Chapter 26

Naturally Judge Rutherford gravitated towards the little house near Dupont Circle. The first night he mounted the stairs and found himself in the small room confronting the primitive supper he had been invited to share with big Tom and his family, his honest countenance assumed a cheerfulness long a stranger to it.

The room looked such a simple, homely place, with its Virginia made carpet, its neat, scant furnishing, and its table set with the plain little meal. The Judge's homesick heart expanded within him.

He shook hands with Tom with fervour. Rupert he greeted with friendly affection. Sheba--on her entering the room with a plate of hot biscuits which she had been baking in Miss Burford's stove--he almost kissed.

"Now this is something like," he said. "I didn't know there was anything so like Barnesville in all Washington city. And there wasn't till you people brought it. I don't know what it is, but, by thunder, it does a man's heart good."

He sat down with the unconventional air of ease he wore in Barnesville when he established himself in one of Jenny's parlour chairs for the evening.

"Lord, Lord!" he said; "you're home folks, and you've got home ways, that's what it is. A month in one of these fashionable hotels would just about kill me. Having to order things written out on a card and eat 'em with a hundred folks looking on--there's no comfort in it. Give me a place where you can all sit up together round the table and smell the good hot coffee and biscuit cooking and the ham and chicken being fried in the kitchen."

Sheba had cooked the supper in Miss Burford's kitchen. Her hot biscuits and coffee were made after Mornin's most respected recipes, and her housewifely air was tenderly anxious.

"If it is not very good, Judge Rutherford," she said, standing shyly at the head of the table before she took her place, "it is because I am only learning."

"You have learned, Sheba," said the Judge, looking at the plate of light golden brown and cream white biscuit with the sensitive eye of a connoisseur. "That plate of biscuit is Barnesville and Sophrony all over."

Sheba blushed with joy.

"Oh, Uncle Tom," she said; "do you think it is? I should so like to remind him of Barnesville."

"Good Lord!" said the Judge. "Fact is, you've made me feel already as if Tom Scott might break out yelling in the back yard any minute."

After the supper was over and the table clear the party of four sat down to talk business and make plans. The entire inexperience of the claimants was an obstacle in their path, but Judge Rutherford, though not greatly wiser than themselves, had means of gaining information which would be of value. As he looked over the papers and learned the details of the story, the good fellow's