"There you go again, Solomon, with that indecent mirth of yours! Friendship aside, you grow more offensive every day." The judge paused and then resumed.

"I understand there's a federal judgeship vacant here.

The president--" Mr.Mahaffy gave him a furtive leer.

"I tell you General Jackson was my friend--we were brothers, sir--I stood at his side on the glorious blood-wet field of New Orleans! You don't believe me--" "Price, you've made more demands on my stock of credulity than any man I've ever known!" The judge became somber-faced.
"Unparalleled misfortune overtook me--I stepped aside, but the world never waits; I was a cog discarded from the mechanism of society--" He was so pleased with the metaphor that he repeated it.
"Look here, Price, you talk as though you were a modern job; what's the matter anyhow ?--have you got boils ?" The judge froze into stony silence.

Well, Mahaffy could sneer--he would show him! This was the last ditch and he proposed to descend into it, it was something to be able to demand the final word of fate--but he instantly recalled that he had been playing at hide-and-seek with inevitable consequences for something like a quarter of a century; it had been a triumph merely to exist.