Mahaffy having eased his conscience, rolled over and promptly went to sleep.

Flat on his back, the judge stared up at the wide blue arch of the heavens and rehearsed those promises which in the last twenty years he had made and broken times without number.

He planned no sweeping reforms, his system of morality being little more than a series of graceful compromises with himself.
He must not get hopelessly in debt; he must not get helplessly drunk.
Dealing candidly with his own soul in the silence, he presently came to the belief that this might be done without special hardship.

Then suddenly the rusted name-plate on Hannibal's old rifle danced again before his burning eyes, and a bitter sense of hurt and loss struck through him.

He saw himself as he was, a shabby outcast, a tavern hanger-on, the utter travesty of all he should have been; he dropped his arm across his face.
The first rift of light in the sky found the judge stirring; it found him in his usual cheerful frame of mind.