Chapter 25 - Page 2

glad to see you."

He went on shaking his hand as he dragged him across the room and pushed him into a dingy armchair by the window; and when he had got him there, he stood over him grasping his shoulder, shaking his hand still. Tom saw that his chin was actually twitching in a curious way which made his goatee move unsteadily.

"The legislation of your country hasn't made you forget home folks, has it?" said Tom.

"Forget 'em!" exclaimed the Judge, throwing himself into a seat opposite and leaning forward excitedly with his hands on his knees. "I never remembered anything in my life as I remember them. They're never out of my mind, night or day. I've got into a way of dreaming I'm back to Barnesville, talking to the boys at the post-office, or listening to Jenny playing 'Home, Sweet Home' or 'The Maiden's Prayer.' I was a bit down yesterday and couldn't eat, and in the night there I was in the little dining-room, putting away fried chicken and hot biscuits as fast as the nigger girl could bring the dishes on the table. Good Lord! how good they were! There's nothing like them in Washington city," he added, and he heaved a big sigh.

"Why, man," said Tom, "you're homesick!"

The Judge heaved another sigh, thrusting his hands deeper into his pockets and looking out of the window.

"Yes, by Jingo!" he said; "that's what I am."

He withdrew his gaze from the world outside the window and returned to Tom.

"You see," he said, "I've lived different. When a man has been born and brought up among the mountains and lived a country life among folks that are all neighbours and have neighbourly ways, city life strikes him hard. Politics look different here; they are different. They're not of the neighbourly kind. Politicians ain't joking each other and having a good time. They don't know anything about the other man, and they don't care a damn. What's Hamlin County to them? Why, they don't know anything about Hamlin County, and, as far as I've got, they don't want to. They've got their own precincts to attend to, and they're going to do it. When a new man comes in, if he ain't a pretty big fellow that knows how to engineer things and say things to make them listen to him, he's only another greenhorn. Now, I'm not a big fellow, Tom; I've found that out! and the first two months after I came, blamed if I wasn't so homesick and discouraged that if it hadn't been for seeming to go back on the boys, durned if I don't believe I should have gone home."

Big Tom sat and regarded his honest face thoughtfully.

"Perhaps you're a bigger man than you know," he said. "Perhaps you'll find that out in time, and perhaps other people will."

The Judge shook his head.

"I've not got education enough," he said. "And I'm not an