Page:The Boys of Bellwood School.djvu/31

Rh pigeons when a voice hailed him from the fence railings.

"Hey, Frank—this way for a minute."

Frank recognized a friend and crony of Samuel Mace. This was pompous, red-faced Judge Roseberry. He had once been elected by mistake a justice of the peace, had never gotten a second term, but for some eight or ten years had traded on his past reputation. He managed to eke out a living by giving what he called legal advice at a cheap rate, and mixing in politics. Sometimes he collected bills for the tradesmen of the town, and in this way he had been useful to Mace. Most of the time, however, he hung around the village tavern. He looked now to Frank as if he had just come from that favorite resort of his. There was an unsteady gravity in the way that he poked an impressive finger at Frank as he spoke to the youth.

"What do you want?" demanded Frank, ungraciously enough, as he half guessed the mission of this bloated and untidy emissary of the law.

"Judicial, see?" observed Roseberry, gravely balancing against the picket fence.

"Go ahead," challenged Frank, keeping out of radius of the judge's breath.

"Come, come, young man," maundered Roseberry. "I'm too old a bird to have to circumlocate.