href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@46699@[email protected]#halloa-goyle-said-he-come-in">"Halloa, Goyle," said he. "Come in."

Goyle began to turn the knob of the safe

"How's everything?" Bodney asked

Bodney took the money

The old man pointed toward the door, and Howard walked slowly out

Bodney struck him in the mouth

The Judge seized the shears and raised them high above his head

JUDGE ELBRIDGE

CHAPTER I.

THE STUDENT AND THE ORATOR.

When John Elbridge retired from the bench, the newspapers said that he had been an honorable judge. He was not a pioneer, but had come to Chicago at a time which we now call an early day, when churches rang their bells where now there is a jungle of trade, when the legs of the Giant of the West were in the ache of "growing pains;" at a time when none but the most visionary dreamed that a mud-hole full of old boots, dead rats, cats, dogs, could ever be worth a million of dollars. Elbridge came from Maryland, with a scant wardrobe, a lawyer's diploma, and the confident ambition of youth. It was not long before he formed a copartnership with a young man named Bodney, a Kentuckian, in whose mind still lived the chimes of Henry Clay's bells—a memory that not so much fitted him to the law as it atuned him to oratory; but in those days the bar could be eloquent without inviting the pitying smile which means, "Oh, yes, it sounds all right, but it's crude." Elbridge was the student of the firm, and Bodney the orator, not a bad combination in the law at that time, for what one did not know the other was prepared to assert. They prospered in a way, but never had the forethought to invest in the magic mud-hole; took wives unto themselves, and, in the opinion of the "orator," settled down to dull and uneventful honesty. The years, like racing horses, flew round and round the track, and a palace of trade grew out of the mud-hole. Bodney and his wife passed away, leaving two children, a boy and a girl. Elbridge had stood at the bedside of his partner, who was following his wife into the eternal shadow. "Don't worry about the children, Dan; they are mine," said the "student," and the "orator" passed away in peace. And they were his. He took them to his home to be brother and sister to his son; and the years raced round and round the track.

At the time of his retirement from the bench the Judge was asked why he refused longer to serve the people. "Because," said he, "I am beginning to be afraid of my judgment; I am becoming too careful—like the old engineer who can't summon the nerve to bring his train in on time."

Mrs. Elbridge had been known as a local "beauty." It was said that the "orator" had rung his Henry Clay bells for her hand, and with philosophy, a rare quality among orators, had accepted defeat, to spur himself into another contest and to win a woman not unknown to "looks." Rachel Fry, afterward Mrs. Elbridge, had written verses to sky tints and lake hues, and the "student" believed that he had won her with a volume of Keats, bound in blue, the color of one of her own lake odes. And in the reminiscent humor of his older days he was wont to laugh over it until he himself was shot through with a metric thrill, when in measure he strove to recall the past; and then she had the laugh on him. It may be a mere notion, but it seems that the young doctor and the old lawyer are much inclined to write verses, for among the papers of many an aged jurist sonnets are found, and editors are well acquainted with the beguiling smile of the young physician. So the "pink fleece of the cloud-sheep," and the "blue, mysterious soul of the lake," inspirations of the "beauty's" earlier years, found sympathy in the "student's" "mellow morning of sunlit hope," penned in the late afternoon of life. But verses, be they ever so bad, are the marks of refinement, and there was no vulgar streak in the mind of the Judge. His weakness, and he possessed more than one, was the doggedness with which he held to a conviction. His mind was not at all times clear; a neighbor said that he often found himself in a cloud of dust that arose from ancient law books; and it is a fact that an able judge is sometimes a man of strong prejudices. At the time of this narration he was still hale, good humored, a little given to the pedantry of advancing years, devoted to his family, impressive in manner, with his high forehead and thin gray hair; firm of step, heavy in the shoulders, not much above medium height, cleanly shaven, with full lips slightly pouting. Following his own idea of comfort, he had planned his house, a large brick building in Indiana Avenue, at first far out, but now within easy reach of the area where the city's pile-driving heart beats with increasing violence. It was a happy household. The son, Howard, was a manly fellow, studious but wide awake, and upon him the old man rested a precious hope. The mother was a blonde, and nature had given her cast to the boy, blue eyes and yellowish hair; and it was said that if he had a vanity it lay in his bronze beard, which he kept neatly trimmed—and it had come early, this mark of the matured man. His foster brother, George Bodney, was dark, inclined to restlessness, over-impressionable, nervous. The old man had another precious hope—Florence, Bodney's sister; but of this he shall tell in his own words. A stranger might not have seen anything striking about the girl; but all acquaintances thought her handsome. At school she had been called a "character," not that she was original to the degree of being "queer," but because she acted in a manner prematurely old, discussing serious questions with her teachers, debating the problems of life. Her hobby was honor, a virtue which a cynic has declared is more often found among boys than among girls. She liked to read of martyrs, not that there was heaven in their faith, but because she thought it glorious to suffer and to die for a principle, no matter what that principle might happen to be.

There was one other member of the family, William, the Judge's brother. He looked like a caricature of the "student," with thinner hair and thicker lips. He had not given his energies to any one calling; shiftless is the word best fitted to set him forth. He had lived in different parts