Character Analysis
The Judge is Mrs. McIntyre's first husband. He was much older than she was and died three years after they were married. This was thirty years before the present action of the text, which occurs when she is 60. So she was about 27 when she married him. She says she married him for his money, but also because she was genuinely attracted to him. When he died, she learned that he had spent all his money and had mortgaged the house. The peacock in the story is the only one left of the twenty that were alive in the Judge's day. He is buried on the property along with the rest of his family. Mrs. McIntyre misses him.