Presently he braced himself straightly in his chair. “He will be your creation, you understand. He is purely your creation. Nature has very evidently given him up. He is dead. You are restoring him to life. You are making him, and he will be a monster, and with no mind.”
“He will be what you like, judge,” cried Trescott, in sudden, polite fury. “He will be anything, but, by God! he saved my boy.”
The judge interrupted in a voice trembling with emotion: “Trescott! Trescott! Don’t I know?”
Trescott had subsided to a sullen mood. “Yes, you know,” he answered, acidly; “but you don’t know all about your own boy being saved from death.” This was a perfectly childish allusion to the judge’s bachelorhood. Trescott knew that the remark was infantile, but he seemed to take desperate delight in it.
But it passed the judge completely. It was not his spot.
“I am puzzled,” said he, in profound thought. “I don’t know what to say.”
Trescott had become repentant. “Don’t think I don’t appreciate what you say, judge. But——”
“Of course!” responded the judge, quickly. “Of course.”
“It——” began Trescott.
“Of course,” said the judge.
In silence they resumed their dinner.
“Well,” said the judge, ultimately, “it is hard for a man to know what to do.”
“It is,” said the doctor, fervidly.
There was another silence. It was broken by the judge:
“Look here, Trescott; I don’t want you to think——”
“No, certainly not,” answered the doctor, earnestly.
“Well, I don’t want you to think I would say anything to——It was only that I thought that I might be able to suggest to you that—perhaps—the affair was a little dubious.”
With an appearance of suddenly disclosing his real mental perturbation, the doctor said: “Well, what would you do? Would you kill him?” he asked, abruptly and sternly.
“Trescott, you fool,” said the old man, gently.
“Oh, well, I know, judge, but then——” He turned red, and spoke with new violence: “Say, he saved my boy—do you see? He saved my boy.”
“You bet he did,” cried the judge, with enthusiasm. “You bet he did.” And they remained for a time gazing at each other, their faces illuminated with memories of a certain deed.
After another silence, the judge said, “It is hard for a man to know what to do.”
XII
Late one evening Trescott, returning from a professional call, paused his buggy at the Hagenthorpe gate. He tied the mare to the old tin-covered post, and entered the house. Ultimately he appeared with