too—and frequently did.

Having, by brisk scratching movements, assuaged the irritation between his shoulder blades, the judge picked up his pen and shoved it across a sheet of legal cap that already was half covered with his fine, close writing. He never dictated his decisions, but always wrote them out by hand. The pen nib travelled along steadily for awhile. Eventually words in a typewritten petition that rested on the desk at his left caught the judge's eye.

"Huh!" he grunted, and read the quoted phrase, "'True Believers' Afro-American Church of Zion, sometimes called——'" Without turning his head he again hailed his slumbering servitor: "Jeff, why do yourall call that there little church-house down by the river Possum Trot?"

Jeff roused and grunted, shaking his head dear of the lingering dregs of drowsiness.

"Suh?" he inquired. "Wuz you speakin' to me, Jedge?"

"Yes, I was. Whut's the reason amongst your people fur callin' that little church down on the river front Possum Trot?"

Jeff chuckled an evasive chuckle before he made answer. For all the close relations that existed between him and his indulgent employer, Jeff had no intention of revealing any of the secrets of the highly secretive breed of humans to which he belonged. His is a race which, upon the surface of things, seems to invite the ridicule of an outer and a higher world, yet dreads that same ridicule above all things. Show me the white man who claims to know intimately the workings of his black servant's mind, who professes to be able to tell anything of any negro's lodge affiliations or social habits or private affairs, and I will show you a born liar.

Mightily well Jeff understood the how and the why and the wherefore of the derisive hate borne by the more orthodox creeds among his people for the strange new sect known as the True Believers. He could have traced out step by step, with circumstantial detail, the progress of the internal feud within the despised congregation that led to the upspringing of rival sets of claimants to the church property, and to the litigation that had thrown the whole tangled business into the courts for final adjudication. But except in company of his own choosing and his own colour, wild horses could not have drawn that knowledge from Jeff, although it would have pained him to think any white person who had a claim upon his friendship suspected him of concealment of any detail whatsoever.

"He-he," chuckled Jeff. "I reckin that's jes' nigger foolishness. Me, I don' know no reason why they sh'd call a church by no sech a name as that. I ain't never had no truck wid 'em ole True Believers, myse'f. I knows some calls 'em the Do-Righters, and some calls 'em the Possum Trotters." His tone subtly altered to one of innocent bewilderment: "Whut you doin', Jedge, pesterin' yo'se'f wid sech low-down trash as them darkies is?"

Further discussion of the affairs of the strange faith that was divided against itself might have ensued but that an interruption came. Steps sounded in the long hallway that split the lower floor of the old courthouse lengthwise, and at a door—not Judge Priest's own door but the door of the closed circuit-court chamber adjoining—a knocking sounded, at first gently, then louder and more insistent.

"See who 'tis out yonder, Jeff," bade Judge Priest. "And ef it's anybody wantin' to see me I ain't got time to see 'em without it's somethin' important. I aim to finish up this job before we go on home."

He bent to his task again. But a sudden draft of air whisked certain loose sheets off his desk, carrying them toward the fireplace, and he swung about to find a woman in his doorway. She was a big, upstanding woman, overfleshed and overdressed, and upon her face she bore the sign of her profession as plainly and indubitably as though it had been branded there in scarlet letters.

The old man's eyes narrowed as he recognised her. But up he got on the instant and bowed before her. No being created in the image of a woman ever had reason to complain that in her presence Judge Priest forgot his manners.

"Howdy do, ma'am," he said ceremoniously. "Will you walk in? I'm sort of busy jest at present."

"That's what your nigger boy told me, outside," she said; "but I came right on in any-way.

"Ah-hah, so I observe," stated Judge Priest dryly, but none the less politely; "mout I enquire the purpose of this here call?"

"Yes, sir; I'm a-goin' to tell you what brought me here without wastin' any more words than I can help," said the woman. "No, thank you,' Judge," she went on as he motioned her toward a seat; "I guess I can say what I've got to say, standin' up. But you set down, please, Judge."!

She advanced to the side of his desk as he settled back in his chair, and rested one broad flat hand upon the desk top. Three or four heavy, bejewelled bangles that were on her arm slipped down her gloved wrist with a clinking sound. Her voice was coarsened and flat; it was more like a man's voice than a woman's, and she spoke with a masculine directness.

"There was a girl died at my house early this mornin'," she told him. "She died about a quarter past four o'clock. She had something like pneumonia. She hadn't been sick but two days; she wasn't very strong to start with anyhow. Viola St. Claire was the name she went by here. I don't know what her real name was—she never told anybody what it was. She wasn't much of a hand to talk about herself. She must have been nice people though, because she was always nice and ladylike, no matter what happened. From what I gathered off and on, she came here from some little town down near Memphis. I certainly liked that girl. She'd been with me nearly ten months. She wasn't more than nineteen years old.

"Well, all day yestiddy she was out of her head with a high fever. But just before she died she come to and her mind cleared up. The doctor was gone—old Doctor Lake. He'd done all he could for her and he left for his home about midnight, leavin' word that he was to be called if there was any change. Only there wasn't time to call him; it all came so sudden.

"I was settin' by her when she opened her eyes and whispered, sort of gaspin', and called me by my name. Well, you could 'a' knocked me down with a feather. From the time she started sinkin' nobody thought she'd ever get her senses back. She called me, and I leaned over her and asked her what it was she wanted, and she told me. She knew she was dyin'. She told me she'd been raised right, which I knew already without her tellin' me, and she said she'd been a Christian girl before she made her big mistake. And she told me she wanted to be buried like a Christian, from a regular church, with a sermon and flowers and music and all that. She made me promise that I'd see it was done just that way. She made me put my hand in her hand and promise her. She shut her eyes then, like she was satisfied, and in a minute or two after that she died, still holdin' on tight to my hand. There wasn't nobody else there—just me and her—and it was about a quarter past four o'clock in the mornin'."

"Well, ma'am, I'm very sorry for that poor child. I am so," said Judge Priest, and his tone showed he meant it; "yit still I don't understand your purpose in comin' to me, without you need money to bury her." His hand went toward his flank, where he kept his wallet.

"Keep your hand out of your pocket, please, sir," said the woman. "I ain't callin' on anybody for help in a money way. That's all been attended to. I telephoned the undertaker the first thing this mornin'.

"It's something else I wanted to speak with you about. Well, I didn't hardly wait to get my breakfast down before I started off to keep my word to Viola. And I've been on the constant go ever since. I've rid miles on the street cars, and I've walked afoot until the bottoms of my feet both feel like boils right this minute, tryin' to find somebody that was fitten to preach a sermon over that dead girl.

"First I made the rounds of the preachers of all