A week passed, and the community was all agog, in anticipation of the

judge's charge in the case just mentioned. It was to be given at noon,

and Mrs. Scoville, conscious that he had not slept an hour the night

before (having crept down more than once to listen if his step had

ceased), approached him as he prepared to leave the house for the court

room, and anxiously asked if he were quite well.

"Oh, yes, I'm well," he responded sharply, looking about for Reuther.

The young girl was standing a little behind him, with his gloves in her

hand--a custom she had fallen into in her desire to have his last look

and fond good morning.

"Come here, child," said he, in a way to make her heart beat; and, as he

took the gloves from her hand, he stooped and kissed her on the

forehead--something he had never done before. "Let me see you smile,"

said he. "It's a memory I like to take with me into the court room."

But when in her pure delight at his caress and the fatherly feeling

which gave a tremor to his simple request, she lifted her face with that

angelic look of hers which was far sweeter and far more moving than any

smile, he turned away abruptly as though he had been more hurt than

comforted, and strode out of the house without another word.

Deborah's hand went to her heart, in the dark corner whither she had

withdrawn herself, and when she turned again towards the spot where

Reuther had stood, it was in some fear lest she had betrayed her

understanding of this deeply tried father's passionate pain. But Reuther

was no longer there. She had fled quickly away with the memory of what

was to make this day a less dreary one for her.

Morning passed and the noon came, bringing Deborah an increased

uneasiness. When lunch was over and Reuther sat down to her piano, the

feeling had grown into an obsession, which soon resolved itself into a

definite fear.

"What if an attack, such as I once saw, should come upon him while he

sits upon the bench! Why have I not thought of this before? O God! these

evil days! When will they be over!"

She found herself so restless that she decided upon going out. Donning

her quietest gown and veil, she looked in on Reuther and expressed her

intention; then slipped out of the front door, hardly knowing whither

her feet would carry her.

They did not carry her far,--not at this moment at least. On the walk

outside she met Miss Weeks hurrying towards her from the corner,

stumbling in her excitement and so weakened in body or spirit that she

caught at the unresponsive fence for the support which its smooth

surface refused to give her.

At sight of Deborah's figure, she paused and threw up her hands.

"Oh, Mrs. Scoville, such a dreadful thing!" she cried. "Look here!" And,

opening one of her hands, she showed a few torn scraps of paper whose

familiarity made Deborah's blood run cold.

"On the bridge," gasped the little lady, leaning against the fence for

support. "Pasted on the railing of the bridge. I should never have seen

it, nor looked at it, if it hadn't been that I--"

"Don't tell me here," urged Deborah. "Let's go over to your house. See,

there are people coming."

The little lady yielded to the other's constraining hand and together

they crossed the street. Once in the house, Deborah allowed her full

apprehension to show itself.

"What were the words? What was on the paper? Anything about--"

The little woman's look of horror stopped her.

"It's a lie, an awful, abominable lie. But think of such a lie being

pasted up on that dreadful bridge for any one to see. After twelve

years, Mrs. Scoville! After--" But here indignation changed suddenly

into suspicion, and eyeing her visitor with sudden disfavour she cried:

"This is your work, madam. Your inquiries and your talk of John

Scoville's innocence has set wagging all the villainous tongues in town.

And I remember something else. How you came smirking into this very room

one day, with your talk about caps and Oliver Ostrander's doings on the

day when Algernon Etheridge was murdered. You were in search of

information, I see; information against the best, the brightest--Well,

why don't you speak? I'll give you the chance if you want it. Don't

stand looking at me like that. I'm not used to it, Mrs. Scoville. I'm a

peaceable woman and I'm not used to it."

"Miss Weeks--" Ah, the oil of that golden speech on troubled waters!

What was its charm? What message did it carry from Deborah's warm, true

heart that its influence should be so miraculous? "Miss Weeks, you have

forgotten my interest in Oliver Ostrander. He was my daughter's lover.

He was my own ideal of a gifted, kind-hearted, if somewhat mysterious,

young man. No calumny uttered against him can awaken in you half the

sorrow and indignation it does in me. Let me see those lines or what

there is left of them so that I may share your feelings. They must be

dreadful--"

"They are more than dreadful. I don't know how I had strength to pull

these pieces off. I couldn't have done it if they had been quite dry.

But what do you want to see them for? I'd have left them there if I had

been willing to have them seen. They are for the kitchen fire. Wait a

moment and then we will talk."

But Deborah had no mind to let these pieces escape her eye. Sick as she

felt at heart, she exerted herself to win the little woman's confidence;

and when Deborah exerted herself, even under such adverse conditions as

these, she seldom failed to succeed.

Nor did she fail now. At the end of fifteen minutes she had the torn

bits of paper arranged in their proper position and was reading these

words:

The scene of Oliv der's crime.

Nothing could be more explicit nothing more damaging. As the glances of

the two women met, it would be difficult to tell on which face Distress

hung out the whiter flag.

"The beginning of the end!" was Deborah's thought. "If after Mr. Black's

efforts, a charge like this is found posted up in the public ways, the

ruin of the Ostranders is determined upon, and nothing we can do can

stop it."

In five minutes more she had said good-bye to Miss Weeks and was on her

way to the courthouse.

This building occupied one end of a large paved square in the busiest

part of the town. As Deborah approached it, she was still further

alarmed by finding this square full of people, standing in groups or

walking impatiently up and down with their eyes fixed on the courthouse

doors. The case which had agitated the whole country for days was now in

the hands of the jury and a verdict was momentarily expected.

So much for appearances outside. Within, there was the uneasy hum, the

anxious look, the subdued movement which marks an universal suspense.

Announcement had been made that the jury had reached their verdict, and

counsel were resuming their places and the judge his seat.

Those who had eyes only for the latter--and these were many--noticed a

change in him. He looked older by years than when he delivered his

charge. Not the prisoner himself gave greater evidence of the effect

which this hour of waiting had had upon a heart whose covered griefs

were, consciously or unconsciously, revealing themselves to the public

eye. He did not wish this man sentenced. This was shown by his

charge--the most one-sided one he had given in all his career. Yet the

man awaiting verdict had small claim to his consideration--none, in

fact, save that he was young and well connected; facts in his favour

with which the people who packed the courthouse that day had little

sympathy, as their cold looks proved.

To Deborah, who had succeeded in getting a seat in a remote and

inconspicuous corner, these looks conveyed a spirit of so much threat

that she gazed about her in wonder that so few saw where the real

tragedy in this room lay.

But the jury is now seated, and the clatter of moving feet which but a

moment before filled the great room, sinks as if under a charm, and

silence, that awesome precursor of doom, lay in all its weight upon

every ear and heart, as the clerk advancing with the cry, "Order in the

court," put his momentous question:

"Gentlemen of the jury, are you ready with your verdict?"

A hush!--then, the clear voice of the foreman:

"We are."

"How do you find? Guilty or not guilty?"

Another hesitation. Did the foreman feel the threat lurking in the air

about him? If so, he failed to show it in his tones as he uttered the

words which released the prisoner:

"NOT GUILTY."

A growl from the crowd, almost like that of a beast stirring its lair,

then a quick cessation of all hubbub as every one turned to the judge to

whose one-sided charge they attributed this release.

Again he was a changed man. With the delivery of this verdict he had

regained his natural poise, and never had he looked more authoritative

or more pre-eminently the dominating spirit of the court than in the few

following moments in which he expressed the thanks of the court to the

jury and dismissed the prisoner. And yet, though each person there, from

the disappointed prosecutor to the least aggressive spectator, appeared

to feel the influence of a presence and voice difficult to duplicate on

the bench of this country, Deborah experienced in her quiet corner no

alleviation of the fear which had brought her into this forbidding spot

and held her breathless through all these formalities.

For the end was not yet. Through all the turmoil of noisy departure and

the drifting out into the square of a vast, dissatisfied throng, she had

caught the flash of a bit of paper (how introduced into this moving mass

of people no one ever knew) passing from hand to hand, towards the

solitary figure of the judge who had not as yet left his seat.

She knew--no one better--what this meant, and instinct bade her cry out

and bid those thoughtless hands to cease their work and let this letter

drop. But her discretion still held, and, subduing the mad impulse, she

watched with dilating eyes and heaving breast the slow passage of this

fatal note through the now rapidly thinning crowd, its delay as it

reached the open space between the last row of seats and the judge's

bench and its final delivery by some officious hand, who thrust it upon

his notice just as he was rising to leave.

The picture he made in that instant of hesitation never left her mind.

To the end of her days she will carry a vision of his tall form,

imposing in his judicial robes and with the majesty of his office still

upon him, fingering this envelope in sight of such persons as still

lingered in his part of the room. Nemesis was lowering its black wings

over his devoted head, and, with feelings which left her dazed and

transfixed in silent terror, Deborah saw his finger tear its way through

the envelope and his eyes fall frowningly on the paper he drew out.

Then the People's counsel and the counsel for the Defence and such

clerks and hangers-on as still lingered in the upper end of the room

experienced a decided sensation.

The judge, who a moment before had towered above them all in melancholy

but impressive dignity, shrunk with one gasp into feebleness and sank

back stricken, if not unconscious, into his chair.

Was it a stroke, or just one of his attacks of which all had heard? Was

he aware of his own condition and the disturbance it caused or was he,

on the contrary, dead to his own misery and oblivious of the rush which

was made from all sides to his assistance? Even Deborah could not tell,

and was forced to sit quiet in her corner, waiting for the parting of

the group which hid the judge from her sight.

It happened suddenly and showed her the same figure she had seen once

before--a man with faculties suspended, but not impaired, facing them

all with open gaze but absolutely dead for the moment to his own

condition and to the world about.

But, horrible as this was, what she saw going on behind him was

infinitely worse. A man had caught up the bit of paper Judge Ostrander

had let fall from his hand and was opening his lips to read it to the

curious people surrounding him.

She tried to stop him. She forced a cry to her lips which should have

rung through the room, but which died away on the air unheard. The

terror which had paralysed her limbs had choked her voice.

But her ears remained true. Low as he spoke, no trumpet-call could have

made its meaning clearer to Deborah Scoville than did these words:

"We know why you favour criminals. Twelve years is a long time, but not

long enough to make wise men forget."

XXII

BEFORE THE GATES

Had she not caught the words themselves she would have recognised their

import from the blighting effect they produced upon the persons grouped

within hearing.

Schooled as most of them were to face with minds secure and tempers

quite unruffled the countless surprises of a court room, they paled at

the insinuation conveyed in these two sentences, and with scarcely the

interchange of glance or word, drew aside in a silence which no man

seemed inclined to break.

As for the people still huddled in the doorway, they rushed away

helter-skelter into the street, there to proclaim the judge's condition

and its probable cause;--an event which to many quite eclipsed in

interest the more ordinary one which had just released to freedom a man

seemingly doomed.

Few persons were now left in the great room, and Deborah, embarrassed to

find that she was the only woman present, was on the point of escaping

from her corner when she perceived a movement take place in the rigid

form from which she had not yet withdrawn her eyes, and, regarding Judge

Ostrander more attentively, she caught the gleam of his suspicious eye

as it glanced this way and that to see if his lapse of consciousness had

been noticed by those about him.

Would the man still in possession of the paper whose contents had

brought about this attack understand these evidences of apprehension?

Yes; and what is more, he seems to take such means as offers to hide

from the judge all knowledge of the fact that any other eyes than his

own have read these invidious words. With unexpected address, he waits

for the judge to turn his head aside when with a quick and dextrous

movement he so launches the paper from his hand that it falls softly and

without flurry within an inch of the judicial seat. Then he goes back to

his papers.

This suggestion, at once so marked and so delicate, did not fail of its

effect upon those about. Wherever the judge looked he saw abstracted

faces and busy hands, and, taking heart at not finding himself watched,

he started to rise. Then memory came,--blasting, overwhelming memory of

the letter he had been reading; and, rousing with a start, he looked

down at his hand, then at the floor before him, and, seeing the letter

lying there, picked it up with a secret, side-long glance to right and

left, which sank deep into the heart of the still watchful Deborah.

If those about him saw, they made no motion. Not an eye looked round and

not a head turned as he straightened himself and proceeded to leave the

room. Only Deborah noted how his steps faltered and how little he was to

be trusted to find his way unguided to the door. It lay to the right and

he was going left. Now he stumbles--Isn't there any one to--Yes, she is

not the sole one on watch. The same man who had read aloud the note and

then dropped it within his reach, had stepped after him, and kindly, if

artfully, turned him towards the proper place of exit. As the two

disappear, Deborah wakes from her trance, and, finding herself alone

among the seats, hurries to quit her corner and leave the building.

The glare--the noise of the square, as she dashes down into it seems for

the moment unendurable. The pushing, panting mass of men and women of

which she has now become a part, closes about her, and for the moment

she can see nothing but faces,--faces with working mouths and blazing

eyes,--a medley of antagonistic expression, all directed against

herself;--or so she felt in the heat of her self-consciousness. But

after the first recoil she knew that no such universal recognition could

be hers; that she was merely a new and inconsiderable atom caught in a

wave of feeling which engulfed all it met; that this mob was not raised

from the stones to overwhelm her but HIM, and that if she flew, it

should be to his aid, and not to save herself. But how was she to reach

him? He would not come out by the main entrance; that she knew. Where

look for him, then? Suddenly she remembered; and using some of her

strength of which she had good measure, and more of that address to

which I have already alluded, she began to worm herself along through

this astounding collection of people much too large already for the

ordinary force of police to handle, to that corner of the building where

a small door opened upon a rear street. She remembered it from those old

days when she had once entered this courthouse as a witness.

But alas, others knew it also, and thick as the crowd was in front, it

was even thicker here, and far more tumultuous. Word had gone about that

the father of Oliver Ostrander had been given his lesson at last, and

the curiosity of the populace had risen to fever-heat in their anxiety

to see how the proud Ostrander would bear himself in his precipitate

downfall. They had crowded there to see and they would see. Were he to

shirk the ordeal! Were he to wait for the square to be cleared--But they

knew him too well to fear this. He will come--nay, he is coming now--and

coming alone! No other figure looms so grandly in a doorway, nor is

there any other face in Shelby whose pallor could strike so coldly to

the heart, or rouse such conflicting emotions.

He was evidently not prepared to see his path quite so heavily marked

out for him by the gaping throng; but after one look, he assumed some

show of his old commanding presence and advanced bravely down the steps,

awing some and silencing all, until he had reached his carriage step and

the protection of the officers on guard.

Then a hoot rose from some far-off quarter of the square, and he turned

short about and the people saw his face. Despair had seized it, and if

any one there desired vengeance, he had it. The knell of active life had

been rung for this man. He would never remount the courthouse steps, or

face again a respectful jury.

As for Deborah, she had shrunk out of sight at his approach, but as soon

as he had ridden off, she looked eagerly for a taxicab to carry her in

his wake. She could not let him ride that mile alone. She was still

fearful for him, though the mass of people about her was rapidly

dissolving away, and the streets growing clear.

But an apprehension still greater, because more personal, seized her

when she found herself behind him on the long road. Several minutes had

been lost in obtaining a taxicab and she feared that she would be unable

to overtake him before he reached his own gates. This would be to

subject Reuther to a shock which the poor child had little strength to

meet. She could not escape the truth long. Soon, very soon she would

have to be told that the man who stood so high in her esteem was now

regarded as a common criminal. But she must be prepared for the awful

news. She must be within reach of her mother's arms when the blow fell

destroying her past as well as her future.

Were minutes really so long--the house really so far away? Deborah gazes

eagerly forward. There is very little traffic in the streets to-day and

the road ahead looks clear--too clear, she cannot even see the dust

raised by the judge's rapidly disappearing carriage. Can he have arrived

home already? No, or the carriage would be coming back, and not a

vehicle is in view.

Her anxiety increases. She has reached the road debouching towards the

bridge--has crossed it--is drawing near--nearer--when, what is this?

Men--women--coming from the right, coming from the left, running out of

houses, flocking from every side street, filling up the road! A lesser

mob than that from which she had just escaped, but still, a mob, and all

making for one point--the judge's house! And he? She can see his

carriage now. Held up for a moment by the crowd, it has broken through,

and is rolling quickly towards Ostrander Lane. But the mob is following,

and she is yet far behind.

Shouting to the chauffeur to hasten, the insistent honk! honk! of the

cab adds its raucous note to the turmoil. They have dashed through one

group;--they are dashing through another;--naught can withstand an

on-rushing automobile. She catches glimpses of raised arms threatening

retaliation; of eager, stolid, uncertain and furious faces--and her

breath held back during that one instant of wild passage rushes

pantingly forth again. Ostrander Lane is within sight. If only they can

reach it!--if only they can cross it! But they cannot without sowing

death in their track. No scattered groups here, the mob fills the

corner. It is packed close as a wall. Brought up against it, the motor

necessarily comes to a stand-still.

Balked? No, not yet. Opening the door, Deborah leaps to the ground and

in one instant finds herself but a mote in this seethe of humanity. In

vain her efforts, she cannot move arm or limb. The gate is but a few

paces off, but all hope of reaching it is futile. She can only hold

herself still and listen as all around are listening. But to what? To

nothing. It is expectation which holds them all silent. She will have to

wait until the crowd sways apart, allowing her to--Ah, there, some heads

are moving now! She catches one glimpse ahead of her, and sees--What

does she see? The noble but shrunk figure of the judge drawn up before

his gate. His lips are moving, but no sound issues from them; and while

those about are waiting for his words, they peer, with an insolence

barely dashed by awe, at his white head and his high fence and now at

the gate swerving gently inward under the hand of some one whose figure

is invisible.

But no words coming, a change passes like a stroke of lightning over the

surging mass. Some one shouts out COWARD! another, TRAITOR! and the

lifted head falls, the moving lips cease from their efforts and in place

of the great personality which filled their eyes a moment before, they

see a man entrapped, waking to the horror of a sudden death in life for

which no visions of the day, no dreams of the night, had been able to

prepare him.

It was a sight to waken pity not derision. But these people had gathered

here in a bitter mood and their rancour had but scented the prey. Calls

of "Oliver!" and such threats as "You saved him at a poor man's expense,

but we'll have him yet, we'll have him yet!" began to rise about him;

followed by endless repetitions of the name from near and far: "Oliver!

Oliver!"

Oliver! His own lips seemed to re-echo the word. Then like a lion baited

beyond his patience the judge lifted his head and faced them all with a

fiery intensity which for the moment made him a terrible figure to

contemplate.

"Let no one utter that name to me here!" shot from his lips in tones of

unspeakable menace and power. "Spare me that name, or the curse of my

ruined life be upon you. I can bear no more to-day."

Thrilled by his aspect, cowering under his denunciation, emphasised as

it was by a terrifying gesture, the people, pressing closest about him,

drew back and left the passage open to the gate. He took it with a

bound, and would have entered but that from the outskirts of the crowd

where his voice had not reached, the cry arose again of "Oliver! Oliver!

The sons of the rich go free, but ours have to hang!"

At which he turned his head about, gave them one stare and fell back

against the door. It yielded and a woman's arms received him. The gentle

Reuther in that hour of dire extremity, showed herself stronger than her

mother who had fallen in a faint amid the crowd.

XXIII

THE MISFORTUNES OF MY HOUSE

To one who swoons but seldom, the moment of returning consciousness is

often fraught with great pain and sometimes with unimaginable horror. It

was such to Deborah; the pain and horror holding her till her eyes,

accustomed to realities again, saw in the angel face which floated

before her vision amid a swarm of demon masks, the sweet and solicitous

countenance of Reuther.

As she took this in, she took in other facts also: that there were no

demons, no strangers even about her: That she and her child were

comparatively alone in their own little parlour, and that Reuther's

sweet face wore a look of lofty courage which reminded her of something

she could not at the moment grasp, but which was so beautiful. At that

instant her full memory came, and, uttering a low cry, she started up,

and struggling to her feet, confronted her child, this time with a look

full of agonised inquiry.

Reuther seemed to understand her; for, taking her mother's hand in hers,

she softly said:

"I knew you were not seriously ill, only frightened by the crowd and

their senseless shoutings. Don't think of it any more, dear mother. The

people are dispersing now, and you will soon be quite restored and ready

to smile with us at an attack so groundless it is little short of

absurd."

Astounded at such tranquillity where she had expected anguish if not

stark unreason, doubting her eyes, her ears--for this was no longer her

delicate, suffering Reuther to be shielded from all unhappy knowledge,

but a woman as strong if not as wise to the situation as herself--she

scrutinised the child closely, then turned her gaze slowly about the

room, and started in painful surprise, as she perceived standing in the

space behind her the tall figure of Judge Ostrander.

He! and she must face him! the man whom she by her blind and untimely

efforts to regain happiness for Reuther, had brought to this woful pass!

The ordeal was too bitter for her broken spirit and, shrinking aside,

she covered her face with her hands like one who stands detected in a

guilty act.

"Pardon," she entreated, forgetting Reuther's presence in her

consciousness of the misery she had brought upon her benefactor. "I

never meant--I never dreamed--"

"Oh, no apologies!" Was this the judge speaking? The tone was an

admonitory, not a suffering one. It was not even that of a man

humiliated or distressed. "You have had an unfortunate experience, but

that is over now and so must your distress be." Then, as in her

astonishment she dropped her hands and looked up, he added very quietly,

"Your daughter has been much disturbed about you, but not at all about

Oliver or his good name. She knows my son too well, and so do you and I,

to be long affected by the virulent outcries of a mob seeking for an

object upon which to expend their spleen."

Swaying yet in body and mind, quite unable in the turmoil of her spirits

to reconcile this strong and steady man with the crushed and despairing

figure she had so lately beheld shrinking under the insults of the

crowd, Deborah was glad to sit silent under this open rebuke and listen

to Reuther's ingenuous declarations, though she knew that they brought

no conviction and distilled no real comfort either to his mind or hers.

"Yes, mother darling," the young girl was saying. "These people have not

seen Oliver in years, but we have, and nothing they can say, nothing

that any one can say but himself could ever shake my belief in him as a

man incapable of a really wicked act. He might be capable of striking a

sudden blow--most men are under great provocation--but to conceal such a

fact,--to live for years enjoying the respect of all who knew him, with

the knowledge festering in his heart of another having suffered for his

crime--that, THAT would be impossible to Oliver Ostrander."

Some words ring in the heart long after their echo has left the ear.

IMPOSSIBLE! Deborah stole a look at the judge. But he was gazing at

Reuther, where he well might gaze, if his sinking heart craved support

or his abashed mind sought to lose itself in the enthusiasm of this pure

soul, with its loving, uncalculating instincts.

"Am I not right, mother?"

Ah! must she answer that?

"Tell the judge who is as confident of Oliver as I am myself that you

are confident, too. That you could no more believe him capable of this

abominable act than you could believe it of my father."

"I will--tell--the judge," stammered the unhappy mother. "Judge," she

briefly declared, as she rose with the help of her daughter's arm, "my

mind agrees with yours in this matter. What you think, I think." And

that was all she could say.

As she fell again into her seat, the judge turned to Reuther:

"Leave your mother for a little while," he urged with that rare

gentleness he always showed her. "Let her rest here a few minutes

longer, alone with me."

"Yes, Reuther," murmured Deborah, seeing no way of avoiding this

inevitable interview. "I am feeling better every minute. I will come

soon."

The young girl's eye faltered from one to the other, then settled, with

a strange and imploring look upon her mother. Had her clear intelligence

pierced at last to the core of that mother's misery? Had she seen what

Deborah would have spared her at the cost of her own life? It would seem

so, for when the mother, with great effort, began some conciliatory

speech, the young girl smiled with a certain sad patience, and, turning

towards Judge Ostrander, said as she softly withdrew:

"You have been very kind to allow me to mention a name and discuss a

subject you have expressly forbidden. I want to show my gratitude, Judge

Ostrander, by never referring to it again without your permission. That

you know my mind,"--here her head rose with a sort of lofty pride which

lent a dazzling quality to her usually quiet beauty,--"and that I know

yours, is quite enough for me."

"A noble girl! a mate for the best!" fell from the judge's lips after a

silence disturbed only by the faint, far-off murmur of a slowly

dispersing throng.

Deborah made no answer. She could not yet trust her courage or her

voice.

The judge, who was standing near, concentrated his look upon her

features. Still she made no effort to meet his eye. He did not speak,

and the silence grew appalling. To break it, he stepped away and took a

glance out of the window. There was nothing to be seen there; the fence

hid all, but he continued to look, the shadows from his soul settling

deeper and deeper upon his countenance as each heavy moment dragged by.

When he finally turned, it was with a powerful effort which communicated

itself to her and forced her long-bowed head to rise and her troubled

mind to disclose itself.

"You wish to express your displeasure, and hesitate on account of

Reuther," she faltered. "You need not. We are quite prepared to leave

your house if our presence reminds you too much of the calamity I have

brought upon you by my inconsiderate revival of a past you had every

reason to believe buried."

His reply was uttered with great courtesy.

"Madam," said he, "I have never had a thought from the first moment of

your coming, of any change in the arrangements we then entered into; nor

is the demonstration we have just witnessed a calamity of sufficient

importance to again divide this household. To connect my high-minded son

with a crime for which he had no motive and from which he could reap no

benefit is, if you will pardon my plain speaking at a moment so

critical, even greater folly than to exculpate, after all these years,

the man whom a conscientious jury found guilty. Only a mob could so

indulge itself; individuals will not dare."

She thought of the letter which had been passed up to him in court, and

surveyed him with an astonishment she made no effort to conceal. Never

had she felt at a greater disadvantage with him. Never had she

understood him less. Was this attempt at unconcern, so pitiably

transparent to her, made in an endeavour to probe her mind or to deceive

his own? In her anxiety to determine, she hesitatingly remarked:

"Not the man who writes those anonymous letters?"

"Letters?" Involuntarily his hand flew to one of his inner pockets.

"Yes, you have found them, have you not, lying about the grounds?"

"No." He looked startled. "Explain yourself," said he. "What letters?

Not such as--" Again his hand went to his pocket, but shrunk hastily

back as she pulled out a crumpled bit of paper and began to smooth it

out for his perusal.

"What have you there?" he cried.

"Such a letter as I speak of, Judge Ostrander. I picked it up from the

walk a day or so ago. Perhaps you have come upon the like?"

"No; why should I?"

He had started back, but his eye falling involuntarily upon the words

she had spread out before him, he rapidly read them, and aghast at their

import, glanced from the paper to her face and back again, crying:

"He means Oliver! We have an enemy, Mrs. Scoville, an enemy! Do you

know"--here he leaned forward, and plunged his eye, now burning with

many passions, into hers--"who this enemy is?"

"Yes." Softly as the word came, it seemed to infuriate him. Seizing her

by the arm, he was about to launch against her the whole weight of his

aroused nature, when she said simply: "He is a common bill-poster. I

took pains to find this out. I was as interested as you could be to

discover the author of such an outrage."

"A bill-poster?"

"Yes, Judge Ostrander."

"What is his name?"

"I do not know. I only know that he is resolved upon making you trouble.

It was he who incited this riot. He did it by circulating anonymous

missives and by--forgive me for telling you this--affixing scrawls of

the same ambiguous character on fences and on walls, and even on--on--"

(Here terror tied her tongue, for his hand had closed about her arm in a

forceful grip, and the fire in the eye holding hers was a consuming one)

"the rails--of--of BRIDGES."

"Ah!"

The cry was involuntary, but not so the steady settling of the lips

which followed it and the determined poise of his body as he waited for

her next word.

"Miss Weeks, the little lady opposite, saw the latter and tore it off.

But the mischief had already spread. Oh, strike me! Send me from your

house!"

He gave no token of hearing her.

"Why is this man my enemy?" he asked. "I do not know any such person as

you describe."

"Nor I," she answered more quietly.

"A bill-poster! Well, he has done his worst. I shall think no more about

him." And the burning eye grew mild and the working lip calm again, with

a determination too devoid of sarcasm to be false.

It was a change for which Deborah was in no wise prepared. She showed

her amazement as ingenuously as a child, and he, observing it, remarked

in a different tone from any he had used yet:

"You do not look well. You are still suffering from the distress and

confusion into which this wretched swoon has thrown you. Or can it be

that you are not yet convinced of our wisdom in ignoring this diabolic

attack upon one whose reputation is as dear to us as our own? If that is

so, and I see that it is, let me remind you of a fact which cannot be

new to you if it is to others of happier memories, that no accusation of

this kind, however plausible--and this is not plausible--can hold its

own for a day without evidence to back it. And there is no evidence

against my son in this ancient matter of my friend Etheridge's violent

death, save the one coincidence known to many, that he chanced to be

somewhere in the ravine at that accursed hour. A petty point upon which

to hang this late and elaborate insult of suspicion!" And his voice rang

out in a laugh, but not as it would have rung, or as Deborah thought it

would have rung, had his mind been as free as his words.

When it had quite ceased, Deborah threw off the last remnant of physical

as well as moral weakness, and deliberately rose to her feet. She

believed she understood him now; and she respected the effort he was

making, and would have seconded it gladly had she dared.

But she did not dare. If he were really as ignorant as he appeared of

the extent of the peril threatening Oliver's good name; if he had

cheated himself during these long years into supposing that the secret

which had undermined his own happiness was an unshared one, and that his

own conduct since that hour he had characterised as accursed, had given

no point to the charges they had just heard hurled against his son, then

he ought to be undeceived and that right speedily. Evidence did exist

connecting Oliver with this crime; evidence as sure, nay, yet surer,

than that raised against her husband; and no man's laughter, no, not

even his father's--least of all his father's--could cover up the fact or

avail against the revelations which must follow, now that the scent was

on. Honouring as she did the man before her, understanding both his

misery and the courage he displayed in this superhuman effort to hide

his own convictions, she gathered up all her resources, and with a

resolution no less brave than his, said firmly:

"You are too much respected in this town, Judge Ostrander, for any

collection of people, however thoughtless or vile, to so follow the lead

of a low-down miscreant as to greet you to your face with these damaging

assertions, unless they THOUGHT they had evidence, and good evidence,

too, with which to back these assertions."

It was the hurling of an arrow poisoned at the point; the launching of a

bomb into the very citadel of his security. Had he burst into

outbreak--gripped her again or fiercely shown her the door, she would

not have been astonished. Indeed, she was prepared for some such result,

but it did not come. On the contrary, his answer was almost mild, though

tinged for the first time with a touch of that biting sarcasm for which

he had once been famous.

"If they had not THOUGHT!" he repeated. "If you had said if they had not

KNOWN, then I might indeed have smelt danger. People THINK strange

things. Perhaps YOU think them, too."

"I?" The moment was critical. She saw now that he was sounding her,--had

been sounding her from the first. Should she let everything go and let

him know her mind, or should she continue to conceal it? In either

course lay danger, if not to herself and Reuther, then to himself and

Oliver. She decided for the truth. Subterfuge had had its day. The

menace of the future called for the strongest weapons which lie at the

hand of man. She, therefore, answered:

"Yes; I have been thinking, and this is the result: You must either

explain publicly and quite satisfactorily to the people of this town,

the mystery of your long separation from Oliver and the life you have

since led in this trebly barred house, or accept the opprobrium of such

accusations as we have listened to to-day. There is no middle course,

Judge Ostrander. I who have loved Oliver almost like a son;--who have a

daughter who not only loves him but regards him as a perfect model of

noble manhood, tell you so, though it breaks my heart to do it. I cannot

see you both fall headlong to destruction for lack of understanding the

nearness or the depth of the precipice you are approaching."

"So!"

The ejaculation came after a moment of intense silence--a silence during

which she seemed to discern the sturdiness of years drop slowly away

from him.

"So that is the explanation which people give to my desire for

retirement and a life of contemplation. Well," he slowly added, with the

halting utterance of one to whom each word is an effort, "I can see some

justification for their conclusions now. I have been too self-centred,

and too short-sighted to recognise my own folly. I might have known that

anything out of the common course rouses a curiosity which supplies its

own explanation at any cost to propriety or respect. I have courted my

own doom. I am the victim of my own mistake. But," he continued, with a

flash of his old fire which made him a dignified figure again, "I'm not

going to cringe because I have lost ground in the first skirmish. I come

of fighting blood. Oliver's reputation shall not suffer long, whatever I

may have done in my parental confidence to endanger it. I have not spent

ten years at the bar, and fifteen on the bench for nothing. Let the

people look to it! I will stand by my own."

He had as completely forgotten her as if she had never existed. John

Scoville, his widow, even the child bowed under troubles not unlike his

own, had faded alike from his consciousness. But the generous Deborah

felt no resentment at the determination which would only press her and

hers deeper into contumely. She had seen the father in the man for the

first time, and her whole heart went out in passionate sympathy which

blinded her to everything but her present duty. Alas, that it should be

so hard a one! Alas, that instead of encouraging him, she must point out

the one weakness of his cause which he did not or would not see, that

is, his own conviction of his absent son's guilt as typified by the line

he had deliberately smeared across Oliver's pictured countenance. The

task seemed so difficult, the first steps so blind, that she did not

know how to begin and stood staring at him with interest and dread

struggling for mastery in her heavily labouring breast.

Did he perceive this or was it the silence which drew his attention to

her condition and the evils still threatening him? Whichever it was, the

light vanished from his face as he surveyed her and it was with a return

of his old manner, that he finally observed:

"You are keeping something from me--some fancied discovery--some clew,

as they call it, to what you may consider my dear boy's guilt."

With a deep breath she woke from her trance of indecision and letting

forth the full passion of her nature, she cried out in her anguish:

"I have but one answer for that, Judge Ostrander. Look into your own

heart! Question your own conscience. I have seen what reveals it. I--"

She stopped appalled. Rage, such as she had never even divined spoke

from every feature. He was no longer the wretched but calmly reasoning

man, but a creature hardly human, and when he spoke, it was in a frenzy

which swept everything before it.

"You have SEEN!" he shouted. "You have broken your promise! You have

touched what you were forbidden to touch! You have--"

"Not so," she broke in softly but very firmly. "I have touched nothing

that I was told not to, nor have I broken any promise. I simply saw more

than I was expected to, I suppose, of the picture which fell the day you

first allowed me to enter your study."

"Is that true?"

"It is true."

They were whispering now.

Drawing a deep breath, he gathered up his faculties. "Upon such

accidents," he muttered, "hang the fate and honour of men. And you have

gossiped about this picture," he again vociferated with sudden and

unrestrained violence, "told Reuther--told others--"

"No." The denial was peremptory,--not to be disbelieved. "What I have

learned, I have kept religiously to myself. Alas!" she half moaned, half

cried, "that I should feel the necessity!"

"Madam!"--he was searching her eyes, searching her very soul, as men

seldom search the mind of another. "You believe in the truth of these

calumnies that have just been shouted in our ears. You believe what they

say of Oliver. You with every prejudice in his favour; with every desire

to recognise his worth! You, who have shown yourself ready to drop your

husband's cause though you consider it an honest one, when you saw what

havoc it would entail to my boy's repute. YOU believe--and on what

evidence?" he broke in. "Because of the picture?"

"Yes."

"And the coincidence of his presence in the ravine?"

"Yes."

"But these are puerile reasons." He was speaking peremptorily now and

with all the weight of a master mind. "And you are not the woman to be

satisfied with anything puerile. There is something back of all this;

something you have not imparted. What is that something? Tell--tell--"

"Oliver was a mere boy in those days and a very passionate one. He hated

Etheridge--the obtrusive mentor who came between him and yourself."

"Hated?"

"Yes."

"HATED?"

"Yes, there is proof."

"Of his hate?"

"Yes, judge."

He did not ask where. Possibly he knew. And because he did not ask, she

did not tell him, holding on to her secret in a vague hope that so much

at least might never see light.

"I knew the boy shrank sometimes from Algernon's company," the judge

admitted, after another glance at her face; "but that means nothing in a

boy full of his own affairs. What else have you against him? Speak up! I

can bear it all."

"He handled the stick that--that-"

"Oliver?"

"Yes."

"Never! Now you have gone mad, madam."

"I would be willing to end my days in an asylum if that would disprove

this fact."

"But, madam, what proof--what reason can you have for an assertion so

monstrous?"

"You remember the shadow I saw which was not that of John Scoville? The

person who made that shadow was whittling a stick; that was a trick of

Oliver's. I have heard that he even whittled furniture."

"Good God!" The judge's panoply was pierced at last.

"They tried to prove, as you will remember, that it was John who thus

disfigured the bludgeon he always carried with pride. But the argument

was a sorry one and in itself would have broken down the prosecution had

he been a man of better repute. Now, those few chips taken from the

handle of this weapon will carry a different significance. For in my

folly I asked to see this stick which still exists at Police

Headquarters, and there in the wood I detected and pointed out a trifle

of steel which never came from the unbroken blades of the knife taken

from John's pocket."

Fallen was the proud head now and fallen the great man's aspect. If he

spoke it was to utter a low "Oliver! Oliver!"

The pathos of it--the heart-rending wonder in the tone brought the tears

to Deborah's eyes and made her last words very difficult.

"But the one great thing which gives to these facts their really

dangerous point is the mystery you have made of your life and of this

so-called hermitage. If you can clear up that, you can afford to ignore

the rest."

"The misfortunes of my house!" was his sole response. "The misfortunes

of my house!"

XXIV

ONE SECRET LESS

Suddenly he faced Deborah again. The crisis of feeling had passed, and

he looked almost cold.

"You have had advisers," said he. "Who are they?"

"I have talked with Mr. Black."

The judge's brows met.

"Well, you were wise," said he. Then shortly, "What is his attitude?"

Feeling that her position was fast becoming intolerable she falteringly

replied, "Friendly to you and Oliver but, even without all the reasons

which move me, sharing my convictions."

"He has told you so?"

"Not directly; but there was no misjudging his opinion of the necessity

you were under to explain, the mysteries of your life. AND IT WAS

YESTERDAY WE TALKED; NOT TO-DAY."

Like words thrown into a void, these slow, lingering, half-uttered

phrases seemed to awaken an echo which rung not only in his inmost

being, but in hers. Not till in both natures silence had settled again

(the silence of despair, not peace), did he speak. When he did, it was

simply to breathe her name.

"Deborah?"

Startled, for it had always before been Madam, she looked up to find him

standing very near her and with his hand held out.

"I am going through deep waters," said he. "Am I to have your support?"

"O, Judge Ostrander, how can you doubt it?" she cried, dropping her hand

into his, and her eyes swimming with tears. "But what can I do? If I

remain here I will be questioned. If I fly--but, possibly, that is what

you want;--for me to go--to disappear--to take Reuther and sink out of

all men's sight forever. If this is your wish, I am ready to do it.

Gladly will we be gone--now--at once--this very night if you say so."

His disclaimer was peremptory.

"No; not that. I ask no such sacrifice. Neither would it avail. There is

but one thing which can reinstate Oliver and myself in the confidence

and regard of these people. Cannot you guess it, madam? I mean your own

restored conviction that the sentence passed upon John Scoville was a

just one. Once satisfied of this, your temperament is such that you

would be our advocate whether you wished it or no. Your very silence

would be eloquent."

"Convince me; I am willing to have you, Judge Ostrander. But how can you

do so? A shadow stands between my wishes and the belief you mention. The

shadow cast by Oliver as he made his way towards the bridge, with my

husband's bludgeon in his hand."

"Did you see him strike the blow? Were there any opportune shadows to

betray what happened between the instant of--let us say Oliver's

approach and the fall of my friend? Much can happen in a minute, and

this matter is one of minutes. Granted that the shadow you saw was that

of Oliver, and the stick he carried was the one under which Algernon

succumbed, what is to hinder the following from, having occurred. The

stick which Oliver may have caught up in an absent frame of mind becomes

burdensome; he has broken his knife against a knot in the handle and he

is provoked. Flinging the bludgeon down, he hurries up the embankment

and so on into town. John Scoville, lurking in the bushes, sees his

stick fall and regains it at or near the time Algernon Etheridge steps

into sight at the end of the bridge beyond Dark Hollow. Etheridge

carries a watch greatly desired by the man who finds himself thus armed.

The place is quiet; the impulse to possess himself of this watch is

sudden and irresistible, and the stick falls on Etheridge's head. Is

there anything impossible or even improbable about all this? Scoville

had a heart open to crime, Oliver not. This I knew when I sat upon the

bench at his trial; and now you shall know it too. Come! I have

something to show you."

He turned towards the door and mechanically she followed. Her thoughts

were all in a whirl. She did not know what to make of him or of herself.

The rooted dread of weeks was stirring in its soil. This suggestion of

the transference of the stick from hand to hand was not impossible. Only

Scoville had sworn to her, and that, too, upon their child's head, that

he had not struck this blow. And she had believed him after finding the

cap; AND SHE BELIEVED HIM NOW. Yes, against her will, she believed him

now. Why? and again, why?

They had crossed the hall and he was taking the turn to his room.

"Enter," said he, lifting the curtain.

Involuntarily she recoiled. Not from him, but from the revelation she

felt to be awaiting her in this place of unguessed mystery. Looking back

into the space behind her, she caught a fleeting glimpse of Reuther

hovering on a distant threshold. Leaving the judge, without even a

murmured word of apology, she ran to the child, embraced her, and

promised to join her soon; and then, satisfied with the comfort thus

gained, she returned quickly to where the judge still awaited her, with

his hand on the curtain.

"Forgive me," said she; and meeting with no reply, stood trembling while

he unlocked the door and ushered her in.

A new leaf in the history of this old crime was about to be turned.

* * * * *

Once within the room, he became his courteous self once more. "Be

seated," he begged, indicating a chair in the half gloom. As she took

it, the room sprang into sudden light. He had pulled the string which

regulated the curtains over the glazed panes in the ceiling. Then as

quickly all was gloom again; he had let the string escape from his hand.

"Half light is better," he muttered in vague apology.

It was a weird beginning to an interview whose object was as yet

incomprehensible to her. One minute a blinding glimpse of the room whose

details were so varied that many of them still remained unknown to

her,--the next, everything swept again into shadow through which the

tall form of the genius of the place loomed with melancholy suggestion!

She was relieved when he spoke.

"Mrs. Scoville (not Deborah now) have you any confidence in Oliver's

word?"

She did not reply at once. Too much depended upon a simple yes or no.

Her first instinctive cry would have been YES, but if Oliver had been

guilty and yet held back his dreadful secret all these years, how could

she believe his word, when his whole life had been a lie?

"Has there ever been anything in his conversation as you knew it in

Detroit to make you hesitate to reply?" the judge persisted, as she

continued speechless.

"No; nothing. I had every confidence in his assertions. I should have

yet, if it were not for this horror."

"Forget it for a moment. Recall his effect upon you as a man, a

prospective son-in-law,--for you meant him to marry Reuther."

"I trusted him. I would trust him in many ways yet."

"Would you trust him enough to believe that he would tell you the truth

if you asked him point-blank whether his hands were clean of crime?"

"Yes." The word came in a whisper; but there was no wavering in it. She

had felt the conviction dart like an arrow through her mind that Oliver

might slay a man in his hate,--might even conceal his guilt for

years--but that he could not lie about it when brought face to face with

an accuser like herself.

"Then I will let you read something he wrote at my request these many

years ago: An experience--the tale of one awful night, the horrors of

which, locked within his mind and mine, have never been revealed to a

third person. That you should share our secret now, is not only

necessary but fitting. It becomes the widow of John Scoville to know

what sort of a man she persists in regarding innocent. Wait here for

me."

With a quick step he wound his way among the various encumbering pieces

of furniture, to the door opening into his bedroom. A breathless moment

ensued, during which she heard his key turn in the lock, followed by the

repeating sound of his footsteps, as he wended his way inside to a point

she could only guess at from her knowledge of the room, to be a dresser

in one of the corners. Here he lingered so long that, without any

conscious volition of her own,--almost in spite of her volition which

would have kept her where she was,--she found herself on her feet, then

moving step by step, more cautiously than he, in and out of huddling

chairs and cluttering tables till she came to a stand-still before the

reflection (in some mirror, no doubt) of the judge's tall form, bending

not over the dresser, as she had supposed, but before a cupboard in the

wall--a cupboard she had never seen, in a wall she had never seen, but

now recognised for the one hitherto concealed by the great carpet rug.

He had a roll of paper in his hand, which he bundled together as he

dropped the curtain back into place and then stopped to smooth it out

over the floor with the precision of long habit. All this she saw in the

mirror as though she had been at his back in the other room; but when

she beheld him turn, then panic seized her and she started breathlessly

for the spot where he had left her, glad that there was so little light,

and praying that he might be deaf to her steps, which, gently as they

fell, sounded portentously loud in her own ears.

She had reached her chair, but she had not had time to re-seat herself

when she beheld him approaching with the bundle of loose sheets clutched

in his hand.

"I want you to sit here and read," said he, laying the manuscript down

on a small table near the wall under a gas-jet which he immediately

lighted. "I am going back to my own desk. If you want to speak, you may;

I shall not be working." And she heard his footsteps retreating again in

and out among the furniture till he reached his own chair and sat before

his own table.

This ended all sound in the room excepting the beating of her own heart,

which had become tumultuous.

How could she sit there and read words, with the blood pounding in her

veins and her eyes half blind with terror and excitement? It was only

the necessity of the case which made it possible. She knew that she

would never be released from that spot until she had read what had been

placed before her. Thank God! the manuscript was legible. Oliver's

handwriting possessed the clearness of print. She had begun to read

before she knew it, and having begun, she never paused till she reached

the end.

* * * * *

I was fifteen. It was my birthday and I had my own ideas of how I wanted

to spend it. My hobby was modelling. My father had no sympathy with this

hobby. To him it was a waste of time better spent in study or such

sports as would fit me for study. But he had never absolutely forbidden

me to exercise my talent this way, and when on the day I mention I had a

few hours of freedom, I decided to begin a piece of work of which I had

long dreamed. This was the remodelling in clay of an exquisite statue

which had greatly aroused my admiration.

This statue stood in a forbidden place. It was one of the art treasures

of the great house on the bluff commonly called Spencer's Folly. I had

seen this marble once, when dining there with father, and was so

impressed by its beauty, that it haunted me night and day, standing out

white and wonderful in my imagination, against backgrounds of endless

variation. To copy its lovely lines, to caress with a creative hand

those curves of beauty instinct, as I then felt, with soul, became my

one overmastering desire,--a desire which soon deepened into purpose.

The boy of fifteen would attempt the impossible. I procured my clay and

then awaited my opportunity. It came, as I have said, on my birthday.

There was no one living in the house at this time. Mr. Spencer had gone

West for the winter. The servants had been dismissed, and the place

closed. Only that morning I had heard one of his boon companions say,

"Oh, Jack's done for. He's found a pretty widow in the Sierras, and

there's no knowing now when we'll drink his health again in Spencer's

Folly:" a statement which wakened but one picture in my mind and that

was a long stretch of empty rooms teeming with art treasures amid which

one gem rose supreme--the gem which through his reckless carelessness, I

now proposed to make my own, if loving fingers and the responsive clay

would allow it.

What to every other person in town would have seemed an insuperable

obstacle to this undertaking, was no obstacle to me. _I_ KNEW HOW TO GET

IN. One day in my restless wanderings about a place which had something

of the nature of a shrine to me, I had noticed that one of the windows

(a swinging one) overlooking the ravine, moved as the wind took it.

Either the lock had given way or it had not been properly fastened. If I

could only bring myself to disregard the narrowness of the ledge

separating the house from the precipice beneath, I felt that I could

reach this window and sever the vines sufficiently for my body to press

in; and this I did that night, finding, just as I had expected, that

once a little force was brought to bear upon the sash, it yielded

easily, offering a free passage to the delights within.

In all this I experienced little fear, but once inside, I began to

realise the hazard of my adventure, as hanging at full length from the

casement, I meditated on the drop I must take into what to my dazed eyes

looked like an absolute void. This taxed my courage; but after a moment

of sheer fright, I let myself go--I had to--and immediately found myself

standing upright in a space so narrow I could touch the walls on either

side. It was a closet I had entered, opening, as I soon discovered, into

the huge dining-hall where I had once sat beside my father at the one

formal meal of my life.

I remembered that room; it had made a great impression upon me, and some

light finding its way through the panes of uncurtained glass which

topped each of the three windows overlooking the ravine, I soon was able

to find the door leading into the drawing-room.

I had brought a small lantern in the bag slung to my shoulders, but I

had not hitherto dared to use it on account of the transparency of the

panes I have mentioned; but once in the perfectly dark recesses of the

room beyond, I drew it out, and without the least fear of detection

boldly turned it upon the small alcove where stood the object of my

adoration.

It was another instance of the reckless confidence of youth. I was on

the verge of one of the most appalling adventures which could befall a

man, and yet no premonition disturbed the ecstasy with which I knelt

before the glimmering marble and unrolled my bundle of wet clay.

I was not a complete fool. I only meant to attempt a miniature copy, but

my presumption led me to expect it to be like--yes, like--oh, I never

doubted it!

But when, after a few minutes of rapturous contemplation of the

proportions which have been the despair of all lesser adepts than the

great sculptor who conceived them, I began my work, oh, then I began to

realise a little the nature of the task I had undertaken and to ask

myself whether if I stayed all night I could finish it to my mind. It

was during one of these moments of hesitation that I heard the first

growl of distant thunder. But it made little impression upon me, and I

returned to my work with renewed glow,--renewed hope. I felt so secure

in my shell of darkness, with only the one small beam lighting up my

model and my own fingers busy with the yielding clay.

But the thunder growled again and my head rose, this time in real alarm.

Not because of that far-off struggle of the elements with which I had

nothing to do and hardly sensed, but because of a nearer sound, an

indistinguishable yet strangely perturbing sound, suggesting a step--no,

it was a voice, or if not a voice, some equally sure token of an

approaching presence on the porch in front. Some one going by on the

road two hundred feet away must have caught the gleam of my lantern

through some unperceived crack in the parlour shutters. In another

minute I should hear a shout at the window, or, perhaps, the pounding of

a heavy hand on the front door. I hated the interruption, but otherwise

I was but little disturbed. Whoever it was, he could not by any chance

find his way in. Nevertheless, I discreetly closed the shutter of my

lantern and began groping my way back to my own place of exit. I had

reached the dining-room door, when the blood suddenly stopped in my

veins. Another sound had reached my ear; an unmistakable one this

time--the rattling of a key in its lock. A man--two men were entering by

the great front door. They came in on a swoop of wind which seemed to

carry everything before it. I heard a loud laugh, coarsened by drink,

and the tipsy exclamation of a voice I knew:

"There! shut the door, can't you, before it's blown from its hinges?

You'll find everything jolly here. Wine, lights, solitude in which to

finish our game and a roaring good opportunity to sleep afterwards. No

servants, no porters, not a soul to disturb us. This is my house and

it's a corker. I might be away for a year and"--here there was the

crackling of a match--"I've only to use my night-key to find everything

a man wants right to my hand."

The answer I failed to catch. I was simply paralysed by terror. Should

their way lay through the drawing-room! My clay, my tools were all lying

there, and my unfinished model. Mr. Spencer was not an unkind man, but

he was very drunk, and I had heard that whisky makes a brute of the most

good-natured. He would trample on my work; perhaps he would destroy my

tools and then hunt the house till he found me. I did not know what to

expect; meantime, lights began to flame up; the room where I stood was

no longer a safe refuge, and creeping like a cat, I began to move

towards the closet door. Suddenly I made a dart for it; the two men,

trampling heavily on the marble floor of the hall were coming my way. I

could hear their rude talk--rude to me, though one of them called

himself a gentleman. As the door of the room opened to admit them, I

succeeded in shutting that of the closet into which I had flung

myself,--or almost so. I did not dare to latch it, for they were already

in the room and might hear me.

"This is the spot for us," came in Spencer's most jovial tones. "Big

table, whisky handy, cards right here in my pocket. Wait, till I strike

a light!"

But the lightning anticipated him. As he spoke, the walls which

surrounded me, the walls which surrounded them, leapt into glaring view

and I heard the second voice cry out:

"I don't like that! Let's wait till the storm is over. I can't play with

such candles as those flaring about us."

"Damn it! you won't know what candles you are playing by when once you

see the pile I've got ready for you. I'm in for a big bout. You have ten

dollars and I have a thousand. I'll play you for that ten. If, in the

meantime, you get my thousand, why, it'll be because you're the better

man."

"I don't like it, I say. There, SEE!"

A flood of white light had engulfed the house. My closet, with its

whitewashed walls flared about me like the mouth of a furnace.

"See, yourself!" came the careless retort, and with the words a gas-jet

shot up, then two, then all that the room contained. "How's that? What's

a flash more or less now!"

I heard no answer, only the slap of the cards as they were flung onto

the table; then the clatter of a key as it was turned in some distant

lock and the quick question:

"Rum, or whisky. Irish or Scotch?"

"Whisky and Irish."

"Good! but you'll drink it alone."

The bottles were brought forward and they sat down one on each side of

the dusty mahogany table. The man facing me was Spencer, the other sat

with his back my way, but I could now and then catch a glimpse of his

profile as he started at some flash or lifted his head in terror of the

thunder-claps.

"We'll play till the hands point to three," announced Spencer, taking

out his watch and laying it down where both could see it. "Do you agree

to that?--Unless I win and your funds go a-begging before the hour."

"I agree." The tone was harsh; it was almost smothered. The man was

staring at the watch; there was a strange set look to his figure; a

pausing as of thought--of sinister thought, I should now say; then I

never stopped to characterise it; it was followed too quickly by a loud

laugh and a sudden grab at the cards.

"You'll win! I feel it in my bones," came in encouraging tones from the

rich man. "If you do"--here the storm lulled and his voice sank to an

encouraging whisper--"you can buy the old tavern up the road. It's going

for a song; and then we'll be neighbours and can play--play--"

Thunder!--a terrific peal. It shook the house; it shook my boyish heart,

but it no longer had power to move the two gamesters. The fever of play

had reached its height, and I heard nothing more from their lips, but

such phrases as belong to the game. Why didn't I take advantage of their

absorption to fly? The sill above my head was within easy reach, the

sash was open and no sound that I could make would reach them in this

hurly-burly of storm. Why then, with all this invitation to escape, did

I remain crouched in my dark retreat with eyes fixed on the narrow crack

before me which, under some impulse of movement in the walls about, had

widened sufficiently for me to see all that I have related? I do not

know, unless I was hypnotised by the glare of expression on those men's

faces.

I remember that it was my first glimpse of the human countenance under

the sway of wicked and absorbing passions. Hitherto my dreams had all

been of beauty--of lovely shapes or noble figures cast in heroic mould.

Henceforth, these ideal groups must visit my imagination mixed with the

bulging eyes of greed and the contortions of hate masking their

hideousness under false smiles or hiding them behind the motions of

riotous jollity. I was horrified, I was sickened, and I was frightened

to the very soul, but the fascination of the spectacle held me; I

watched the men and I watched the play and soon I forgot the tempest

also, or remembered it only when my small retreat flared into sudden

whiteness, or some gust, heavier than the rest, toppled the bricks from

the chimneys above us and sent them crashing down upon the rain-soaked

roof.

The stranger was winning. I saw the heap of bills beside him grow and

grow while that of his opponent dwindled. I saw the latter smile--smile

softly at each toss of his losings across the board; but there was no

mirth in his smile, nor was there any common satisfaction in the way the

other's hand closed over his gains.

"He will have it all," I thought. "The Claymore Tavern will soon change

owners;" and I was holding my breath over the final stake when suddenly

the house gave a lurch, resettled, then lurched again. The tempest had

become a hurricane, and with its first swoop a change took place in the

stranger's luck.

The bills which had all gone one way began slowly to recross the board,

first singly, then in handfuls. They fell within Spencer's grasp, and

the smile with which he hailed their return was not the smile with which

he had seen them go, but a steady grin such as I had beheld on the faces

of sculptured demons. It frightened me, this smile. I could see nothing

else; but, when at another crashing peal I ducked my head, I found on

lifting it that my eyes sought instinctively the rigid back of the

stranger instead of the open face of Spencer. The passion of the winner

was nothing to that of the loser; and from this moment on, I saw but the

one figure, and thrilled to the one hope--that an opportunity would soon

come for me to see the face of the man whose back told such a tale of

fury and suspense.

But it remained fixed on Spencer, and the cards. The roof might fall--he

was past heeding. A bill or two only lay now at his elbow, and I could

perceive the further stiffening of his already rigid muscles as he dealt

out the cards. Suddenly hard upon a rattling peal which seemed to unite

heaven and earth, I heard shouted out:

"Half-past two! The game stops at three."

"Damn your greedy eyes!" came back in a growl. Then all was still,

fearfully still, both in the atmosphere outside and in that within,

during which I caught sight of the stranger's hand moving slowly around

to his back and returning as slowly forward, all under cover of the

table-top and a stack of half-empty bottles.

I was inexperienced. I knew nothing of the habits or the ways of such

men as these, but the alarm of innocence in the face of untold,

unsuspected but intuitively felt evil, seized me at this stealthy

movement, and I tried to rise,--tried to shriek,--but could not; for

events rushed upon us quicker than I could speak or move.

"I can buy the Claymore Tavern, can I? Well, I'm going to," rang out

into the air as the speaker leaped to his feet. "Take that, you cheat!

And that! And that!" And the shots rang out--one, two, three!

Spencer was dead in his Folly. I had seen him rise, throw up his hands

and then fall in a heap among the cards and glasses.

Silence! Not even Heaven spoke.

Then the man who stood there alone turned slightly and I saw his face. I

have seen it many times since; I have seen it at Claymore Tavern.

Distorted up to this moment by a thousand emotions,--all evil ones,--it

was calm now with the realisation of his act, and I could make no

mistake as to his identity. Later I will mention his name.

Glancing first at his victim, then at the pistol still smoking in his

hand, he put the weapon back in his pocket, and began gathering up the

money for which he had just damned his soul. To get it all, he had to

move an arm of the body sprawling along the board. But he did not appear

to mind. When every bill was in his pockets, he reached out his hand for

the watch. Then I saw him smile. He smiled as he shut the case, he

smiled as he plunged it in after the bills. There was gloating in this

smile. He seemed to have got what he wanted more than when he fingered

the bills. I was stiff with horror. I was not conscious of noting these

details, but I saw them every one. Small things make an impression when

the mind is numb under the effect of a great blow.

Next moment I woke to a realisation of myself and all the danger of my

own position. He was scanning very carefully the room about him. His

eyes were travelling slowly--very slowly but certainly, in my direction.

I saw them pause--concentrate their glances and fix them straight and

full upon mine. Not that he saw me. The crack through which we were

peering each in our several ways was too narrow for that. But the crack

itself--that was what he saw and the promise it gave of some room

beyond. I was a creature frozen. But when he suddenly turned away

instead of plunging towards me with his still smoking pistol, I had the

instinct to make a leap for the window over my head and clutch madly at

its narrow sill in a wild attempt at escape.

But the effort ended precipitately. Terror had got me by the hair, and

terror made me look back. The crack had widened still further, and what

I now saw through it glued me to the wall and held me there transfixed,

with dangling feet and starting eyeballs.

He was coming towards me--a straining, panting figure--half carrying,

half dragging, the dead man who flopped aside from his arms.

God! what was I to do now! How meet those cold, indifferent eyes filled

only with thoughts of his own safety and see them flare again with

murderous impulse and that impulse directed towards myself! I couldn't

meet them; I couldn't stay; but how fly when not a muscle responded. I

had to stay--hanging from the sill and praying--praying--till my senses

blurred and I knew nothing till on a sudden they cleared again, and I

woke to the blessed realisation that the door had been pushed against my

slender figure, hiding it completely from his sight, and that this door

was now closed again and this time tightly, and I was safe--safe!

The relief sent the perspiration in a reek from every pore; but the icy

revulsion came quickly. As I drew up my knees to get a better purchase

on the sill, heaven's torch was suddenly lit up, the closet became a pit

of dazzling whiteness amid which I saw the blot of that dead body, with

head propped against the wall and eyes--

Remember, I was but fifteen. The legs were hunched up and almost touched

mine. I could feel them--though there was no contact--pushing

me--forcing me from my frail support. Would it lighten again? Would I

have to see--No! any risk first. The window--I no longer thought of it.

It was too remote, too difficult. The door--the door--there was my

way--the only way which would rid me instantly of any proximity to this

hideous object. I flung myself at it--found the knob--turned it and

yelled aloud--My foot had brushed against him. I knew the difference and

it sent me palpitating over the threshold; but no further. Love of life

had returned with my escape from that awful prison-house, and I halted

in the semidarkness into which I had plunged, thanking Heaven for the

thunder peal which had drowned my loud cry.

For I was not yet safe. He was still there. He had turned out all lights

but one, but this was sufficient to show me his tall figure straining up

to put out this last jet.

Another instant and darkness enveloped the whole place. He had not seen

me and was going. I could hear the sound of his feet as he went

stumbling in his zigzag course towards the door. Then every sound both

on his part and on mine was lost in a swoop of down-falling rain and I

remember nothing more till out of the blankness before me, he started

again into view, within the open doorway where in the glare of what he

called heaven's candles he stood, poising himself to meet the gale which

seemed ready to catch him up and whirl him with other inconsequent

things into the void of nothingness. Then darkness settled again and I

was left alone with Murder;--all the innocence of my youth gone, and my

soul a very charnel house.

* * * * *

I had to re-enter that closet; I had to take the only means of escape

proffered. But I went through it as we go through the horrors of

nightmare. My muscles obeyed my volition, but my sensibilities were no

longer active. How I managed to draw myself up to that slippery sill all

reeking now with rain, or save myself from falling to my death in the

whirling blast that carried everything about me into the ravine below, I

do not know.

I simply did it and escaped all--lightning-flash and falling limb, and

the lasso of swirling winds--to find myself at last lying my full length

along the bridge amid a shock of elements such as nature seldom sports

with. Here I clung, for I was breathless, waiting with head buried in my

arm for the rain to abate before I attempted a further escape from the

place which held such horror for me!

But no abatement came, and feeling the bridge shaking under me almost to

cracking, I began to crawl, inch by inch, along its gaping boards till I

reached its middle.

There God stopped me.

For, with a clangour as of rending worlds, a bolt, hot from the zenith,

sped down upon the bluff behind me, throwing me down again upon my face

and engulfing sense and understanding for one wild moment. Then I sprang

upright and with a yell of terror sped across the rocking boards beneath

me to the road, no longer battling with my desire to look back; no

longer asking myself when and how that dead man would be found; no

longer even asking my own duty in the case; for Spencer's Folly was on

fire and the crime I had just seen perpetrated there would soon be a

crime stricken from the sight of men forever.

In the flare of its tremendous burning I found my way up through the

forest road to my home and into my father's presence. He like everybody

else was up that night, and already alarmed at my continued absence.

"Spencer's Folly is on fire," I cried, as he cast dismayed eyes at my

pallid and dripping figure. "If you go to the door, you can see it!"

But I told him nothing more.

Perhaps other boys of my age can understand my silence.

I not only did not tell my father, but I told nobody, even after the

discovery of Spencer's charred body in the closet so miraculously

preserved. With every day that passed, it became harder to part with

this baleful secret. I felt it corroding my thoughts and destroying my

spirits, and yet I kept still. Only my taste for modelling was gone. I

have never touched clay since.

Claymore Tavern did change owners. When I heard that a man by the name

of Scoville had bought it, I went over to see Scoville. He was the man.

Then I began to ask myself what I ought to do with my knowledge, and the

more I asked myself this question, and the more I brooded over the

matter, the less did I feel like taking, not the public, but my father,

into my confidence.

I had never doubted his love for me, but I had always stood in great awe

of his reproof, and I did not know where I was to find courage to tell

him all the details of this adventure.

There is one thing I did do, however. I made certain inquiries here and

there, and soon satisfied myself as to how Scoville had been able to

come into town, commit this horrid deed and escape without any one but

myself being the wiser. Spencer and he had come from the west en route

to New York without any intention of stopping off in Shelby. But once

involved in play, they got so interested that when within a few miles of

the town, Spencer proposed that they should leave the train and finish

the game in his own house. Whether circumstances aided them, or Spencer

took some extraordinary precautions against being recognised, will never

be known. But certain it is that he escaped all observation at the

station and even upon the road. When Scoville returned alone, the storm

had reached such a height that the roads were deserted, and he, being an

entire stranger here at that time, naturally attracted no attention, and

so was able to slip away on the next train with just the drawback of

buying a new ticket. I, a boy of fifteen, trespassing where I did not

belong, was the only living witness of what had happened on this night

of dreadful storm, in the house which was now a ruin.

I realised the unpleasantness of the position in which this put me, but

not its responsibility. Scoville, ignorant that any other breast than

his own held the secret of that hour of fierce temptation and murder,

naturally scented no danger and rejoiced without stint in his new

acquisition. What evil might I not draw down upon myself by disturbing

him in it at this late day. If I were going to do anything, I should

have done it at first--so I reasoned, and let the matter slide. I became

interested in school and study, and the years passed and I had almost

forgotten the occurrence, when suddenly the full remembrance came back

upon me with a rush. A man--my father's friend--was found murdered in

sight of this spot of old-time horror, and Scoville was accused of the

act.

I was older now and saw my fault in all its enormity. I was guilty of

that crime--or so I felt in the first heat of my sorrow and despair. I

may even have said so--in dreams or in some of my self-absorbed

broodings. Though I certainly had not lifted the stick against Mr.

Etheridge, I had left the hand free which did, and this was a sufficient

occasion for remorse--or so I truly felt.

I was so affected by the thought that even my father, with his own

weight of troubles, noticed my care-worn face and asked me for an

explanation. But I held him off until the verdict was reached, and then

I told him. I had not liked his looks for some time; they seemed to

convey some doubt of the justice of this man's sentence, and I felt that

if he had such doubts, they might be eased by this certainty of

Scoville's murderous tendencies and unquestionable greed.

And they were; but as Scoville was already doomed, we decided that it

was unnecessary to make public his past offences. However, with an eye

upon future contingencies, my father exacted from me in writing this

full account of my adventure, which with all the solemnity of an oath I

here declare to be the true story of what befell me in the house called

Spencer's Folly, on the night of awful storm, September Eleventh, 1895.

OLIVER OSTRANDER.

Witnesses to above signature,

ARCHIBALD OSTRANDER,

BELA JEFFERSON.

Shelby........November 7, 1898.

XXV

"WHAT DO YOU THINK OF HIM NOW?"

This was the document and these the words which Deborah, widow of the

man thus doubly denounced, had been given to read by the father of the

writer, in the darkened room which had been and still was to her, an

abode of brooding thought and unfathomable mystery.

No wonder that during its reading more than one exclamation of terror

and dismay escaped her, as the once rehabilitated form of the dead and

gone started into dreadful life again before her eyes. There were so

many reasons for believing this record to be an absolute relation of the

truth.

Incoherent phrases which had fallen from those long-closed lips took on

new meaning with this unveiling of an unknown past. Repugnances for

which she could not account in those old days, she now saw explained. He

would never, even in passing, give a look at the ruin on the bluff, so

attractive to every eye but his own. As for entering its gates--she had

never dared so much as to ask him to do so. He had never expressed his

antipathy for the place, but he had made her feel it. She doubted now if

he would have climbed to it from the ravine even to save his child from

falling over its verge. Indeed, she saw the reason now why he could not

explain the reason for the apathy he showed in his hunt for Reuther on

that fatal day, and his so marked avoidance of the height where she was

found.

Then the watch! Deborah knew well that watch. She had often asked him by

what stroke of luck he had got so fine a timepiece. But he had never

told her. Later, it had been stolen from him; and as he had a mania for

watches, that was why, perhaps--

God! was her mind veering back to her old idea as to his responsibility

for the crime committed in Dark Hollow? Yes; she could not help it.

Denial from a monster like this--a man who with such memories and such

spoil, could return home to wife and child, with some gay and confused

story of a great stroke in speculation which had brought him in the

price of the tavern it had long been his ambition to own--what was

denial from such lips worth, though emphasised by the most sacred of

oaths, and uttered under the shadow of death. The judge was right.

Oliver--whose ingenuous story had restored his image to her mind, with

some of its old graces--had been the victim of circumstances and not

John Scoville. Henceforth, she would see him as such, and when she had

recovered a little from the effect of this sudden insight into the

revolting past, she would--

Her thoughts had reached this stage and her hand, in obedience to the

new mood, was lightly ruffling up the pages before her, when she felt a

light touch on her shoulder and turned with a start.

The judge was at her back. How long he had stood there she did not know,

nor did he say. The muttered exclamations which had escaped her, the

irrepressible cry of despair she had given when she first recognised the

identity of the "stranger" may have reached him where he sat at the

other end of the room, and drawn him insensibly forward till he could

overlook her shoulder as she read, and taste with her the horror of

these revelations which yet were working so beneficent a result for him

and his. It may have been so, and it may have been that he had not made

his move till he saw her attitude change and her head droop

disconsolately at the reading of the last line. She did not ask, as I

have said, nor did he tell her; but when upon feeling his hand upon her

shoulder she turned, he was there; and while his lips failed to speak,

his eyes were eloquent and their question single and imperative.

"What do you think of him now?" they seemed to ask, and rising to her

feet, she met him with a smile, ghastly perhaps with the lividness of

the shadows through which she had been groping, but encouraging withal

and soothing beyond measure to his anxious and harassed soul.

"Oliver is innocent," she declared, turning once more to lay her hand

upon the sheets containing his naive confession. "The dastard who could

shoot his host for plunder is capable of a second crime holding out a

similar inducement. Nothing now will ever make me connect Oliver with

the crime at the bridge. As you said, he was simply near enough the

Hollow to toss into it the stick he had been whittling on his way from

the oak tree. I am his advocate from this minute."

Her eyes were still resting mechanically upon that last page lying

spread out before her, and she did not observe in its full glory the

first gleam of triumphant joy which, in all probability, Judge

Ostrander's countenance had shown in years. Nor did he see, in the glad

confusion of the moment, the quick shudder with which she lifted her

trembling hand away from those papers and looked up, squarely at last,

into his transfigured visage.

"Oh, judge!" she murmured, bursting into a torrent of tears. "How you

must have suffered to feel so great a relief!" Then she was still, very

still, and waited for him to speak.

"I suffered," he presently proceeded to state, "because of the knowledge

which had come to me of the scandal with which circumstances threatened

us. Oliver had confided to me (after the trial, mind, not before) the

unfortunate fact of his having been in possession of the stick during

those few odd minutes preceding the murder. He had also told me how he

had boasted once, and in a big crowd, too, of his intention to do

Etheridge. He had meant nothing by the phrase, beyond what any body

means who mingles boasting with temper, but it was a nasty point of

corroborative evidence; and heart-breaking as it was for me to part with

him, I felt that his future career would be furthered by a fresh start

in another town. You see," he continued, a faint blush dyeing his old

cheek ... old in sorrow not in years ... "I am revealing mysteries of my

past life which I have hitherto kept strictly within my own breast. I

cannot do this without shame, because while in the many serious

conversations we have had on this subject, I have always insisted upon

John Scoville's guilt. I have never allowed myself to admit the least

fact which would in any way compromise Oliver. A cowardly attitude for a

judge you will say, and you are right; but for a father--Mrs. Scoville,

I love my boy. I--What's that?"

The front door-bell was ringing.

In a flash Deborah was out of the room. It was as if she had flown with

unnecessary eagerness to answer a bidding which, after all, Reuther

could easily have attended to. It struck him aghast for the instant,

then he began slowly to gather up the papers before him and carry them

back into the other room. Had he, instead, made straight for the doorway

leading to the front of the house, he would have come upon the figure of

Deborah standing alone and with her face pressed in anguish and

unspeakable despair against the lintel. Something had struck her heart

and darkened her soul since that exalted moment in which she cried:

"Henceforth I will be Oliver's advocate."

When the judge at last came forth, it was at Reuther's bidding.

A gentleman wished to see him in the parlour.

This was so unprecedented,--even of late when the ladies did receive

some callers, that he stopped short after his first instinctive step, to

ask her if the gentleman had given his name.

She said no; but added that he was not alone; that he had a very strange

and not very nice-looking person with him whom mother insisted should

remain in the hall. "Mother requests you to see the gentleman, Judge

Ostrander. She said you would wish to, if you once saw the person

accompanying him."

With a dark glance, not directed against her, however, the judge bade

her run away to the kitchen and as far from all these troubles as she

could, then, locking his door behind him, as he always did, he strode

towards the front.

He found Deborah standing guard over an ill-conditioned fellow whose

slouching figure slouched still more under his eye, but gave no other

acknowledgment of his presence. Passing him without a second look, Judge

Ostrander entered the parlour where he found no less a person than Mr.

Black awaiting him.

There was no bad blood between these two whatever their past relations

or present suspicions, and they were soon shaking hands with every

appearance of mutual cordiality.

The judge was especially courteous.

"I am glad," said he, "of any occasion which brings you again under my

roof, though from the appearance of your companion I judge the present

one to be of no very agreeable character."

"He's honest enough," muttered Black, with a glance towards Deborah, for

the understanding of which the judge held no key. Then, changing the

subject, "You had a very unfortunate experience this afternoon. Allow me

to express my regret at an outbreak so totally unwarranted."

A grumble came from the hall without. Evidently his charge, if we may so

designate the fellow he had brought there, had his own ideas on this

subject.

"Quiet out there!" shouted Mr. Black. "Mrs. Scoville, you need not

trouble yourself to stand over Mr. Flannagan any longer. I'll look after

him."

She bowed and was turning away when the judge intervened.

"Is there any objection," he asked, "to Mrs. Scoville's remaining

present at this interview?"

"None whatever," answered the lawyer.

"Then, Mrs. Scoville, may I request you to come in?"

If she hesitated, it was but natural. Exhaustion is the obvious result

of so many excitements, and that she was utterly exhausted was very

apparent. Mr. Black cast her a commiserating smile, but the judge only

noticed that she entered the room at his bidding and sat down by the

window. He was keying himself up to sustain a fresh excitement. He was

as exhausted as she, possibly more so. He had a greater number of

wearing years to his credit.

"Judge, I'm your friend;" thus Mr. Black began. "Thinking you must wish

to know who started the riotous procedure which disgraced our town

to-day, I have brought the ringleader here to answer for himself--that

is, if you wish to question him."

Judge Ostrander wheeled about, gave the man a searching look, and

failing to recognise him as any one he had ever seen before, beckoned

him in.

"I suppose," said he, when the lounging and insolent figure was fairly

before their eyes, "that this is not the first time you have been asked

to explain your enmity to my long absent son."

"Naw; I've had my talk wherever and whenever I took the notion. Oliver

Ostrander hit me once. I was jest a little chap then and meanin' no harm

to any one. I kept a-pesterin' of 'im and he hit me. He'd a better have

hit a feller who hadn't my memory. I've never forgiven that hit, and I

never will. That's why I'm hittin' him now. It's just my turn; that's

all."

"Your turn! YOUR turn! And what do you think has given YOU an

opportunity to turn on HIM?"

"I'm not in the talkin' mood just now," the fellow drawled, frankly

insolent, not only in his tone but in his bearing to all present. "Nor

can you make it worth my while, you gents. I'll not take money. I'm an

honest hard-workin' man who can earn his own livin', and you can't pay

me to keep still, or to go away from Shelby a day sooner than I want to.

I was goin' away, but I gave it up when they told me that things were

beginnin' to look black against Ol Ostrander;--that a woman had come

into town who was a-stirrin' up things generally about that old murder

for which a feller had already been 'lectrocuted, and knowin' somethin'

myself about that murder and Ol Ostrander, I--well, I stayed."

The quiet threat, the suggested possibility, the attack which wraps

itself in vague uncertainty, are ever the most effective. As his raucous

voice, dry with sinister purpose which no man could shake, died out in

an offensive drawl, Mr. Black edged a step nearer the judge, before he

sprang and caught the young fellow by the coat-collar and gave him a

very vigorous shake.

"See here!" he threatened. "Behave yourself and treat the judge like a

gentleman or--"

"Or what?" the bulldog mouth sneered. "See here yourself," he now

shouted, as the lawyer's hands unloosed and he stood panting; "I'm not

afeard o' you, sir, nor of the jedge, nor of the lady nuther. I KNOWS

somethin', I do; and when I gets ready to tell it, we'll just see whose

coat-collar they'll be handlin'. I came 'cause I wanted to see the

inside o' the house Ol Ostrander's father doesn't think him good enough

to live in. It's grand; but this part here isn't the whole of it.

There's a door somewhere which nobody never opens unless it's the jedge

there. I'd like to see what's behind that 'ere door. If it's somethin'

to make a good story out of, I might be got to keep quiet about this

other thing. I don't know, but I MIGHT."

The swagger with which he said this, the confidence in himself which he

showed and the reliance he so openly put in the something he knew but

could not be induced to tell, acted so strongly upon Mr. Black's nerves,

that he leaped towards him again, evidently with the intention of

dragging him from the house.

But the judge was not ready for this. The judge had gained a new lease

of life in the last half-hour and he felt no fear of this sullen

bill-poster for all his sly innuendoes. He, therefore, hindered the

lawyer from his purpose, by a quick gesture of so much dignity and

resolve that even the lout himself was impressed and dropped some of his

sullen bravado.

"I have something to say to this fellow," he announced, looking anywhere

but at the drooping figure in the window which ought, above all things

in the world, to have engaged his attention. "Perhaps he does not know

his folly. Perhaps he thinks because I was thrown aback to-day by those

public charges against my son and a string of insults for which no

father could be prepared, that I am seriously disturbed over the

position into which such unthinking men as himself have pushed Mr.

Oliver Ostrander. I might be if there were truth in these charges or any

serious reason for connecting my upright and honourable son with the low

crime of a highwayman. BUT THERE IS NOT. I aver it and so will this lady

here whom you have doubtless recognised for the one who has stirred this

matter up. You can bring no evidence to show guilt on my son's

part,"--these words he directed straight at the discomfited poster of

bills--"BECAUSE THERE IS NO EVIDENCE TO BRING."

Mr. Black's eyes sparkled with admiration. He could not have used this

method with the lad, but he recognised the insight of the man who could.

Bribes were a sign of weakness, so were suggested force and

counter-attack; but scorn--a calm ignoring of the power of any one to

seriously shake Oliver Ostrander's established position--that might

rouse wrath and bring avowal; certainly it had shaken the man; he looked

much less aggressive and self-confident than before.

However, though impressed, he was not yet ready to give in. Shuffling

about with his feet but not yet shrinking from an encounter few men of

his stamp would have cared to subject themselves to, he answered with a

remark delivered with a little more civility than any of his previous

ones:

"What you call evidence may not be the same as I calls evidence. If

you're satisfied at thinkin' my word's no good, that's your business. I

know how I should feel if I was Ol Ostrander's father and knew what I

know."

"Let him go," spoke up a wavering voice. It was Deborah's.

But the judge was deaf to the warning. Deborah's voice had but reminded

him of Deborah's presence. Its tone had escaped him. He was too

engrossed in the purpose he had in mind to notice shades of inflection.

But Mr. Black had, and quick as thought he echoed her request:

"He is forgetting himself. Let him go, Judge Ostrander."

But that astute magistrate, wise in all other causes but his own, was no

more ready now than before to do this.

"In a moment," he conceded. "Let me first make sure that this man

understands me. I have said that there exists no evidence against my

son. I did not mean that there may not be supposed evidence. That is

more than probable. No suspicion could have been felt and none of these

outrageous charges made, without that. He was unfortunate enough not

only to have been in the ravine that night but to have picked up

Scoville's stick and carried it towards the bridge, whittling it as he

went. But his connection with the crime ends there. He dropped this

stick before he came to where the wood path joins Factory Road; and

another hand than his raised it against Etheridge. This I aver; and this

the lady here will aver. You have probably already recognised her. If

not, allow me to tell you that she is the lady whose efforts have

brought back this case to the public mind: Mrs. Scoville, the wife of

John Scoville and the one of all others who has the greatest interest in

proving her husband's innocence. If she says, that after the most

careful inquiry and a conscientious reconsideration of this case, she

has found herself forced to come to the conclusion that justice has

already been satisfied in this matter, you will believe her, won't you?"

"I don't know," drawled the man, a low and cunning expression lighting

up his ugly countenance. "She wants to marry her daughter to your son.

Any live dog is better than a dead one; I guess her opinion don't go for

much."

Recoiling before a cynicism that pierced with unerring skill the one

joint in his armour he knew to be vulnerable, the judge took a minute in

which to control his rage and then addressing the half-averted figure in

the window said:

"Mrs. Scoville, will you assure this man that you have no expectations

of marrying your daughter to Oliver Ostrander?"

With a slow movement more suggestive of despair than any she had been

seen to make since the hour of her indecision had first struck, she

shifted in her seat and finally faced them, with the assertion:

"Reuther Scoville will never marry Oliver Ostrander. Whatever my wishes

or willingness in the matter, she herself is so determined. Not because

she does not believe in his integrity, for she does; but because she

will not unite herself to one whose prospects in life are more to her

than her own happiness."

The fellow stared, then laughed:

"She's a goodun," he sneered. "And you believe that bosh?"

Mr. Black could no longer contain himself.

"I believe you to be the biggest rascal in town," he shouted. "Get out,

or I won't answer for myself. Ladies are not to be treated in this

manner."

Did he remember his own rough handling of the sex on the witness stand?

"_I_ didn't ask to see the ladies," protested Flannagan, turning with a

slinking gait towards the door.

If they only had let him go! If the judge in his new self-confidence had

not been so anxious to deepen the effect and make any future repetition

of the situation impossible!

"You understand the lady," he interposed, with the quiet dignity which

was so imposing on the bench. "She has no sympathy with your ideas and

no faith in your conclusions. She believes absolutely in my son's

innocence."

"Do you, ma'am?" The man had turned and was surveying her with the

dogged impudence of his class. "I'd like to hear you say it, if you

don't mind, ma'am. Perhaps, then, I'll believe it."

"I--" she began, trembling so, that she failed to reach her feet,

although she made one spasmodic effort to do so. "I believe--Oh, I feel

ill! It's been too much--I--" her head fell forward and she turned

herself quite away from them all.

"You see she ain't so eager, jedge, as you thought," laughed the

bill-poster, with a clumsy bow he evidently meant to be sarcastic.

"Oh, what have I done!" moaned Deborah, starting up as though she would

fling herself after the retreating figure, now half way down the hall.

She saw in the look of the judge as he forcibly stopped her, and heard

in the lawyer's whisper as he bounded past them both to see the fellow

out: "Useless; nothing will bridle him now"; and finding no support for

her despairing spirit either on earth or, as she thought, in heaven, she

collapsed where she sat and fell unnoticed to the floor, where she lay

prone at the feet of the equally unconscious figure of the judge, fixed

in another attack of his peculiar complaint.

And thus the lawyer found them when he returned from closing the gate

behind Flannagan.

XXVI

THE TELEGRAM

"I CANNOT say anything, I cannot do anything till I have had a few words

with Mrs. Scoville. How soon do you think I can speak to her?"

"Not very soon. Her daughter says she is quite worn out. Would it not be

better to give her a rest for to-night, judge?"

The judge, now quite recovered, but strangely shrunk and wan, showed no

surprise, at this request, odd as it was, on the lips of this honest but

somewhat crabbed lawyer, but answered out of the fulness of his own

heart and from the depths of his preoccupation:

"My necessity is greater than hers. The change I saw in her is

inexplicable. One moment she was all fire and determination, satisfied

of Oliver's innocence and eager to proclaim it. The next--but you were

with us. You witnessed her hesitation--felt its force and what its

effect was upon the damnable scamp who has our honour--the honour of the

Ostranders under his tongue. Something must have produced this change.

What? good friend, what?"

"I don't know any more than you do, judge. But I think you are mistaken

about the previous nature of her feelings. I noticed that she was not at

peace with herself when she came into the room."

"What's that?" The tone was short, and for the first time irritable.

"The change, if there was a change, was not so sudden as you think. She

looked troubled, and as I thought, irresolute when she came into the

room."

"You don't know her; you don't know what passed between us. She was all

right then, but--Go to her, Black. She must have recovered by this time.

Ask her to come here for a minute. I won't detain her. I will wait for

her warning knock right here."

Alanson Black was a harsh man, but he had a soft streak in him--a streak

which had been much developed of late. Where he loved, he could be

extraordinarily kind, and he loved, had loved for years, in his own way

which was not a very demonstrative one, this man whom he was now

striving to serve. But a counter affection was making difficulties for

him just at this minute. Against all probability, many would have said

possibility, Deborah Scoville had roused in this hard nature, a feeling

which he was not yet ready to name even to himself, but which

nevertheless stood very decidedly in his way when the judge made this

demand which meant further distress to her.

But the judge had declared his necessity to be greater than hers, and

after Mr. Black had subjected him to one of his most searching looks he

decided that this was so, and quietly departed upon his errand. The

judge left alone, sat, a brooding figure in his great chair, with no

light in heart or mind to combat the shadows of approaching night

settling heavier and heavier upon the room and upon himself with every

slow passing and intolerable minute.

At last, when the final ray had departed and darkness reigned supreme,

there came a low knock on the door. Then a troubled cry:

"Oh, judge, are you here?"

"I am here."

"Alone and so dark?"

"I am always alone, and it is always dark. Is there any one with you?"

"No, sir. Shall I make a light?"

"No light. Is the door quite shut?"

"No, judge."

"Shut it."

There came the sound of a hand fumbling over the panels, then a quick

snap.

"It is shut," she said.

"Don't come any nearer; it is not necessary." A pause, then the quick

question ringing hollow from the darkness, "Why have your doubts

returned? Why are you no longer the woman you were when not an hour ago

and in this very spot you cried, 'I will be Oliver's advocate!'" Then,

as no answer came,--as minutes passed, and still no answer came, he

spoke again and added: "I know that you are ill and exhausted--broken

between duty and sympathy; but you must answer me, Mrs. Scoville. My

affairs won't wait. I must know the truth and all the truth before this

day is over."

"You shall." Her voice sounded hollow too and oh, how weary! "You

allowed the document you showed me to remain a little too long before my

eyes. That last page--need I say it?"

"Say it."

"Shows--shows changes, Judge Ostrander. Some words have been erased and

new ones written in. They are not many, but--"

"I understand. I do not blame you, Deborah." The words came after a

pause and very softly, almost as softly as her own BUT which had sounded

its low knell of doom through the darkness. "Too many stumbling-blocks

in your way, Deborah, too much to combat. The most trusting heart must

give way under such a strain. That page WAS tampered with. I tampered

with it myself. I am not expert at forgery. I had better have left it,

as he wrote it." Then after another silence, he added, with a certain

vehemence: "We will struggle no longer, either you or I. The boy must

come home. Prepare Reuther, or, if you think best, provide a place for

her where she will be safe from the storm which bids fair to wreck us

here. No, don't speak; just ask Mr. Black to return, will you?"

"Judge--"

"I understand. Mr. Black, Deborah."

Slowly she moved away and began to grope for the door. As her hand fell

on the knob she thought she heard a sob in those impenetrable depths

behind her; but when she listened again, all was still; still as if

merciful death and not weary life gave its significance to the

surrounding gloom.

Shuddering, she turned the knob and paused again for rebuff or command.

Neither came; and, realising that having spoken once the judge would not

speak again, she slipped softly away, and the door swung to after her.

When Mr. Black re-entered the study, it was to find the room lighted and

the judge bent over the table, writing.

"You are going to send for Oliver?" he queried.

The judge hesitated, then motioning Black to sit, said abruptly:

"What is Andrews' attitude in this matter?"

Andrews was Shelby's District Attorney.

Black's answer was like the man.

"I saw him for one minute an hour ago. I think, at present, he is

inclined to be both deaf and dumb, but if he's driven to action, he will

act. And, judge, this man Flannagan isn't going to stop where he is."

"Black, be merciful to my misery. What does this man know? Have you any

idea?"

"No, judge, I haven't. He's as tight as a drum,--and as noisy. It is

possible--just possible that he's as empty. A few days will tell."

"I cannot wait for a few days. I hardly feel as if I could wait a few

hours. Oliver must come, even if--if the consequences are likely to be

fatal. An Ostrander once accused cannot skulk. Oliver has been accused

and--Send that!" he quickly cried, pulling forward the telegram he had

been writing.

Mr. Black took up the telegram and read:

Come at once. Imperative. No delay and no excuse.

ARCHIBALD OSTRANDER.

"Mrs. Scoville will supply the address," continued the poor father. "You

will see that it goes, and that its sending is kept secret. The answer,

if any is sent, had better be directed to your office. What do you say,

Black?"

"I am your friend, right straight through, judge. Your friend."

"And my boy's adviser?"

"You wish that?"

"Very much."

"Then, there's my hand on it, unless he wishes a change when we see

him."

"He will not wish any change."

"I don't know. I'm a surly fellow, judge. I have known you all these

years, yet I've never expressed--never said what I even find it hard to

say now, that--that my esteem is something more than esteem; that--that

I'll do anything for you, judge."

"I--we won't talk of that, Black. Tell Mrs. Scoville to keep me

informed--and bring me any message that may come. The boy, even if he

leaves the first thing in the morning, cannot get here before to-morrow

night."

"Not possibly."

"He will telegraph. I shall hear from him. O God! the hours I must wait;

my boy! my boy!"

It was nature's irrepressible cry. Black pressed his hand and went out

with the telegram.