a flat,
unfolded slip settled just in front of Doctor
Lake. Governed partly by an instinct operating
automatically, partly to hide his own emotions,
which had been roused to a considerable degree,
Doctor Lake bent and spelled out the first few
words. His head came up with a jerk of pro
found surprise and gratification.
"Why, this is signed by John B. Gordon him
self!" he snorted. He twisted about, reaching
out for Judge Priest. "Billy! Billy Priest!
Why, look here! Why, this man's no Yankee!
Not by a dam' sight he's not! Why, he served
with a Georgia regiment! Why
But Judge Priest never heard a word of what
Doctor Lake was saying. His old blue eyes
stared at the stranger's left hand. On the back
of that hand, standing out upon the corded
tendons and the wrinkled brown skin, blazed a
red spot, shaped like a dumb-bell, a birthmark
of most unusual pattern.
Judge Priest stared and stared; and as he
stared a memory that was nearly as old as he
was crept out from beneath a neglected con
volution in the back part of his brain, and grew
and spread until it filled his amazed, startled,
scarce-believing mind. So it was no wonder he
did not hear Doctor Lake; no wonder he did
not see black Tobe Emery stealing up behind
him, with popped eyes likewise fixed on that
red dumb-bell-shaped mark.
[88]
A BLENDING OF THE PARABLES
No; Judge Priest did not hear a word. As
Doctor Lake faced about the other way to
spread his wonderful discovery down the table
and across it, the judge bent forward and
touched the fourteenth guest on the -shoulder
very gently.
"Pardner," he asked, apparently apropos of
nothing that had happened since the dinner
started "Pardner, when was the first time you
heard about this here meetin' of Company B
the first time?"
Through the interlaced fingers of the other
the answer came haltingly:
"I read about it in a Chicago Sunday paper
three weeks ago."
"But you knew before that there was a Com
pany B down here in this town?"
Without - raising his head or baring his face,
the other nodded. Judge Priest overturned his
coffee cup as he got to his feet, but took no heed
of the resultant damage to the cloth on the table
and the fronts of his white trouser legs.
"Boys," he cried out so shrilly, so eagerly, so
joyously, that they all jumped, "when you
foller after Holy Writ you can't never go fur
wrong. You're liable to breed a miracle. A
while ago we took a lesson from the Parable of
the Rich Man that give a dinner; and lo and
behold ! another parable and a better parable
yes, the sweetest parable of 'em all has come
to pass and been repeated here 'mongst us
without our ever knowin' it or even suspectin' it.
[89]
OLD JUDGE PRIEST
The Prodigal Son didn't enjoy the advantage of
havin' a Chicago Sunday paper to read, but in
due season he came back home that other
Prodigal did; and it stands written in the text
that he was f urgiven, and that a feast was made
fur him in the house of his fathers."
His tone changed to one of earnest demand:
"Lycurgus Reese, finish the roll call of this
company finish it right now, this minute the
way it oughter be finished ! "
"Why, Judge Priest," said Professor Reese,
still in the dark and filled with wonderment,
"it is already finished!"
As though angered almost beyond control,
the judge snapped back:
"It ain't finished, neither. It ain't been
rightly finished from the very beginnin' of these
dinners. It ain't finished till you call the very
last name that's on that list."
"But, Judge-
"But nothin'! You call that last name, Ly
curgus Reese; and you be almighty quick about
it!"
There was no need for the old professor, thus
roughly bidden, to haul out his manuscript. He
knew well enough the name, though wittingly it
had not passed his lips for forty years or more.
So he spoke it out:
"Sylvester B. Washburn!"
The man they had called Watts raised in his
place and dropped his clenched hands to his
sides, and threw off the stoop that was in his
[90]
A BLENDING OF THE PARABLES
shoulders. He lifted his wetted eyes to the
cracked, stained ceiling above. He peered past
plaster and rafter and roof, and through a rift in
the skies above he feasted his famished vision on
a delectable land which others might not see.
And then, beholding on his face that look of one
who is confessed and shriven, purified and
atoned for, the scales fell away from their own
eyes and they marvelled not that they knew
him now, but that they had not known him
before now. And for a moment or two there
was not a sound to be heard.
"Sylvester B. Washburn!" repeated Profes
sor Reese.
And the prodigal answered:
"Here!"
[91]
Ill
JUDGE PRIEST COMES BACK
FROM time to time persons of an inquir
ing turn of mind have been moved
audibly to speculate I might even say
to ponder regarding the enigma un
derlying the continued presence in the halls
of our National Congress of the Honourable
Dabney Prentiss. All were as one in agreeing
that he had a magnificent delivery, but in this
same connection it has repeatedly been pointed
out that he so rarely had anything to deliver.
Some few among this puzzled contingent, know
ing, as they did, the habits and customs of
the people down in our country, could under
stand that in a corner of the land where the gift
of tongue is still highly revered and the golden
chimings of a full- jewelled throat are not yet
entirely lost in the click of cash registers and
the whir of looms, how the Honourable Dabney
within his limitations might have been oratori-
cally conspicuous and politically useful, not
alone to himself but to others. But as a con-
[92]
JUDGE PRIEST COMES BACK
structive statesman sent up to Washington,
District of Columbia, and there engaged in
shaping loose ends of legislation into the welded
and the tempered law, they could not seem to see
him at all. It was such a one, an editorial writer
upon a metropolitan daily, who once referred
to Representative Prentiss as The Human Voice.
The title stuck, a fact patently testifying to its
aptness. That which follows here in this chapter
is an attempt to explain the mystery of this gen
tleman's elevation to the high places which he
recently adorned.
To go back to the very start of things we must
first review briefly the case of old Mr. Lysander
John Curd, even though he be but an incidental
figure in the narrative. He was born to be inci
dental, I reckon, heredity, breeding and the
chance of life all conspiring together to fit him
for that inconsequential role. He was born to
be a background. The one thing he ever did in
all his span on earth to bring him for a moment
into the front of the picture was that, having
reached middle age, he took unto himself a
young wife. But since he kept her only long
enough to lose her, even this circumstance did
not serve to focus the attention of the commun
ity upon his uncoloured personality for any con
siderable period of time.
Considering him in all his aspects as a volun
teer soldier in the Great War, as a district school
teacher, as a merchant in our town, as a bachelor
of long standing, as a husband for a fleeting
[93]
OLD JUDGE PRIEST
space, and as a grass widower for the rest of his
days I have gleaned that he never did anything
ignoble or anything conspicuous. Indeed, I
myself, who knew him as a half -grown boy may
know a middle-aged man, find it hard after the
lapse of years to describe him physically for you.
I seem to recall that he was neither tall nor
short, neither thick nor thin. He had the custo
mary number of limbs and the customary num
ber of features arranged in the customary way
I know that, of course. It strikes me that his
eyes were mild and gentle, that he was, as the
saying runs, soft-spoken and that his whiskers
were straggly and thin, like young second growth
in a new clearing; also that he wore his winter
overcoat until the hot suns of springtime
scorched it, and that he clung to his summer
alpaca and his straw hat until the frosts of
autumn came along and nipped them with the
sweet-gum and the dogwood. That lets me out.
Excusing these things, he abides merely as a
blur in my memory.
On a certain morning of a certain year, the
month being April, Judge Priest sat at his desk
in his chamber, so-called, on the right-hand side
of the long hall in the old courthouse, as you
came in from the Jefferson Street door. He was
shoulders deep down in his big chair, with both
his plump legs outstretched and one crossed
over the other, and he was reading a paper-
bound volume dealing in the main with certain
inspiring episodes in the spectacular life of a
JUDGE PRIEST COMES BACK
Western person known as Trigger Sam. On his
way downtown from home that morning he had
stopped by Wilcox & Powell's bookstore and
purchased this work at the price of five cents; it
was the latest production of the facile pen of a
popular and indefatigable author of an earlier
day than this, the late Ned Buntline, In his
hours of leisure and seclusion the judge dearly
loved a good nickel library, especially one with a
lot of shooting and some thrilling rescues in it.
Now he was in the middle of one of the most
exciting chapters when there came a mild rap
at the outer door. Judge Priest slid the Trigger
Sam book into a half-open drawer and called
out:
"Come right on in, whoever 'tis."
The door opened and old Mr. Lysander John
Curd entered, in his overcoat, with his head
upon his chest.
"Good morning, Judge Priest," he said in his
gentle halting drawl; "could I speak with you in
private a minute? It's sort of a personal matter
and I wouldn't care to have anybody maybe
overhearing."
"You most certainly could," said Judge
Priest. He glanced through into the adjoining
room at the back, where Circuit Clerk Milam
and Sheriff Giles Birdsong, heads together, were
busy over the clerical details of the forthcoming
term of circuit court. Arising laboriously from
his comfortable place he waddled across and
kicked the open door between the two rooms
[95]
OLD JUDGE PRIEST
shut with a thrust of a foot clad in a box-toed,
low-quartered shoe. On his way back to his
desk he brushed an accumulation of old papers
out of a cane-bottomed chair. "Set down here,
Ly sandy," he said in that high whiny voice of
his, "and let's hear whut's on your mind. Nice
weather, ain't it?"
An eavesdropper trained, mayhap, in the
psychology of tone and gesture might have
divined from these small acts and this small
utterance that Judge Priest had reasons for sus
pecting what was on his caller's mind; as though
this visit was not entirely unexpected, even
though he had had no warning of it. There was
in the judge's words an intangible inflection of
understanding, say, or sympathy; no, call it
compassion that would be nearer to it. The
two old men neither of them would ever see
sixty-five again lowered themselves into the
two chairs and sat facing each other across the
top of the judge's piled and dusty desk.
Through his steel-rimmed glasses the judge
fixed a pair of kindly, but none-the-less keen,
blue eyes on Mr. Lysander Curd's sagged and
slumped figure. There was despondency and
there was embarrassment in all the drooping
lines of that elderly frame. Judge Priest's lips
drew up tightly, and unconsciously he nodded
the brief nod that a surgeon might employ on
privately confirming a private diagnosis.
The other did not detect these things neither
the puckering of the lips nor the small forward
[96]
JUDGE PRIEST COMES BACK
bend of the judge's head. His own chin was in
his collar and his own averted eyes were on the
floor. One of his hands a gnarly, rather with
ered hand it must have been reached forth
absently and fumbled at a week-old copy of the
Daily Evening News that rested upon a corner
of the desk. The twining fingers tore a little
strip loose from the margin of a page and rolled
it up into a tiny wad.
For perhaps half a minute there was nothing
said. Then Judge Priest bent forward suddenly
and touched the nearermost sleeve of Mr. Curd
with a gentle little half -pat.
"Well, Lysandy?" he prompted.
"Well, Judge." The words were the first the
visitor had uttered since his opening speech, and
they came from him reluctantly. "Well, sir, it
would seem like I hardly know how to start.
This is a mighty personal matter that I've come
to see you in regards to and it's just a little bit
hard to speak about it even to somebody that
I've known most of my life, same as I've always
known you. But things in my home have finally
come to a head, and before the issue reaches you
in an official capacity as the judge on the bench
I sort of felt like it might help some might
make the whole thing pass off easier for all con