“I crave opportunity, Solomon—­the indorsement of my own class.  I feel that I shall have it here,” resumed the judge pensively.

But Mahaffy was sad in his joy, sober in his incipientent drunkenness.  The same handsome treatment which the judge commended, had been as freely tendered him, yet he saw the end of all such hospitality.  This was the worm in the bud.  The judge, however, was an eager idealist; he still dreamed of Utopia, he still believed in millenniums.  Mahaffy didn’t and couldn’t.  Memory was the scarecrow in the garden of his hopes—­you could wear out your welcome anywhere.  In the end the world reckoned your cost, and unless you were prepared to make some sort of return for its bounty, the cold shoulder came to be your portion instead of the warm handclasp.

“Hannibal has found friends among people of the first importance.  I have made it my business to inquire into their standing, and I find that young lady is heiress to a cool half million.  Think of that, Solomon—­think of that!  I never saw anything more beautiful than her manifestation of regard for my protege—­”

“And you made it your business, Mr. Price, to do your very damnedest to ruin his chances,” said Mahaffy, with sudden heat.

“I ruin his chances?—­I, sir?  I consider that I helped his chances immeasurably.”

“All right, then, you helped his chances—­only you didn’t, Price!”

“Am I to understand, Solomon, that you regard my interest in the boy as harmful?” inquired the judge, in a tone of shocked surprise.

“I regard it as a calamity,” said Mahaffy, with cruel candor.

“And how about you, Solomon?”

“Equally a calamity.  Mr. Price, you don’t seem able to grasp just what we look like!”

“The mind’s the only measure of the man, Solomon.  If anybody can talk to me and be unaware that they are conversing with a gentleman, all I can say is their experience has been as pitiable as their intelligence is meager.  But it hurts me when you intimate that I stand in the way of the boy’s opportunity.”

“Price, what do you; suppose we look like—­you and I”

“In a general way, Solomon, I am conscious that our appeal is to the brain rather than the eye,” answered the judge, with dignity.

“I reckon even you couldn’t do a much lower trick than use the boy as a stepping-stone,” pursued Mahaffy.

“I don’t see how you have the heart to charge me with such a purpose—­I don’t indeed, Solomon.”  The judge spoke with deep feeling; he was really hurt.

“Well, you let the boy have his chance, and don’t you stick in your broken oar,” cried Mahaffy fiercely.

The judge rolled over on his back, and stared up at the heavens.

“This is a new aspect of your versatile nature, Solomon.  Must I regard you as a personally emancipated moral influence, not committed to the straight and narrow path yourself, but still close enough to it to keep my feet from straying?” he at length demanded.