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THE PRODIGAL JUDGE BY VAUGHAN KESTER

CHAPTER I

THE BOY AT THE BARONY

The Quintards had not prospered on the barren lands of the pine
woods whither they had emigrated to escape the malaria of the low
coast, but this no longer mattered, for the last of his name and
race, old General Quintard, was dead in the great house his
father had built almost a century before and the thin acres of
the Barony, where he had made his last stand against age and
poverty, were to claim him, now that he had given up the struggle
in their midst. The two or three old slaves about the place,
stricken with a sense of the futility of the fight their master
had made, mourned for him and for themselves, but of his own
blood and class none was present.

Shy dwellers from the pine woods, lanky jeans-clad men and
sunbonneted women, who were gathering for the burial of the
famous man of their neighborhood, grouped themselves about the
lawn which had long since sunk to the uses of a pasture lot.
Singly or by twos and threes they stole up the steps and across
the wide porch to the open door. On the right of the long hall
another door stood open, and who wished could enter the
drawing-room, with its splendid green and gold paper, and the
wonderful fireplace with the Dutch tiles that graphically
depicted the story of Jonah and the whale.

Here the general lay in state. The slaves had dressed their old
master in the uniform he had worn as a colonel of the continental
line, but the thin shoulders of the wasted figure no longer
filled the buff and blue coat. The high-bred face, once proud
and masterful no doubt, as became the face of a Quintard, spoke
of more than age and poverty--it was infinitely sorrowful. Yet
there was something harsh and unforgiving in the lines death had
fixed there, which might have been taken as the visible impress
of that mystery, the bitterness of which had misshaped the dead
man's nature; but the resolute lips had closed for ever on their
secret, and the broken spirit had gone perhaps to learn how poor
a thing its pride had been.

Though he had lived continuously at the Barony for almost a
quarter of a century, there was none among his neighbors who
could say he had looked on that thin, aquiline face in all that
time. Yet they had known much of him, for the gossip of the
slaves, who had been his only friends in those years he had
chosen to deny himself to other friends, had gone far and wide
over the county.

That notable man of business, Jonathan Crenshaw--and this
superiority was especially evident when the business chanced to
be his own--was closeted in the library with a stranger to whom
rumor fixed the name of Bladen, supposing him to be the legal
representative of certain remote connections of the old
general's.

Crenshaw sat before the flat-topped mahogany desk in the center
of the room with several well-thumbed account-books open before
him. Bladen, in riding dress, stood by the window.

"I suppose you will buy in the property when it comes up for
sale?" the latter was saying.

Mr. Crenshaw had already made it plain that General Quintard's
creditors would have lean pickings at the Barony, intimating that
he himself was the chiefest of these and the one to suffer most
grievously in pocket. Further than this, Mr. Bladen saw that the
old house was a ruin, scarcely habitable, and that the thin
acres, though they were many and a royal grant, were of the
slightest value. Crenshaw nodded his acquiescence to the
lawyer's conjecture touching the ultimate fate of the Barony.

"I reckon, sir, I'll want to protect myself, but if there are any
of his own kin who have a fancy to the place I'll put no obstacle
in their way."

"Who are the other creditors?" asked Bladen.

"There ain't none, sir; they just got tired waiting on him, and
when they began to sue and get judgment the old general would
send me word to settle with them, and their claims passed into my
hands. I was in too deep to draw out. But for the last ten
years his dealings were all with me; I furnished the supplies for
the place here. It didn't amount to much, as there was only him
and the darkies, and the account ran on from year to year."

"He lived entirely alone, saw no one, I understand," said Bladen.

"Alone with his two or three old slaves--yes, sir. He wouldn't
even see me; Joe, his old nigger, would fetch orders for this or
that. Once or twice I rode out to see him, but I wa'n't even
allowed inside that door; the message I got was that he couldn't
be disturbed, and the last time I come he sent me word that if I
annoyed him again he would be forced to terminate our business
relations. That was pretty strong talk, wa'n't it, when you
consider that I could have sold the roof from over his head and
the land from under his feet? Oh, well, I just put it down to
childishness." There was a brief pause, then Crenshaw spoke
again. "I reckon, sir, if you know anything about the old
general's private affairs you don't feel no call to speak on that
point?" he observed, and with evident regret. He had hoped that
Bladen would clear up the mystery, for certainly it must have
been some sinister tragedy that had cost the general his grip on
life and for twenty years and more had made of him a recluse, so
that the faces of his friends had become as the faces of
strangers.

"My dear sir, I know nothing of General Quintard's private,
history. I am even unacquainted with my clients, who are distant
cousins, but his nearest kin--they live in South Carolina. I was
merely instructed to represent them in the event of his death and
to look after their interests."

"That's business," said Crenshaw, nodding.

"All I know is this: General Quintard was a conspicuous man in
these parts fifty years ago; that was before my time, Mr.
Crenshaw, and I take it, too, it was before yours; he married a
Beaufort."

"So he did," said Crenshaw, "and there was one child, a daughter;
she married a South Carolinian by the name of Turberville. I
remember that, fo' they were married under the gallery in the
hall. Great folks, those Turbervilles, rolling rich. My father
was manager then fo' the general--that was nearly forty years
ago. There was life here then, sir; the place was alive with
niggers and the house full of guests from one month's end to
another." He drummed on the desktop. "Who'd a thought it wa'n't
to last for ever!"

"And what became of the daughter who married Turberville ?"

"Died years ago," said Crenshaw. "She was here the last time
about thirty years back. It wa'n't so easy to get about in those
days, no roads to speak of and no stages, and besides, the old
general wa'n't much here nohow; her going away had sort of broken
up his home, I reckon. Then the place stood empty fo' a few
years, most of the slaves were sold off, and the fields began to
grow up. No one rightly knew, but the general was supposed to be
traveling up yonder in the No'th, sir. As I say, things ran
along this way quite a while, and then one morning when I went to
my store my clerk says, 'There's an old white-headed nigger been
waiting round here fo' a word with you, Mr. Crenshaw.' It was
Joe, the general's body servant, and when I'd shook hands with
him I said, 'When's the master expected back?' You see, I
thought Joe had been sent on ahead to open the house, but he
says, 'General Quintard's at the Barony now,' and then he says,
'The general's compliments, sir, and will you see that this order
is filled?' Well, Mr. Bladen, I and my father had factored the
Barony fo' fifteen years and upward, but that was the first time
the supplies fo' the general's table had ever been toted here in
a meal sack!

"I rode out that very afternoon, but Joe, who was one of your
mannerly niggers, met me at the door and says, 'Mr. Crenshaw, the
general appreciates this courtesy, but regrets that he is unable
to see you, sir.' After that it wa'n't long in getting about
that the general was a changed man. Other folks came here to
welcome him back and he refused to see them, but the reason of it
we never learned. Joe, who probably knew, was one of your close
niggers; there was, no getting anything out of him; you could
talk with that darky by the hour, sir, and he left you feeling
emptier than if he'd kept his mouth shut."

They were interrupted by a knock at the door.

"Come in," said Crenshaw, a trifle impatiently, and in response
to his bidding the door opened and a small boy entered the room
dragging after him a long rifle. Suddenly overcome by a
speechless shyness, he paused on the threshold to stare with
round, wondering eyes at the two men. "Well, sonny, what do you
want?" asked Mr. Crenshaw indulgently.

The boy opened his mouth, but his courage failed him, and with
his courage went the words he would have spoken.

"Who is this?" asked Bladen.

"I'll tell, you presently," said Crenshaw. "Come, speak up,
sonny, what do you want?"

"Please, sir, I want this here old spo'tin' rifle," said: the
child. "Please, sir, I want to keep it," he added.

"Well, you run along on out of here with your old spo'tin'
rifle!" said Crenshaw good-naturedly.

"Please, sir, am I to keep it?"

"Yes, I reckon you may keep it--least I've no objection."
Crenshaw glanced at Bladen.

"Oh, by all means," said the latter. Spasms of delight shook the
small figure, and with a murmur that was meant for thanks he
backed from the room, closing the door. Bladen glanced
inquiringly at Crenshaw.

"You want to know about him, sir? Well, that's Hannibal Wayne
Hazard."

"Hannibal Wayne Hazard?" repeated Bladen.

"Yes, sir; the general was the authority on that point, but who
Hannibal Wayne Hazard is and how he happens to be at the Barony
is another mystery--just wait a minute, sir--" and quitting his
chair Mr. Crenshaw hurried from the room to return almost
immediately with a tall countryman. "Mr. Bladen, this is Bob
Yancy. Bob, the gentleman, wants to hear about the woman and the
child; that's your story."

"Howdy, sir," said Mr. Yancy. He appeared to meditate on the
mental effort that was required of him, then he took a long
breath. "It was this a-ways--" he began with a soft drawl, and
then paused. "You give me the dates, Mr. John, fo' I
disremember."

"It was four year ago come next Christmas," said Crenshaw.

"Old Christmas," corrected Mr. Yancy. "Our folks always kept the
old Christmas like it was befo' they done mussed up the calendar.
I'm agin all changes," added Mr. Yancy.

"He means the fo'teenth of December," explained Mr. Crenshaw.

"Not wishin' to dispute your word, Mr. John, I mean Christmas,"
objected Yancy.

"Oh, very well, he means Christmas then!" said Crenshaw.

"The evening befo', it was, and I'd gone to Fayetteville to get
my Christmas fixin's; there was right much rain and some snow
falling." Mr. Yancy's guiding light was clearly accuracy. "Just
at sundown I hooked up that blind mule of mine to the cart and
started fo' home. As I got shut of the town the stage come in
and I seen one passenger, a woman. Now that mule is slow, Mr.
John; I'm free to say there are faster mules, but a set of
harness never went acrost the back of a slower critter than that
one of mine." Yancy, who thus far had addressed himself to Mr.
Crenshaw, now turned to Bladen. "That mule, sir, sees good with
his right eye, but it's got a gait like it was looking fo' the
left-hand side of the road and wondering what in thunderation had
got into it that it was acrost the way; mules are gifted with
some sense, but mighty little judgment."

"Never mind the mule, Bob," said Crenshaw.

"If I can't make the gentleman believe in the everlasting
slowness of that mule of mine, my story ain't worth a hill of
beans," said Yancy.

"The extraordinary slowness of the mule is accepted without
question, Mr. Yancy," said Bladen.

"I'm obliged to you," rejoined Yancy, and for a brief moment he
appeared to commune with himself, then he continued. "A mile out
of town I heard some one sloshing through the rain after me; it
was dark by that time and I couldn't see who it was, so I pulled
up and waited, and then I made out it was a woman. She spoke
when she was alongside the cart and says, 'Can you drive me on to
the Barony?' and it came to me it was the same woman I'd seen
leave the stage. When I got down to help her into the cart I saw
she was toting a child in her arms."

"What did the woman look like, Bob?" said Crenshaw.

"She wa'n't exactly old and she wa'n't young by no manner of
means; I remember saying to myself, that child ain't yo's, whose
ever it is. Well, sir, I was willing enough to talk, but she
wa'n't, she hardly spoke until we came to the red gate, when she
says, 'Stop, if you please, I'll walk the rest of the way.' Mind
you, she'd known without a word from me we were at the Barony.
She give me a dollar, and the last I seen of her she was hurrying
through the rain toting the child in her arms."

Mr. Crenshaw took up the narrative.

"The niggers say the old general almost had a fit when he saw
her. Aunt Alsidia let her into the house; I reckon if Joe had
been alive she wouldn't have got inside that door, spite of the
night!"

"Well?" said Bladen.

"When morning come she was gone, but the child done stayed
behind; we always reckoned the lady walked back to Fayetteville
sometime befo' day and took the stage. I've heard Aunt Alsidia
tell as how the old general said that morning, pale and shaking
like, 'You'll find a boy asleep in the red room; he's to be fed
and cared fo', but keep him out of my sight. His name is
Hannibal Wayne Hazard.' That is all the general ever said on the
matter. He never would see the boy, never asked after him even,
and the boy lived in the back of the house, with the niggers to
look after him. Now, sir, you know as much as we know, which is
just next door to nothing."

The old general was borne across what had once been the west lawn
to his resting-place in the neglected acre where the dead and
gone of his race lay, and the record of the family was complete,
as far as any man knew. Crenshaw watched the grave take shape
with a melancholy for which he found no words, yet if words could
have come from the mist of ideas in which his mind groped vaguely
he would have said that for themselves the deeds of the Quintards
had been given the touch of finality, and that whether for good
or for evil, the consequences, like the ripple which rises from
the surface of placid waters when a stone is dropped, still
survived somewhere in the world.

The curious and the idle drifted back to the great house; then
the memory of their own affairs, not urgent, generally speaking,
but still of some casual interest, took them down the disused
carriage-way to the red gate and so off into the heat of the
summer day. Crenshaw's wagon, driven by Crenshaw's man, vanished
in a cloud of gray dust with the two old slaves, Aunt Alsidia and
Uncle Ben, who were being taken to the Crenshaw place to be cared
for pending the settlement of the Quintard estate. Bladen parted
from Crenshaw with expressions of pleasure at having had the
opportunity of making his acquaintance, and further delivered
himself of the civil wish that they might soon meet again. Then
Crenshaw, assisted by Bob Yancy, proceeded to secure the great
house against intrusion.

"I make it a p'int to always stay and see the plumb finish of a
thing," explained Yancy. "Otherwise you're frequently put out by
hearing of what happened after you left; I can stand anything but
disapp'intment of that kind."

They passed from room to room securing doors and windows, and at
last stepped out upon the back porch.

"Hullo!" said Yancy, pointing.

There on a bench by the kitchen door was a small figure. It was
Hannibal Wayne Hazard asleep, with his old spo'tin' rifle across
his knees. His very existence had been forgotten.

"Well, I declare to goodness!" said Crenshaw.

"What are you going to do with him, Mr. John?"

This question nettled Crenshaw.

"I don't know as that is any particular affair of mine," he said.
Now, Mr. Crenshaw, though an excellent man of business, with an
unblinking eye on number one, was kindly, on the whole, but there
was a Mrs. Crenshaw, to whom he rendered a strict account of all
his deeds, and that sacred institution, the home, was only a
tolerable haven when these deeds were nicely calculated to fit
with the lady's exactions. Especially was he aware that Mrs.
Crenshaw was averse to children as being inimical to cleanliness
and order, oppressive virtues that drove Crenshaw himself in his
hours of leisure to the woodshed, where he might spit freely.

"I reckon you'd rather drop a word with yo' missus before you
toted him home?" suggested Yancy, who knew something of the
nature of his friend's domestic thraldom.

"A woman ought to be boss in her own house," said Crenshaw.

"Feelin' the truth of that, I've never married, Mr. John; I do as
I please and don't have to listen to a passel of opinion. But I
was going to say, what's to hinder me from toting that boy to my
home? There are no calico petticoats hanging up in my closets."

"And no closets to hang 'em in, I'll be bound!" rejoined
Crenshaw. "But if you'll take the boy, Bob, you shan't lose by
it."

Yancy rested a big knotted hand on the boy's shoulder.

"Come, wake up, sonny! Yo' Uncle Bob is ready fo' to strike out
home," he said. The child roused with a start and stared into
the strange bearded face that was bent toward him. "It's yo'
Uncle Bob," continued Yancy in a wheedling tone. "Are you the
little nevvy what will help him to hook up that old blind mule of
hisn ? Here, give us the spo'tin' rifle to tote!"

"Please, sir, where is Aunt Alsidia?" asked the child.

Yancy balanced the rifle on his great palm and his eyes assumed a
speculative cast.

"I wonder what's to hinder us from loading this old gun, and
firing this old gun, and hearing this old gun go-bang! Eh?"

The child's blue eyes grew wide.

"Like the guns off in the woods?" he asked, in a breathless
whisper.

"Like the guns a body hears off in the woods, only louder--heaps
louder," said Yancy. "You fetch out his plunder, Mr. John," he
added in a lower tone.

"Do it now, please," the child cried, slipping off the bench.

"I was expectin' fo' to hear you name me Uncle Bob, sonny; my
little nevvies get almost anything they want out of me when they
call me that-a-ways."

"Please, Uncle Bob, make it go bang!"

"You come along, then," and Mr. Yancy moved off in the direction
of his mule, the child following. "Powder's what we want fo' to
make this old spo'tiu' rifle talk up, and I reckon we'll find
some in a horn flask in the bottom of my cart." His expectations
in this particular were realized, and he loaded the rifle with a
small blank charge. 'Now," he said, shaking the powder into the
pan by a succession of smart taps on the breech, "sometimes these
old pieces go off and sometimes they don't; it depends on the
flint, but you stand back of your Uncle Bob, sonny, and keep yo'
fingers out of yo' ears, and when you say--bang!-- off she goes."

There was a moment of delightful expectancy, and then--

"Bang!" cried the child, and on the instant the rifle cracked.
"Do it againQ Please, Uncle Bob!" he cried, wild with delight.

"Now if you was to help yo' Uncle Bob hook up that old mule of
hisn and ride home with him, fo' he's going pretty shortly, you
and Uncle Bob could do right much shootin' with this old rifle."
Mr. Crenshaw had appeared with a bundle, which he tossed into the
cart. Yancy turned to him. "If you meet any inquiring friends,
Mr. John, I reckon you may say that my nevvy's gone fo' to pay me
a visit. Most of his time will be agreeably spent shootin' with
this rifle at a mark, and me holdin' him so he won't get kicked
clean off his feet."

Thereafter beguiling speech flowed steadily from Mr. Yancy's
bearded lips, in the midst of which relations were established
between the mule and cart, and the boy quitted the Barony for a
new world.

"Do you reckon if Uncle Bob was to let you, you could drive,
sonny?"

"Can she gallop?" asked the boy.

Mr. Yancy gave him a hurt glance.

"She's too much of a lady to do that," he said. "No, I 'low this
ain't 'so fast as running or walking, but it's a heap quicker
than standing stock-still." The afternoon sun waned as they went
deeper and deeper into the pine woods, but at last they came to
their journey's end, a widely scattered settlement on a hill
above a branch.

"This," said Mr. Yancy, "are Scratch Hill, sonny. Why Scratch
Hill? Some say it's the fleas; others agin hold it's the eternal
bother of making a living here, but whether fleas or living you
scratch fo' both."

CHAPTER II

YANCY TELLS A MORAL TALE

In the deep peace that rested like a benediction on the pine-clad
slopes of Scratch Hill the boy Hannibal followed at Yancy's heels
as that gentleman pursued the not arduous rounds of temperate
industry which made up his daily life, for if Yancy were not
completely idle he was responsible for a counterfeit presentment
of idleness having most of the merits of the real article. He
toiled casually in a small cornfield and a yet smaller truck
patch, but his work always began late, when it began at all, and
he was easily dissuaded from continuing it; indeed, his attitude
toward it seemed to challenge interference.

In the winter, when the weather conditions were perfectly
adjusted to meet certain occult exactions he had come to require,
Yancy could be induced to go into the woods and there labor with
his ax. But as he pointed out to Hannibal, a poor man's capital
was his health, and he being a poor man it behooved him to have a
jealous care of himself. He made use of the dull days of mingled
mist and drizzle for hunting, work being clearly out of the
question; one could get about over the brown floor of the forest
in silence then, and there was no sun to glint the brass
mountings of his rifle. The fine days he professed to regard
with keen suspicion as weather breeders, when it was imprudent to
go far from home, especially in the direction of the Crenshaw
timber lands, which for years had been the scene of all his
gainful industry, and where he seemed to think nature ready to
assume her most sinister aspect. Again in the early spring, when
the young oak leaves were the size of squirrel's ears and the
whippoorwills began calling as the long shadows struck through
the pine woods, the needs of his corn ground battled with his
desire to fish. In all such crises of the soul Mr. Yancy was
fairly vanquished before the struggle began; but to the boy his
activities were perfectly ordered to yield the largest return in
contentment.

The Barony had been offered for sale and bought in by Crenshaw
for eleven thousand dollars, this being the amount of his claim.
Some six months later he sold the plantation for fifteen thousand
dollars to Nathaniel Ferris, of Currituck County.

"There's money in the old place, Bob, at that figure," Crenshaw
told Yancy.

"There are so," agreed Yancy, who was thinking Crenshaw had lost
no time in getting it out.

They were seated on the counter in Crenshaw's store at Balaam's
Cross Roads, where the heavy odor of black molasses battled with
the sprightly smell of salt fish. The merchant held the Scratch
Hiller in no small esteem. Their intimacy was of long standing,
for the Yancys going down and the Crenshaws coming up had for a
brief space flourished on the same social level. Mr. Crenshaw's
rise in life, however, had been uninterrupted, while Mr. Yancy,
wrapped in a philosophic calm and deeply averse to industry, had
permitted the momentum imparted by a remote ancestor to carry him
where it would, which was steadily away from that tempered
prosperity his family had once boasted as members of the
land-owning and slaveholding class.

"I mean there's money in the place fo' Ferris," Crenshaw
explained.

"I reckon yo're right, Mr. John; the old general used to spend a
heap on the Barony and we all know he never got a cent back, so I
reckon the money's there yet.

"Bladen's got an answer from them South Carolina Quintards, and
they don't know nothing about the boy," said Crenshaw, changing
the subject. "So you can rest easy, Bob; they ain't going to
want him."

"Well, sir, that surely is a passel of comfort to me. I find I
got all the instincts of a father without having had none of the
instincts of a husband."

A richer, deeper realization of his joy came to Yancy when he had
turned his back on Balaam's Cross Roads and set out for home
through the fragrant silence of the pine woods. His probable
part in the young life chance had placed in his keeping was a
glorious thing to the man. He had not cared to speculate on the
future; he had believed that friends or kindred must sooner or
later claim Hannibal, but now he felt wonderfully secure in
Crenshaw's opinion that this was not to be.

Just beyond the Barony, which was midway between Balaam's and the
Hill, down the long stretch of sandy road he saw two mounted
figures, then as they drew nearer he caught the flutter of skirts
and recognized one of the horsewomen. It was Mrs. Ferris, wife
of the Barony's new owner. She reined in her horse abreast of
his cart.

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