"You are here to defend something that no longer exists. Your organization is wrecked, your signals and passwords are known, your secrets have become public property—I can even produce a list of your members; there are none of you who do not stand in imminent peril—yet understand, I have no wish to strike at those who have been misled or coerced into joining Murrell's band!" The judge's sodden old face glowed now with the magnanimity of his sentiments. "But I have no feeling of mercy for your leaders, none for Murrell himself. Put down your guns!—you can only kill us after we have killed Murrell—but you can't kill the law! If the arch conspirator dies in this room and hour, on whose head will the punishment fall?" He swung round his ponderous arm in a sweeping gesture and shook a fat but expressive forefinger in the faces of those nearest him. "On yours—and yours—and yours!"

Across the space that separated them the judge grinned his triumph at his enemy. He had known when Fentress entered the room that a word or a sign from him would precipitate a riot, but he knew now that neither this word nor this sign would be given. Then quite suddenly he strode down the aisle, and foot by foot Fentress yielded ground before his advance. A murderous light flashed from the judge's bloodshot eyes and his right hand was stealing toward the frayed tails of his coat.

"Look out—he's getting ready to shoot!" cried a frightened voice.

Instantly by doors and windows the crowd, seized with inexplicable panic, emptied itself into the courthouse yard. Fentress was caught up in the rush and borne from the room and from the building. When he reached the graveled space below the steps he turned. The judge was in the doorway, the center of a struggling group; Mr. Bowen, the minister, Mr. Saul and Mr. Wesley were vainly seeking to pinion his arm.

"Draw—damn you!" he roared at Fentress, as he wrenched himself free, and the crowd swayed to right and left as Fentress was seen to reach for his pistol.

Mr. Saul made a last frantic effort to restrain his friend; he seized the judge's arm just as the latter's finger pressed the trigger, and an instant later Fentress staggered back with the judge's bullet in his shoulder.



CHAPTER XXXVI. THE END AND THE BEGINNING

It was not strange that a number of gentlemen in and about Raleigh yielded to an overmastering impulse to visit newer lands, nor was it strange that the initial steps looking toward the indulgence of their desires should have been taken in secrecy. Mr. Pegloe was one of the first to leave; Mr. Saul had informed him of the judge's declared purpose of shooting him on sight. Even without this useful hint the tavern-keeper had known that he should experience intense embarrassment in meeting the judge; this was now a dreary certainty.

"You reckon he means near all he says?" he had asked, his fat sides shaking.

"I'd take his word a heap quicker than I would most folks," answered Mr. Saul with conviction.

Pegloe promptly had a sinking spell. He recalled the snuffing of the candles by the judge, an extremely depressing memory under the circumstances, also the reckless and headlong disregard of consequences which had characterized so many of that gentleman's acts, and his plans shaped themselves accordingly, with this result: that when the judge took occasion to call at the tavern, and the hostile nature of his visit was emphasized by the cautious manner of his approach, he was greatly shocked to discover that his intended victim had sold his business overnight for a small lump sum to Mr. Saul's brother-in-law, who had appeared most opportunely with an offer.

Pegloe's flight created something of a sensation, but it was dwarfed by the sensation that developed a day or so later when it became known that Tom Ware and Colonel Fentress had likewise fled the country. Still later, Fentress' body, showing marks of violence, was washed ashore at a wood-yard below Girard. It was conjectured that he and Ware had set out from The Oaks to cross the river; there was reason to believe that Fentress had in his possession at the time a considerable sum of money, and it was supposed that his companion had murdered and robbed him. Of Ware's subsequent career nothing was ever known.

These were, after all, only episodes in the collapse of the Clan, sporific manifestations of the great work of disintegration that was going forward and which the judge, more than any other, perhaps, had brought about. This was something no one questioned, and he quickly passed to the first phase of that unique and peculiar esteem in which he was ever after held. His fame widened with the succeeding suns; he had offers of help which impressed him as so entirely creditable to human nature that he quite lacked the heart to refuse them, especially as he felt that in the improvement of his own condition the world had bettered itself and was moving nearer those sound and righteous ideals of morality and patriotism which had never lacked his indorsement, no matter how inexpedient it had seemed for him to put them into practice. But he was not diverted from his ultimate purpose by the glamour of a present popularity; he was able to keep his bleared eyes resolutely fixed on the main chance, namely the Fentress estate and the Quintard lands. It was highly important that he should go east to South Carolina to secure documentary evidence that would establish his own and Fentress' identity, to Kentucky, where Fentress had lived prior to his coming to Tennessee.

Early in November the judge set out by stage on his journey east; he was accompanied by Yancy and Hannibal, from neither of whom could he bring himself to be separated; and as the woods, flaming now with the touch of frost, engulfed the little town, he turned in his seat and looked back. He had entered it by that very road, a beggar on foot and in rags; he was leaving it in broadcloth and fine linen, visible tokens of his altered fortunes. More than this, he could thrust his hands deep down into his once empty pockets and hear the clink of gold and silver. The judge slowly withdrew his eyes from the last gray roof that showed among the trees, and faced the east and the future with a serenely confident expression.

Betty Malroy and Carrington had ridden into Raleigh to take leave of their friends. They had watched the stage from sight, had answered the last majestic salute the judge had given them across the swaying top of the coach before the first turn of the road hid it from sight, and then they had turned their horses' heads in the direction of Belle Plain.

"Bruce, do you think judge Price will ever be able to accomplish all he hopes to?" Betty asked when they had left the town behind. She drew in her horse as she spoke, and they went forward at a walk under the splendid arch of the forest and over a carpet of vivid leaves.

"I reckon he will, Betty," responded Carrington. Unfavorable as had been his original estimate of the judge's character, events had greatly modified it.

"He really seems quite sure, doesn't he?" said Betty.

"There's not a doubt in his mind," agreed Carrington.

He was still at Belle Plain, living in what had been Ware's office, while the Cavendishes were domiciled at the big house. He had arranged with the judge to crop a part of that hopeful gentleman's land the very next season; the fact that a lawsuit intervened between the judge and possession seemed a trifling matter, for Carrington had become infected with the judge's point of view, which did not admit of the possibility of failure; but he had not yet told Betty of his plans. Time enough for that when he left Belle Plain.

His silence concerning the future had caused Betty much thought. She wondered if he still intended going south into the Purchase; she was not sure but it was the dignified thing for him to do. She was thinking of this now as they went forward over the rustling leaves, and at length she turned in the saddle and faced him.

"I am going to miss Hannibal dreadfully—yes, and the judge, and Mr. Yancy!" she began.

"And when I leave—how about me, Betty?" Carrington asked unexpectedly, but he only had in mind leaving Belle Plain.

A little sigh escaped Betty's red lips, for she was thinking of the Purchase, which lay far down the river, many, many miles distant. The sigh was ever so little, but Carrington had heard it.

"I am to be missed, too, am I, Betty?" he inquired, leaning toward her.

"You, Bruce?—Oh, I shall miss you, too—dreadfully—but then, perhaps in five years, when you come back—"

"Five years!" cried Carrington, but he understood, something of what was passing in her mind, and laughed shortly. "Five years, Betty?" he repeated, dwelling on the numeral.

Betty hesitated and looked thoughtful. Presently she stole a surreptitious glance at Carrington from under her long lashes, and went on slowly, as though she were making careful choice of her words.

"When you come back in three years, Bruce—"

Carrington still regarded her fixedly. There was a light in his black eyes that seemed to penetrate to the most secret recesses of her heart and soul.

"Three years, Betty?" he repeated again.

Betty, her eyes cast down, twisted her rein nervously between her slim, white fingers, but Carrington's steady glance never left her sweet face, framed by its halo of bright hair. She stole another look at him from beneath her dark lashes.

"Three years, Betty?" he prompted.

"Bruce, don't stare at me that way, it makes me forget what I was going to say! When you come, back—next year—" and then she lifted her eyes to his and he saw that they were full of sudden tears. "Bruce, don't go away—don't go away at all—"

Carrington slipped from the saddle and stood at her side.

"Do you mean that, Betty?" he asked. He took her hands loosely in his and relentlessly considered her crimsoned face. "I reckon it will always be right hard to refuse you anything—here is one settler the Purchase will never get!" and he laughed softly.

"It was the Purchase—you were going there!" she cried.

"No, I wasn't, Betty; that notion died its natural death long ago. When we are sure you will be safe at Belle Plain with just the Cavendishes, I am going into Raleigh to wait as best I can until spring." He spoke so gravely, that she asked in quick alarm.

"And then, Bruce—what?"

"And then—Oh, Betty, I'm starving—" All in a moment he lifted her slender figure in his arms, gathering her close to him. "And then, this—and this—and this, sweetheart—and more—and—oh, Betty! Betty!"

When Murrell was brought to trial his lawyers were able to produce a host of witnesses whose sworn testimony showed that so simple a thing as perjury had no terrors for them. His fight for liberty was waged in and out of court with incredible bitterness, and, as judge and jury were only human, the outlaw escaped with the relatively light sentence of twelve years' imprisonment; he died, however, before the expiration of his term.

The judge, where he returned to Raleigh, resumed his own name of Turberville, and he allowed it to be known that he would not be offended by the prefix of General. During his absence he had accumulated a wealth of evidence of undoubted authenticity, with the result that his claim against the Fentress estate was sustained by the courts, and when The Oaks with its stock and slaves was offered for sale, he, as the principal creditor, was able to buy it in.

One of his first acts after taking possession of the property was to have Mahaffy reinterred in the grove of oaks below his bedroom windows, and he marked the spot with a great square of granite. The judge, visibly shaken by his emotions, saw the massive boulder go into place.

"Harsh and rugged like the nature of him who lies beneath it—but enduring, too, as he was," he murmured. He turned to Yancy and Hannibal, and added,

"You will lay me beside him when I die."

Then when the bitter struggle came and he was wrenched and tortured by longings, his strength was in remembering his promise to the dead man, and it was his custom to go out under the oaks and pace to and fro beside Mahaffy's grave until he had gained the mastery of himself. Only Yancy and Hannibal knew how fierce the conflict was he waged, yet in the end he won that best earned of all victories, the victory over himself.

"My salvation has been a costly thing; it was bought with the blood of my friend," he told Yancy.

It was Hannibal's privilege to give Cavendish out of the vast Quintard tract such a farm as the earl had never dreamed of owning even in his most fervid moments of imagining; and he abandoned all idea of going to England to claim his title. At the judge's suggestion he named the place Earl's Court. He and Polly were entirely satisfied with their surroundings, and never ceased to congratulate themselves that they had left Lincoln County. They felt that their friends the Carringtons at Belle Plain, though untitled people, were still of an equal rank with themselves; while as for the judge, they doubted if royalty itself laid it any over him.

Mr. Yancy accepted his changed fortunes with philosophic composure. Technically he filled the position of overseer at The Oaks, but the judge's activity was so great that this position was largely a sinecure. The most arduous work he performed was spending his wages.

Certain trifling peculiarities survived with the judge even after he had entered what he had once been prone to call the Portal of Hope; for while his charity was very great and he lived with the splendid air of plenty that belonged to an older order, it required tact, patience, and persistence to transact business with him; and his creditors, of whom there were always a respectable number, discovered that he esteemed them as they were aggressive and determined. He explained to Yancy that too great certainty detracted from the charm of living, for, after all, life was a game—a gamble—he desired to be reminded of this. Yet he was held in great respect for his wisdom and learning, which was no more questioned that his courage.

Thus surrounded by his friends, who were devoted to him, he began Hannibal's education and the preparation of his memoirs, intended primarily for the instruction of his grandson, and which he modestly decided to call The History of My Own Times, which clearly showed the magnificence of his mind and its outlook.

THE END