“I think, sir, that I shall be able to do my duty.”  William Pressley spoke stiffly, with a touch of condescension and a shade of resentment, such as he always evinced at any sign that the censer might cease to swing.

“It isn’t a simple matter of duty.  It’s a much more complicated matter of ability,” the judge said sternly.

“Pardon me, sir, but it really does not seem to me such a difficult place to fill,” said William, loftily.  “In this, as in any other position of life, the man who is influenced solely by the profoundest and most conscientious conviction, and who is firm in following his convictions, can hardly go far astray.”

The judge looked at him over his big spectacles in perplexed, troubled silence for a moment.  So gazing, he gave the old impatient toss of his tousled head, and the old quizzical look came under his suddenly uplifted eyebrow.

“All right, William!” he said at last, almost immediately lapsing into silence, and presently beginning to nod.

Philip Alston scarcely glanced at the judge and his nephew.  He was looking at Ruth, and noting with adoring eyes that her beauty had blossomed like some rare flower of late.  It seemed to him that the roses on her fair cheeks were of a more exquisite, yet brighter tint, that her eyes were bluer and brighter and softer than ever.  There also appeared to be a new maturity in the delicate curves of her graceful figure.  But there was no change in the childlike affection of her bearing toward him.  She clung round him just as she had always done, and when she turned to leave his side to take a chair, he called her back, unconsciously falling into the tone of fond playfulness that he had used in her childhood.

“If a little girl about your size were to come and look in her uncle’s pockets, she might find something that she would like—­”

Ruth did not wait for him to finish what he was saying, but ran to him as if she had been the little toddler of other days, needing only the sight of his dear face, or the sound of his kind voice, to fly into his outstretched arms.  In a moment more her eager hands were swiftly searching his pockets, and making believe to have great difficulty in finding the hidden treasure.  She knew all the while where it was, but she also knew that he liked her to be a long time in getting it out.  His worshipping eyes looked down on her hands fluttering like white doves about his heart,—­for it was hard to keep away from that inner breast pocket—­and at last, when she could not wait any longer, she went deep down in it, and drew out a flat packet.  This looked as if it had travelled a long distance.  There were many wrappings around it, and many seals and foreign marks were stamped upon it.  She laid it on his knee, and pretended to shake him, when he made out that he meant to take time to untie the cords which bound the wrappings, instead of cutting them.  And when he had cut the cords with his pen-knife, the wrappings fell off, disclosing a jewel case of white satin richly wrought in gold.  At the quick touch of her fingers the lid of the case flew up, revealing a long string of large pearls,—­great frozen drops of the rainbow, wrapped in silvery white mist,—­treasures that a queen might have coveted.