Page:Tom Beauling (1901).pdf/18

 mined him, as it were,—and looked him in the face, as if to determine whether or not that black-clothed, gray-headed man was trustable. In the course of his life Judge Tyler had spoken to more felons than children. He was quite at a loss.

"Come," he said presently, in a gruff voice, and forced himself to hold out a finger. The child's hand closed on the finger as a grown man's hand closes on money that is owing to him. An ingratiating feeling started, with the brazen intention of getting into his heart, to run up the judge's arm. He managed, not too easily, to check it at the elbow.

"Be good, Tom!"

In the dining-room the blinds were drawn. A few blue-and-white plates, "Independence Hall;" "Old South;" "The Franklin Elm," New Haven; "Mount Vernon;" a steel-engraving, "Shakespere lisant son drame de Macbeth devant La Reine Elisabeth et sa cour;" a copperplate, "Delia Hid in Shades Eludes her Eager Swain," and a copy of a copy of Van Dyke's portrait of