The child couldn't have been hers no how." Yancy paused.
The judge drummed idly on the desk.
"What implacable hate--what iron pride!" he murmured, and swept his hand across his eyes.

Absorbed and aloof, he was busy with his thoughts that spanned the waste of years, years that seemed to glide before him in review, each bitter with its hideous memories of shame and defeat.

Then from the smoke of these lost battles emerged the lonely figure of the child as he had seen him that June night.

His ponderous arm stiffened where it rested on the desk, he straightened up in his chair and his face assumed its customary expression of battered dignity, while a smile at once wistful and tender hovered about his lips.
"One other question," he said.

"Until this man Murrell appeared you had no trouble with Bladen?
He was content that you should keep the child--your right to Hannibal was never challenged ?" "Never, sir.