"The Judge," she had explained, "is short of taxes on his Fawquear
lands. It's a desperate moment with him." Yet in two days the Judge
was shooting blue-winged teal at the mouth of the Accotink, and his
entire indifference to his family set Reybold to thinking whether the
Virginia husband and father was any thing more than a forgetful
savage. The boarders, however, made very merry over the absent
unknown. If the beefsteak was tough, threats were made to send for
"the Judge," and let him try a tooth on it; if scant, it was suggested
that the Judge might have paid a gunning visit to the premises and
inspected the larder. The daughter of the house kept such an even
temper, and was so obliging within the limitations of the
establishment, that many a boarder went to his department without
complaint, though with an appetite only partly satisfied. The boy,
Uriel, also was the guardsman of the household, old-faced as if with
the responsibility of taking care of two women. Indeed, the children
of the landlady were so well behaved and prepossessing that, compared
with Mrs. Basil's shabby _hauteur_ and garrulity, the legend of the
Judge seemed to require no other foundation than offspring of such
good spirit and intonation.

Mrs. Tryphonia Basil was no respecter of persons. She kept boarders,
she said, as a matter of society, and to lighten the load of the
Judge. He had very little idea that she was making a mercantile matter
of hospitality, but, as she feelingly remarked, "the old families are
misplaced in such times as these yer, when the departments are filled
with Dutch, Yankees, Crackers, Pore Whites, and other foreigners." Her
manner was, at periods, insolent to Mr. Reybold, who seldom protested,
out of regard to the daughter and the little Page; he was a man of
quite ordinary appearance, saying little, never making speeches or