And
then you know well enough that I am speaking of my respected and trusted
friend, Monsieur Jean Lafitte."
The judge dropped the lace as if it had burnt his hand. He went back to
his seat by the window in silence. He sat down heavily and looked at
Philip Alston in perplexity, rubbing his great shock of rough grizzled
hair the wrong way as he always did when worried. His thoughts were
plainly to be read on his open, rugged face. This liking of Philip
Alston's for a man under a national ban was an old subject of worry and
perplexity. Yet Alston was always as frank and as firm about it as he
had been just now, and the judge's confidence in him was absolute.
Robert Knox's own character must have changed greatly before he could
have doubted the sincerity of any one whom he had known as long, as
intimately, and as favorably as he had known Philip Alston. We all judge
others by ourselves,--whether we do it consciously or not,--since we
have no other way of judging. And the judge himself was so simple, so
sincere, so essentially honest, that he could not doubt one who was in a
way a member of his own family.
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