Book Description:
OLD JUDGE PRIEST 1914, 1915 AND 1916 CONTENTS CHAPTEB PAQEl I. THE LORD PROVIDES . . . . . 11 31. A BLENDING OF THE PARABLES . . . . 49 nI. JUDGE PRIEST COMES BACK . . 92 IV. A CHAPTER FROM THE LIFE OF AN ANT . . . 141 V. SERGEANT JIMMY BAGBYS FEET . . . . 198 VI. ACCORDING TO THE CODE . . . . . . 232 VII. FORRESTS LAST CHARGE . . 2 8 0 VIII. DOUBLE BARRELLEDJUSTICE . . . . . 324 IX, A BEAUTIFUL EVENING . . . . . . 361 OLD JUDGE PRIEST THE LORD PROVIDES 1 HIS story begins with Judge Priest sitting at his desk at his chambers at the old courthouse. I have a suspicion that it will end with him sitting there. As to that small detail I cannot at this time be quite positive. Man proposes, but facts will have their way. If so be yo have read divers earlier tales of my telling you already know the setting for the opening scene here. You are to picture first the big bare room, high ceiled and square of shape, its plastering cracked and stained, its wall cases burdened with law books in splotched leather jerkins and some of the books stand straight and upright, showing themselves to be confident of the rectitude of all statements made therein, and some slant over sideways against their fel lows to the right or the left, as though craving confirmatory support for their contents. Observe also the water bucket on the little shelf in the corner, with the gourd dipper hanging handily by the art calendar, presented with the compliments of the Langstock Lumber Company, tacked against the door the spittoon on the floor the steel engraving of President Davis and his Cabinet facing you as you enter the two wide windows opening upon the west side of the square the woodwork, which is of white poplar, but grained by old Mr. Kane, our leading house, sign and portrait painter, into what he reckoned to be a plausible imitation of the fibrillar eccentricities of black walnut and in the middle of all this, hunched down behind his desk like a rifleman in a pit, is Judge Priest, in a confusing muddle of broad, stooped shoul ders, wrinkled garments and fat short legs. Summertime would have revealed him clad in linen, or alpaca, or ample garments of homespun hemp, but this particular day, being a day in the latter part of October, Judge Priests limbs and body were clothed in woollen coverings. The first grate fire of the season burned in his grate. There was a local superstition current to the effect that our courthouse was heated with steam. Years before, a bond issue to provide the requisite funds for this purpose had been voted after much public discussion pro and con. Thereafter, for a space, contractors and journey men artisans made free of the, building, to the great discomfort of certain families of resident rats, old settler rats really, that had come to look upon their cozy habitats behind the wainscoting as homes for life. Anon iron pipes C 12 1
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