on the curb rein of my curiosity. I apparently took no notice of his remark, for just then a negro stepped suddenly from behind the bushes along the road and startled Sandhelo so that he promptly became temperamental and sat up on his haunches to get a better look at the apparition, and the mess he made of the harness furnished us plenty of theme for conversation for the next ten minutes.

“Lord, what an ape,” remarked Justice, gazing after the departing form of the negro shambling along the road, “he looks like the things you see in nightmares.”

Accustomed as I was to seeing low-down niggers, this one struck me as being the worst specimen nature had ever produced. He had the features of a baboon, and the flapping rags of the grotesque garments he wore made him look like a wild creature.

“Do you have many such intellectual-looking gentlemen around here?” asked Justice, twisting his neck around for a final look at the fellow. “I’d hate to meet that professor at the dark of the moon.”

“Oh, they’re really not as bad as they look,” I replied. “They look like apes, but they’re quite harmless. They’re shiftless to the last degree, but not violent. They’re too lazy to do any mischief.”

“Just the same, I’d rather not get into an argument with that particular brother, if it’s all the same to you,” answered Justice. “He looks like mischief to me.”

“He doesn’t look like a prize entry in a beauty contest,” I admitted.

With all that talk about the negro Justice’s remark about Switzerland went unheeded, but I didn’t forget it just the same. I thought about it all the rest of the afternoon and it was as plain as the nose on your face that there was some mystery about Justice Sherman. A sheep herder who spouted Virgil at a touch, quoted continually from the classics, had refined manners and had traveled abroad, couldn’t hide his light under a bushel very well. Another thing; he wasn’t a Texan as he had led us to believe. He talked with the crisp, clear accent of the North, and the fuss he made about the negro in the road that afternoon betrayed the fact that he was no southerner. Nobody around here pays any attention to niggers, no matter how tattered they are. We’re used to them, but northerners always make a fuss.

The question bubbled up and down in my mind, keeping time to the bubbling of the soup on the stove; why was this educated and refined young man working for thirty dollars a month as a handy man around horses on a third-rate stock farm in this God-forsaken part of the country? Then a suspicion flashed into my mind and at the dreadful thought I stopped stirring with the upraised spoon frozen in mid-air. Then I gathered my wits together and started resolutely for the table. I had promised father I would never ask Justice Sherman anything about his past, but here was something that swept aside all personal obligations and promises. I found him with father in the stable working over a sick colt. I marched straight up to him and began without any preamble.

“See here, Justice Sherman,” I said, “are you hiding yourself to avoid military service? Are you a slacker?”

Justice Sherman straightened up and looked at me with flashing eyes. “No, I’m not!” he shouted in a voice quite unlike his.

I never saw anyone in such a rage. His face was as red as a beet and his hair actually stood on end. “I registered for the service,” he went on hotly, “and wasn’t called in the draft. I tried to enlist and they wouldn’t take me. I was under weight and had a weak throat. If anyone thinks I’m a slacker, I’ll——” Here he choked and had a violent coughing spell.

I stared at him, dazed. I never thought he could get so angry. He looked at me with hostile, indignant eyes. Then he straightened up stiffly and walked out of the stable.

“I won’t stay here any longer,” he exploded, still at the boiling point. “I won’t be insulted.”

“I apologize,” I said humbly. “I spoke in haste. Won’t you please consider it unsaid?”

No, he wouldn’t consider it unsaid. He wouldn’t listen to father’s pathetic plea not to leave him without a helper. We suspected him of being a slacker and that finished it. He would leave immediately. Down the road he marched as fast as he could go without ever turning his head.

A worm in the dust was much too exalted to describe the way I felt. With the best of intentions I had precipitated a calamity, taking away father’s best helper at a critical time, to say nothing of my losing him as a companion. I was too disgusted with myself to live and chopped wood to relieve my feelings. After supper I hitched up Sandhelo and drove to Spencer to post a letter. I am not in the least sentimental—you know that—but all along the road I kept seeing things that reminded me of Justice Sherman and the fun we had had together. Now that he was gone the days ahead of me seemed suddenly very empty, and desolation laid a firm hand on my ankle.

Also, I had an uncomfortable recollection that it was right along here we had met the horrid negro, and I became filled with fear that I would meet him again. The fear grew, and turned into absolute panic when I approached that same clump of bushes and in the dusk saw a figure rise from behind them and lurch toward the road. I pulled Sandhelo up sharply, thinking to turn around and flee in the opposite direction, but Sandhelo refused to be turned. When I pulled him up he sat back and mixed up the harness so he got the bit into his teeth, and then he jumped up and went straight on forward, with a squeal of mischief. When we were opposite the figure in the road Sandhelo stopped short and poked his nose forward just the way he used to do when Justice Sherman came into his stall.

“Hello,” said a voice in the darkness, and then I saw that the figure in the road was Justice Sherman. His bad ankle had given out on him and he had been sitting there on the ground waiting for some vehicle to come along and give him a lift to Spencer.

“Get in,” I said briefly, helping him up, and he got in beside me without a word. We drove to Spencer in silence and he made no move to get out when we got there. I mailed my letter and then turned and drove homeward. About half way home he spoke up and apologized for being so hasty, and wondered if father would take him back again. I reassured him heartily and we were on the old footing of intimacy by the time we reached home.

We found father standing in front of the house talking to a negro whom we recognized as the one we had met in the road that afternoon. Father greeted Justice Sherman with joy and relief.

“You pretty nearly came back too late,” he said. “Here I was just hiring a man to take your place.” Then he turned to the negro and said, “It’s all off, Solomon. I don’t need you. My own man has come back. You go along and get a job somewhere else.”

The negro shuffled off and I fancied that he looked rather resentful at being sent away.

“Father,” I said, when the creature was out of earshot, “you surely weren’t going to hire that ape to work here?”

“Why not?” answered father. “I have to have a man to help with the horses, and this fellow came up to the door and asked for work, so I promised him a job.”

“But he’s such a terrible looking thing,” I said.

Father only laughed and dismissed the subject with a wave