Old Judge Priest

THIS story begins with Judge Priest sitting at his desk at his chambers at the old courthouse. I have a suspicion that it will end with him sitting there. As to that small detai...

“I don't know as you know about it, Judge Priest--the chances are you naturally wouldn't--but in a domestic way things haven't been going very smoothly with me--with us, I shoul...

Sitting down the above-named seemed a person of no more than ordinary height, this being by reason of the architectural peculiarities just referred to. But standing up, as at th...

“Stay right where you are for five minutes,” was the final warning from behind the cambric mask. “Five minutes, remember! Anybody who tries to come down those steps before that...

Then, noting the others had not yet rallied back again to the point where the flow of reminiscences had been checked by Press Harper's labial slip-up, he had an inspiration.

At once his fancy was drawn to a milk punch, the same being a pleasant compound to which he had been introduced an hour or so earlier. This milk punch seemed to call for another...

The stranger's accent stamped him as a Northerner; his manner revealed him indubitably as a man of the world--withal it was a genial manner. He bestowed a suit case alongside in...

With her, back and forth across the telephone wire, Judge Priest had extended speech. Then he hung up the receiver and went home alone to a late and badly burnt supper. Aunt Dil...

Emanuel had proper cause to hurry. Never in all his years of service for the Commonwealth Bank had he failed to be on hand at eight o'clock to sort out the mail; and if his watc...

Most of this was as pure Greek to Judge Priest, who, I may say, knew no Greek, pure or otherwise. Suddenly aware of the bewilderment revealed in the countenance of his interview...

There were servants aplenty within, but the younger Miss Grundy elected to serve him; a pretty girl, all in snowy white except for touches of red at her throat and her slender b...

The Yankees, however, unaccountably fought, and it was not a ninety-day picnic after all. It was not any kind of a picnic. And when it was over, after four years and a month, Mi...

“I wouldn't go so fur ez to say that,” spake Judge Priest soothingly. “Frum where I'm settin' it looks to me like the joke is mainly on quite a number of people.”

“Jimmy Bagby,” reproved Judge Priest, “ain't you knowed Dab Prentiss long enough to know that you don't have to tell him whut kind of a speech he's to make? He's got all kinds o...

Then he would excuse himself and leave the table and enter the library for a moment, returning with a polished rosewood case borne reverently in his two hands and he would put t...

“My brother--the junior partner here”--he dwelt heavily upon the word _junior_, making of it a most disqualifying adjective--“he also thinks in this matter the same way as I do....

“Boys,” he cried, lifting his high, shrill voice yet higher and yet shriller, “I'm about to put a motion to you and I want a vote on it purty dam' quick! They've been sayin' in...

It turns out that I was right a while back when I predicted this chapter of this book might end with Judge Priest sitting at his desk in his room at the old courthouse. On the m...

The camel's back broke entirely at the end of the third week. It was a green paymaster from the Chicago offices who furnished the last straw. He tried to pay off with paper mone...

“Then set right still and do so,” commanded Judge Priest. “I'm goin' to take you into my confidences jest as soon as I see how my way of doin' the thing works out. We oughter gi...

Since he held the levers of the district machinery in the hollows of his two itching hands, Senator Maydew very naturally and very properly elected to direct his own canvass. Ju...

“Doin' fairly well,” answered Mr. Bloomfield. “F'r instance, he's payin' taxes on that there house next door.” He flirted his whiskered chin over his left shoulder. “F'r instanc...

Exulting now, he caught up the paper he had dropped, and with it crumpled in his pudgy fist was half-way down the gravel walk, bound for the little cottage snuggled in its vine...