Page:The Galaxy, Volume 6.djvu/503

1868.] "All wrong," replied the judge. "Don't think anything about it. There will be another train along in half an hour," looking at his watch, and taking Joseph by the arm. "Come and get a cup of coffee—capital coffee as ever I tasted. I thought we should get home for dinner, but this detention will make us rather late, and you won't have any refreshment until we arrive."

While the judge was speaking he was hurrying through the crowd, which made way for him, and he soon had Joseph seated at the table; and the confusion of the little world in which they were but two, was agreeable to both.

From the moment that he heard Judge Forrest's voice Joseph was passive in his hands. He had persuaded himself that he never could go back to Dunham, and the first night of his release was to be spent there!

In a village filled with acquaintances, who had been friends, he must be welcomed, congratulated, discussed. People would say to each other, "Hazard is back;" ask, "Have you seen him?" "What is he going to do?" comment, "That's a heavy load for the old judge to carry;" at the very best, pity him. What torture could have been prepared for him compared with that to which he must quietly submit on the day succeeding his return? He must go to church, of course! Everybody knew that he was in Dunham—and the presence of Judge Forrest was as much relied upon in the Dunham meeting-house, as was that of the minister.

"You will go with us, of course," Hazard seemed to hear his father-in-law say, and that which was taken for granted he performed.

The determination formed by Josie Parker, on her way home Saturday afternoon, that she would sit with Maggie Sunday morning, was carried out. When Margaret walked behind her father and the judge up the long aisle, she believed that she must fall down in a faint before she had gone half way; but in some mysterious manner there was conveyed to her an intimation, perhaps by the flutter of a well-known ribbon, or the flash of an eye, she never knew what or how it was, that Josie was waiting for her; and so she went bravely on, fluttering into her seat at last, scared, blushing; and it was a long while before she could lift her eyes even to look at the minister.

After a while—it seemed to Josie a long while—she nudged Margaret with her elbow, and laid an open hymn book on her lap, pointing to the lines—

an act of grace sufficient to cover a multitude of sins in oblivion.

Judge Forrest was equal to the business he had undertaken. He had Hazard with him everywhere. "We have stood for justice," he said to himself, and he bore himself majestically toward his towns-folk. He had done his duty; let no one intrude upon that fact. The novelty of his position had, however, it cannot be denied, deadened the old man's sensibility. He seemed to be losing sight of Hazard's experience in his own.

But now what was Joseph Hazard to do? A lost man, his business was to find himself and his proper place in a new world. And what had he to do on that plane where people exchanged civilities, laughed, talked, ate, and drank with each other? Their courtesies meaning, however, little when extended toward those of their own kind meant too much when exhibited toward him.

Their painful endeavors so to regulate behavior that it might not be mis-