“Well, I happened to be passing, and I saw the door open, and I thought maybe Dick was here.”

It was on Kenton’s tongue to say that it was a good thing for him Dick was not there.  But partly the sense that this would be unbecoming bluster, and partly the suffocating resentment of the fellow’s impudence, limited his response to a formless gasp, and Bittridge went on:  “But I’m glad to find you here, judge.  I didn’t know that you were in town.  Family all well in New York?” He was not quelled by the silence of the judge on this point, but, as if he had not expected any definite reply to what might well pass for formal civility, he now looked aslant into his breast-pocket from which he drew a folded paper.  “I just got hold of a document this morning that I think will interest you.  I was bringing it round to Dick’s wife for you.”  The intolerable familiarity of all this was fast working Kenton to a violent explosion, but he contained himself, and Bittridge stepped forward to lay the paper on the table before him.  “It’s the original roster of Company C, in your regiment, and—­”

“Take it away!” shouted Kenton, “and take yourself away with it!” and he grasped the stick that shook in his hand.

A wicked light came into Bittridge’s eye as he drawled, in lazy scorn, “Oh, I don’t know.”  Then his truculence broke in a malicious amusement.  “Why, judge, what’s the matter?” He put on a face of mock gravity, and Kenton knew with helpless fury that he was enjoying his vantage.  He could fall upon him and beat him with his stick, leaving the situation otherwise undefined, but a moment’s reflection convinced Kenton that this would not do.  It made him sick to think of striking the fellow, as if in that act he should be striking Ellen, too.  It did not occur to him that he could be physically worsted, or that his vehement age would be no match for the other’s vigorous youth.  All he thought was that it would not avail, except to make known to every one what none but her dearest could now conjecture.  Bittridge could then publicly say, and doubtless would say, that he had never made love to Ellen; that if there had been any love-making it was all on her side; and that he had only paid her the attentions which any young man might blamelessly pay a pretty girl.  This would be true to the facts in the case, though it was true also that he had used every tacit art to make her believe him in love with her.  But how could this truth be urged, and to whom?  So far the affair had been quite in the hands of Ellen’s family, and they had all acted for the best, up to the present time.  They had given Bittridge no grievance in making him feel that he was unwelcome in their house, and they were quite within their rights in going away, and making it impossible for him to see her again anywhere in Tuskingum.  As for his seeing her in New York, Ellen had but to say that she did not wish it, and that would end it.  Now, however, by treating him rudely, Kenton was aware that he had bound himself to render Bittridge some account of his behavior throughout, if the fellow insisted upon it.