old man, who would potter and philander round a long time before he ever came to the point of anything. So he appeared to the others there, too. But what Durham did not sense was that the homely simplicity of the old man was of a piece with the picture of the courtroom, that he would seem to these watching, hostile people one of their own kind, and that they would give to him in all likelihood a sympathy and understanding that had been denied the clothing merchant and the broadclothed banker.
He wore a black alpaca coat that slanted upon him in deep, longitudinal folds, and the front skirts of it were twisted and pulled downward until they dangled in long, wrinkly black teats. His shapeless gray trousers were short for him and fitted his pudgy legs closely. Below them dangled a pair of stout ankles encased in white cotton socks and ending in low-quarter black shoes. His shirt was clean but wrinkled countlessly over his front. The gnawed and blackened end of a cane pipestem stood out of his breast pocket, rising like a frosted weed stalk.
He settled himself back in the capacious oak chair, balanced upon his knees a white straw hat with a string band round the crown and waited for the question.
“What is your name?” asked Durham. “William Pitman Priest.”
Even the voice somehow seemed to fit the setting. Its high nasal note had a sort of whimsical appeal to it.
“When and where were you born?”
“In Calloway County, Kintucky, July 27, 1889.”
“What is your profession or business?”
“I am an attorney-at-law.”
“What position if any do you hold in your native state?”
“I am presidin' judge of the first judicial district of the state of Kintucky.”
“And have you been so long?”
“For the past sixteen years.”
“When were you admitted to the bar?”
“In 1860.”
“And you have ever since been engaged, I take it, either in the practice of the law before the bar or in its administration from the bench?”
“Exceptin' for the four years from April, 1861, to June, 1866.”
Up until now Durham had been sparring, trying to fathom the probable trend of the old judge's expected meanderings. But in the answer to the last question he thought he caught the cue and, though none save those two knew it, thereafter it was the witness who led and the questioner who followed his lead blindly.
“And where were you during those four years?”
“I was engaged, suh, in takin' part in the war.”
“The War of the Rebellion?”
“No, suh,” the old man corrected him gently but with firmness, “the War for the Southern Confederacy.”
There was a least bit of a stir at this. Aunt Tilly's tape-edged palmleaf blade hovered a brief second in the wide regular arc of its sweep and the foreman of the jury involuntarily ducked his head, as if in affiance of an indubitable fact.
“Ahem!” said Durham, still feeling his way, although now he saw the path more clearly. “And on which side were you engaged?”
“I was a private soldier in the Southern army,” the old judge answered him, and as he spoke he straightened up. “Yes, suh,” he repeated, “for four years I was a private soldier in the late Southern Confederacy. Part of the time I was down here in this very country,” he went on as though he had just recalled that part of it. “Why, in the summer of '64 I was right here in this town. And until yistiddy I hadn't been back since.”
He turned to the trial judge and spoke to him with a tone and manner half apologetic, half confidential.
“Your Honor,” he said, “I am a judge myself, occupyin' in my home state a position very similar to the one which you fill here, and whilst I realize, none better, that this ain't all accordin' to the rules of evidence as laid down in the books, yet when I git to thinkin' about them old soldierin' times I find I am inclined to sort of reminiscence round a little. And I trust your Honor will pardon me if I should seem to ramble slightly?”
His tone was more than apologetic and more than confidential. It was winning. The judge upon the bench was a veteran himself. He looked toward the prosecutor.
“Has the state's attorney any objection to this line of testimony?” he asked, smiling a little.
Certainly Gilliam had no fear that this honest-appearing old man's wanderings could damage a case already as good as won. He smiled back indulgently and waved his arm with a gesture that was compounded of equal parts of toleration and patience, with a top-dressing of contempt. “I fail,” said Gilliam, “to see wherein the military history and achievements of this worthy gentleman can possibly affect the issue of the homicide of Abner J. Rankin. But,” he added magnanimously, “if the defense chooses to encumber the record with matters so trifling and irrelevant I surely will make no objection now or hereafter.”
“The witness may proceed,” said the judge. “Well, really, Your Honor, I didn't have so very much to say,” confessed Judge Priest, “and I didn't expect there'd be any to-do made over it. What I was trying to git at was that cornin' down here to testify in this case sort of brought back them old days to my mind. As I git along more in years—” he was looking toward the jurors now—“I find that I live more and more in the past.”
As though he had put a question to them several of the jurors gravely inclined their heads. The busy cud of Juror No. 12 moved just a trifle slower in its travels from the right side of the jaw to the left and back again. “Yes, suh,” he said musingly, “I got up early this mornin' at the tavern where I'm stoppin' and took a walk through your thrivin' little city.” This was rambling with a vengeance, thought the puzzled Durham. “I walked down here to a bridge over a little creek and back again. It reminded me mightily of that other time when I passed through this town—in '64—just about this season of the year—and it was hot early today just as it was that other time—and the dew was thick on the grass, the same as 'twas then.”
He halted a moment.
“Of course your town didn't look the same this mornin' as it did that other mornin'. It seemed like to me there are twicet as many houses here now as there used to be—it's got to be quite a little city.”
Mr. Lukins, the grocer, nodded silent approval of this utterance, Mr. Lukins having but newly completed and moved into a two-story brick store building with a tin cornice and an outside staircase.
“Yes, suh, your town has grown mightily, but”—and the whiny, humorous voice grew apologetic again—“but your roads are purty much the same as they were in '64—hilly in places—and kind of rocky.”
Durham found himself sitting still, listening hard. Everybody else was listening too. Suddenly it struck Durham, almost like a blow, that this simple old man had somehow laid a sort of spell upon them all. The flattening sunrays made a kind of pink glow about the old judge's face, touching gently his bald head and his white whiskers. He droned on:
“I remember about those roads particularly well, because that
