Round Anvil Rock | Page 9

sat on its trivet above the glowing coals. The widow
Broadnax stirred among her cushions once or twice, as if almost on the
point of trying to get out of her chair. She was fonder of finery than her
half-sister was, and she would have liked very much to see these
beautiful things nearer. But she was still fonder of her own ease than of
finery, and it was really a great deal of trouble to get out of her deep,
broad low chair. And then she never moved or took her eyes off her
half-sister while that energetic lady was engaged in making the coffee.
Knowing the ladies' ways, Ruth did not expect them to come. She was
quite satisfied to have the men share her pleasure in the presents. They
were looking at her and not at the gifts lying heaped on the
candle-stand, but she did not notice that. She gave the judge a priceless
piece of lace to hold. He took it with the awkward, helpless
embarrassment of a manly man handling a woman's delicate
belongings,--the awkwardness that goes straight to a woman's heart,
because she sees and feels its true reverence--a reverence just as plain
and just as sweet to the simplest country girl as to the wisest woman of
the world. The perception of it is a matter of intuition, not one of
experience. The least experienced woman instantly distrusts the man
who can touch her garments with ease or composure. Ruth's gay young
voice broke into a sweet chime of delighted laughter when the judge
seized the airy bit of lace as if it had been the heaviest and hottest of
crowbars. She laughed again when she looked at his face. He had an
odd trick of lifting one of his eyebrows very high and at an acute angle
when perplexed or ill at ease. This eccentric left eyebrow--now quite
wedge-shaped--had gone up almost to the edge of his tousled gray hair.
Ruth patted his great clumsy hands with her little deft ones.

"Well, I'll have to take to the woods, if there's no other way of escape,"
said the judge, making his greatest threat.
"You dear!" she said, running her arm through his and giving it a little
squeeze. "That's right. Hold it tight--be careful, or it will break. Here,
William," piling the young man's arms full of delicately tinted gauze,
"this is a sunset cloud. And these," casting lengths of exquisite tissue
over the boy's shoulder, "these are the mists of the dawn, David,--all
silvery white and golden rose and jewelled blue. But--oh! oh!--these are
the loveliest of all! A pair of slippers in orange-blossom kid, spangled
with silver! Look at them! Just look, everybody!"
Holding them in her hand she ran round the table again to throw her
arms about Philip Alston's neck the second time, like a happy, excited
child. The little white slippers went up with her arms and touched his
cheek. And then he drew them down, and clasping her slender wrists,
held her out before him and looked at her with fond, smiling eyes.
"I don't believe that the Empress Josephine has any prettier slippers
than those," he said. "I ordered the prettiest and the finest in Paris."
"Who fetched all these things?" the judge broke in, with something like
a sudden realization of the number and the value of the gifts.
"Oh, a friend of mine," responded Philip Alston, carelessly, and
without turning his head,--"a friend who has many ships constantly
going and coming between New Orleans and France. He orders
anything I wish; and when it comes to him, he sends it on to me by the
first flatboat cordelled up the river."
"What is his name?" asked the judge, with a persistence very
uncommon in him.
Philip Alston turned now and glanced at him with an easy, almost
bantering smile.
"I don't like to tell you his name, because you--with a good many other
honestly mistaken people--are most unjustly prejudiced against him.

And then you know well enough that I am speaking of my respected
and trusted friend, Monsieur Jean Lafitte."
The judge dropped the lace as if it had burnt his hand. He went back to
his seat by the window in silence. He sat down heavily and looked at
Philip Alston in perplexity, rubbing his great shock of rough grizzled
hair the wrong way as he always did when worried. His thoughts were
plainly to be read on his open, rugged face. This liking of Philip
Alston's for a man under a national ban was an old subject of worry and
perplexity. Yet Alston was always as frank and as firm about it as he
had been just now, and the judge's confidence in him was absolute.
Robert Knox's own character must have