The Voice of the People | Page 2

judge, his gaze passing
over the large, red head to rest upon the small one, "and a farmer like
his father before him, I suppose."
He was turning away when the child's voice checked him, and he
paused.
"I--I'd ruther be a judge," said the boy.
He was leaning against the faded bricks of the old court-house, one

sunburned hand playing nervously with the crumbling particles. His
honest little face was as red as his hair.
The judge started.
"Ah!" he exclaimed, and he looked at the child with his kindly eyes.
The boy was ugly, lean, and stunted in growth, browned by hot suns
and powdered by the dust of country roads, but his eyes caught the gaze
of the judge and held it.
Above his head, on the brick wall, a board was nailed, bearing in black
marking the name of the white-sand street which stretched like a
chalk-drawn line from the grass-grown battlefields to the pale old
buildings of King's College. The street had been called in honour of a
duke of Gloucester. It was now "Main" Street, and nothing more,
though it was still wide and white and placidly impressed by the slow
passage of Kingsborough feet. Beyond the court-house the breeze blew
across the green, which was ablaze with buttercups. Beneath the warm
wind the yellow heads assumed the effect of a brilliant tangle,
spreading over the unploughed common, running astray in the
grass-lined ditch that bordered the walk, hiding beneath dusty-leaved
plants in unsuspected hollows, and breaking out again under the horses'
hoofs in the sandy street.
"Ah!" exclaimed the judge, and a good-natured laugh ran round the
group.
"Wall, I never!" ejaculated the elder Burr, but there was no surprise in
his tone; it expressed rather the helplessness of paternity.
The boy faced them, pressing more firmly against the bricks.
"There ain't nothin' in peanut-raisin'," he said. "It's jest farmin' fur
crows. I'd ruther be a judge."
The judge laughed and turned from him.
"Stick to the soil, my boy," he advised. "Stick to the soil. It is the best

thing to do. But if you choose the second best, and I can help you, I
will--I will, upon my word--Ah! General," to a jovial-faced,
wide-girthed gentleman in a brown linen coat, "I'm glad to see you in
town. Fine weather!"
He put on his hat, bowed again, and went on his way.
He passed slowly along in the spring sunshine, his feet crunching upon
the gravel, his straight shadow falling upon the white level between
coarse fringes of wire-grass. Far up the town, at the street's sudden end,
where it was lost in diverging roads, there was visible, as through a
film of bluish smoke, the verdigris-green foliage of King's College.
Nearer at hand the solemn cruciform of the old church was steeped in
shade, the high bell-tower dropping a veil of English ivy as it rose
against the sky. Through the rusty iron gate of the graveyard the marble
slabs glimmered beneath submerging grasses, long, pale, tremulous like
reeds.
The grass-grown walk beside the low brick wall of the churchyard led
on to the judge's own garden, a square enclosure, laid out in straight
vegetable rows, marked off by variegated borders of flowering
plants--heartsease, foxglove, and the red-lidded eyes of scarlet poppies.
Beyond the feathery green of the asparagus bed there was a bush of
flowering syringa, another at the beginning of the grass-trimmed walk,
and yet another brushing the large white pillars of the square front
porch--their slender sprays blown from sun to shade like fluttering
streamers of cream-coloured ribbons. On the other side there were
lilacs, stately and leafy and bare of bloom, save for a few ashen-hued
bunches lingering late amid the heavy foliage. At the foot of the garden
the wall was hidden in raspberry vines, weighty with ripening fruit.
The judge closed the gate after him and ascended the steps. It was not
until he had crossed the wide hall and opened the door of his study that
he heard the patter of bare feet, and turned to find that the boy had
followed him.
For an instant he regarded the child blankly; then his hospitality
asserted itself, and he waved him courteously into the room.

"Walk in, walk in, and take a seat. I am at your service."
He crossed to one of the tall windows, unfastening the heavy inside
shutters, from which the white paint was fast peeling away. As they fell
back a breeze filled the room, and the ivory faces of microphylla roses
stared across the deep window-seat. The place was airy as a
summer-house and odorous with the essence of roses distilled in the
sunshine beyond. On the high plastered walls, above the book-shelves,
rows of bygone Bassetts looked down on their departed
possessions--stately