"Sit down," urged the judge.
"I hope you feel mean ?" said Mahaffy.
"If it's any satisfaction to you, I do," admitted the judge.
"You ought to." Mahaffy drew forward a chair.

The judge filled his glass.

But Mr.Mahaffy's lean face, with its long jaws and high cheek-bones, over which the sallow skin was tightly drawn, did not relax in its forbidding expression, even when he had tossed off his first glass.
"I love to see you in a perfectly natural attitude like that, Solomon, with your arm crooked.

What's the news from the landing ?" Mahaffy brought his fist down on the table.
"I heard the boat churning away round back of the bend, then I saw the lights, and she tied up and they tossed off the freight.

Then she churned away again and her lights got back of the trees on the bank.
There was the lap of waves on the shore, and I was left with the half-dozen miserable loafers who'd crawled out to see the boat come in.
That's the news six days a week!" By the river had come the judge, tentatively hopeful, but at heart expecting nothing, therefore immune to disappointment and equipped for failure.