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Dark Hollow

by Anna Katharine Green · English · Gutenberg #5121 · 520,738 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Dark Hollow

Author: Anna Katharine Green


        
Release date: February 1, 2004 [eBook #5121]
                Most recently updated: June 2, 2012

Language: English

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Credits: Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
        Html version by Chuck Greif


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DARK HOLLOW ***




Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
Html version by Chuck Greif








[Illustration: IMAGE OF THE BOOK'S COVER]

[Illustration: ON THE INSTANT HE RECOGNIZED THAT NO COMMON INTERVIEW LAY
BEFORE HIM (Page 61)]




DARK HOLLOW

By ANNA KATHARINE GREEN

Author of "The House of the Whispering Pines," "Initials Only," "That
Affair Next Door," Etc.

With Four Illustrations By THOMAS FOGARTY

[Illustration: COLOPHON]

NEW YORK DODD, MEAD & COMPANY

1914



    CONTENTS

    BOOK I

    THE WOMAN IN PURPLE

    I     WHERE IS BELA?
    II    WAS HE LIVING--WAS HE DEAD?
    III   BELA THE REDOUBTABLE
    IV   "AND WHERE WAS I WHEN ALL THIS HAPPENED?"
    V    "SHE WORE PURPLE"
    VI    ACROSS THE BRIDGE
    VII   WITH HER VEIL DOWN
    VIII  WITH HER VEIL LIFTED
    IX    EXCERPTS
    X     THE SHADOW
    XI   "I WILL THINK ABOUT IT"
    XII   SOUNDS IN THE NIGHT

    BOOK II

    THE HOUSE AND THE ROOM

    XIII  A BIT OF STEEL
    XIV   ALL IS CLEAR
    XV    THE PICTURE
    XVI  "DON'T! DON'T!"
    XVII  UNWELCOME TRUTHS
    XVIII REFLECTIONS
    XIX   ALANSON BLACK
    XX    WHAT HAD MADE THE CHANGE?
    XXI   IN THE COURT ROOM
    XXII  BEFORE THE GATES
    XXIII THE MISFORTUNES OF MY HOUSE
    XXIV  ONE SECRET LESS
    XXV  "WHAT DO YOU THINK OF HIM NOW?"
    XXVI  THE TELEGRAM

    BOOK III

    THE DOOR OF MYSTERY

    XXVII  HE MUST BE FOUND
    XXVIII THE FIRST EFFORT
    XXIX  "THERE IS BUT ONE THING TO DO"
    XXX    TEMPEST LODGE
    XXXI   ESCAPE
    XXXII  THE VIGIL
    XXXIII THE CURTAIN LIFTED
    XXXIV  DARK HOLLOW
    XXXV   SUNSET




ILLUSTRATIONS

On the instant he recognised that no common interview lay before him

After one look he assumed some show of his old commanding presence and
advanced bravely down the steps

Silence! Not even Heaven spoke

"Tell me what this means," said he, but he did not turn his head as he
made this request




BOOK I

THE WOMAN IN PURPLE




I

WHERE IS BELA?


A high and narrow gate of carefully joined boards, standing ajar in a
fence of the same construction! What is there in this to rouse a whole
neighbourhood and collect before it a group of eager, anxious,
hesitating people?

I will tell you.

This fence is no ordinary fence, and this gate no ordinary gate; nor is
the fact of the latter standing a trifle open, one to be lightly
regarded or taken an inconsiderate advantage of. For this is Judge
Ostrander's place, and any one who knows Shelby or the gossip of its
suburbs, knows that this house of his has not opened its doors to any
outsider, man or woman, for over a dozen years; nor have his gates--in
saying which, I include the great one in front--been seen in all that
time to gape at any one's instance or to stand unclosed to public
intrusion, no, not for a moment. The seclusion sought was absolute. The
men and women who passed and repassed this corner many times a day were
as ignorant as the townspeople in general of what lay behind the grey,
monotonous exterior of the weather-beaten boards they so frequently
brushed against. The house was there, of course,--they all knew the
house, or did once--but there were rumours (no one ever knew how they
originated) of another fence, a second barrier, standing a few feet
inside the first and similar to it in all respects, even to the gates
which corresponded exactly with these outer and visible ones and
probably were just as fully provided with bolts and bars.

To be sure, these were reports rather than acknowledged facts, but the
possibility of their truth roused endless wonder and gave to the
eccentricities of this well-known man a mysterious significance which
lost little or nothing in the slow passage of years.

And now! in the freshness of this summer morning, without warning or any
seeming reason for the change, the strict habit of years has been broken
into and this gate of gates is not only standing unlocked before their
eyes, but a woman--a stranger to the town as her very act shows--has
been seen to enter there!--to enter, but not come out; which means that
she must still be inside, and possibly in the very presence of the
judge.

Where is Bela? Why does he allow his errands--But it was Bela, or so
they have been told, who left this gate ajar ... he, the awe and terror
of the town, the enormous, redoubtable, close-mouthed negro, trusted as
man is seldom trusted, and faithful to his trust, yes, up to this very
hour, as all must acknowledge, in spite of every temptation (and they
had been many and alluring) to disclose the secret of this home of which
he was not the least interesting factor. What has made him thus suddenly
careless, he who has never been careless before? Money? A bribe from the
woman who had entered there?

Impossible to believe, his virtue has always been so impeccable, his
devotion to his strange and dominating master so sturdy and so seemingly
unaffected by time and chance!

Yet, what else was there to believe? There stood the gate with the
pebble holding it away from the post; and here stood half the
neighbourhood, staring at that pebble and at the all but invisible crack
it made where an opening had never been seen before, in a fascination
which had for its motif, not so much the knowledge that these forbidden
precincts had been invaded by a stranger, as that they were open to any
intruding foot--that they, themselves, if they had courage enough, might
go in, just as this woman had gone in, and see--why, what she is seeing
now--the unknown, unguessed reason for all these mysteries;--the hidden
treasure or the hidden sorrow which would explain why he, their first
citizen, the respected, even revered judge of their highest court,
should make use of such precautions and show such unvarying
determination to bar out all comers from the place he called his home.

It had not always been so. Within the memory of many there it had been
an abode of cheer and good fellowship. Not a few of the men and women
now hesitating before its portals could boast of meals taken at the
judge's ample board, and of evenings spent in animated conversation in
the great room where he kept his books and did his writing.

But that was before his son left him in so unaccountable a manner;
before--yes, all were agreed on this point--before that other bitter
ordeal of his middle age, the trial and condemnation of the man who had
waylaid and murdered his best friend.

Though the effect of these combined sorrows had not seemed to be
immediate (one month had seen both); though a half-year had elapsed
before all sociability was lost in extreme self-absorption, and a full
one before he took down the picket-fence which had hitherto been
considered a sufficient protection to his simple grounds, and put up
these boards which had so completely isolated him from the rest of the
world, it was evident enough to the friends who recalled his look and
step as he walked the streets with Algernon Etheridge on one side and
his brilliant, ever-successful son on the other, that the change now
observable in him was due to the violent sundering of these two ties.
Affections so centred wreck the lives from which they are torn; and
Time, which reconciles most men to their losses, had failed to reconcile
him to his. Grief slowly settled into confirmed melancholy, and
melancholy into the eccentricities of which I have spoken and upon which
I must now enlarge a trifle further, in order that the curiosity and
subsequent action of the small group of people in whom we are interested
may be fully understood and, possibly, in some degree pardoned.

Judge Ostrander was, as I have certainly made you see, a recluse of the
most uncompromising type; but he was such for only half his time. From
ten in the morning till five in the afternoon, he came and went like any
other citizen, fulfilling his judicial duties with the same scrupulous
care as formerly and with more affability. Indeed, he showed at times,
and often when it was least expected, a mellowness of temper quite
foreign to him in his early days. The admiration awakened by his fine
appearance on the bench was never marred now by those quick and rasping
tones of an easily disturbed temper which had given edge to his
invective when he stood as pleader in the very court where he now
presided as judge. But away from the bench, once quit of the courthouse
and the town, the man who attempted to accost him on his way to his
carriage or sought to waylay him at his own gate, had need of all his
courage to sustain the rebuff his presumption incurred.

One more detail and I will proceed with my story.

The son, a man of great ability who was making his way as a journalist
in another city, had no explanation to give of his father's
peculiarities. Though he never came to Shelby--the rupture between the
two, if rupture it were, seeming to be complete--there were many who had
visited him in his own place of business and put such questions
concerning the judge and his eccentric manner of living as must have
provoked response had the young man had any response to give. But he
appeared to have none. Either he was as ignorant as themselves of the
causes which had led to his father's habit of extreme isolation, or he
showed powers of dissimulation hardly in accordance with the other
traits of his admirable character.

All of which closed inquiry in this direction, but left the maw of
curiosity unsatisfied.

And unsatisfied it had remained up to this hour, when through
accident--or was it treachery--the barrier to knowledge was down and the
question of years seemed at last upon the point of being answered.




II

WAS HE LIVING?--WAS HE DEAD?


Meantime, a fussy, talkative man was endeavouring to impress the rapidly
collecting crowd with the advisability of their entering all together
and approaching the judge in a body.

"We can say that we felt it to be our dooty to follow this woman in," he
argued. "We don't know who she is, or what her errand is. She may mean
harm; I've heard of such things, and are we goin' to see the judge in
danger and do nothin'?"

"Oh, the woman's all right," spoke up another voice. "She has a child
with her. Didn't you say she had a child with her, Miss Weeks?"

"Yes, and--"

"Tell us the whole story, Miss Weeks. Some of us haven't heard it. Then
if it seems our duty as his neighbours and well-wishers to go in, we'll
just go in."

The little woman towards whom this appeal--or shall I say command--was
directed, flushed a fine colour under so many eyes, but immediately
began her ingenuous tale. She had already related it a half dozen times
into as many sympathising ears, but she was not one to shirk publicity,
for all her retiring manners and meekness of disposition.

It was to this effect:

She was sitting in her front window sewing. (Everybody knew that this
window faced the end of the lane in which they were then standing.) The
blinds were drawn but not quite, being held in just the desired position
by a string. Naturally, she could see out without being very plainly
seen herself; and quite naturally, too, since she had watched the same
proceeding for years, she had her eyes on this gate when Bela, prompt to
the minute as he always was, issued forth on his morning walk to town
for the day's supplies.

Always exact, always in a hurry--knowing as he did that the judge would
not leave for court till his return--he had never, in all the eight
years she had been sitting in that window making button-holes, shown any
hesitation in his methodical relocking of the gate and subsequent quick
departure.

But this morning he had neither borne himself with his usual spirit nor
moved with his usual promptitude. Instead of stepping at once into the
lane, he had lingered in the gateway peering to right and left and
pushing the gravel aside with his foot in a way so unlike himself that
the moment he was out of sight, she could not help running down the lane
to see if her suspicions were correct.

And they were. Not only had he left the gate unlocked, but he had done
so purposely. The movement he had made with his foot had been done for
the purpose of pushing into place a small pebble, which, as all could
see, lay where it would best prevent the gate from closing.

What could such treachery mean, and what was her neighbourly duty under
circumstances so unparalleled? Should she go away, or stop and take one
peep just to see that there really was another and similar fence inside
of this one? She had about decided that it was only proper for her to
enter and make sure that all was right with the judge, when she
experienced that peculiar sense of being watched with which all of us
are familiar, and turning quickly round, saw a woman looking at her from
the road,--a woman all in purple even to the veil which hid her
features. A little child was with her, and the two must have stepped
into the road from behind some of the bushes, as neither of them were
anywhere in sight when she herself came running down from the corner.

It was enough to startle any one, especially as the woman did not speak
but just stood silent and watchful till Miss Weeks in her embarrassment
began to edge away towards home in the hope that the other would follow
her example and so leave the place free for her to return and take the
little peep she had promised herself.

But before she had gone far, she realised that the other was not
following her, but was still standing in the same spot, watching her
through a veil the like of which is not to be found in Shelby, and which
in itself was enough to rouse a decent woman's suspicions.

She was so amazed at this that she stepped back and attempted to address
the stranger. But before she had got much further than a timid and
hesitating Madam, the woman, roused into action possibly by her
interference, made a quick gesture suggestive of impatience if not
rebuke, and moving resolutely towards the gate Miss Weeks had so
indiscreetly left unguarded, pushed it open and disappeared within,
dragging the little child after her.

The audacity of this act, perpetrated without apology before Miss Weeks'
very eyes, was too much for that lady's equanimity. She stopped
stock-still, and, as she did so, beheld the gate swing heavily to and
stop an inch from the post, hindered as we know by the intervening
pebble. She had scarcely got over the shock of this when plainly from
the space beyond she heard a second creaking noise, then the swinging to
of another gate, followed, after a breathless moment of intense
listening, by a series of more distant sounds, which could only be
explained by the supposition that the house door had been reached,
opened and passed.

"And you didn't follow?"

"I didn't dare."

"And she's in there still?"

"I haven't seen her come out."

"Then what's the matter with you?" called out a burly, high-strung
woman, stepping hastily from the group and laying her hand upon the gate
still standing temptingly ajar. "It's no time for nonsense," she
announced, as she pushed it open and stepped promptly in, followed by
the motley group of men and women who, if they lacked courage to lead,
certainly showed willingness enough to follow.

One glance and they felt their courage rewarded.

Rumour, which so often deceives, proved itself correct in this case. A
second gate confronted them exactly like the first even to the point of
being held open by a pebble placed against the post. And a second fence
also! built upon the same pattern as the one they had just passed
through; the two forming a double barrier as mysterious to contemplate
in fact as it had ever been in fancy. In gazing at these fences and the
canyon-like walk stretching between them, the band of curious invaders
forgot their prime errand. Many were for entering this path whose
terminus they could not see for the sharp turns it took in rounding
either corner. Among them was a couple of girls who had but one thought,
as was evinced by their hurried whispers. "If it looks like this in the
daytime, what must it be at night!" To which came the quick retort:
"I've heard that the judge walks here. Imagine it under the moon!"

But whatever the mysteries of the place, a greater one awaited them
beyond, and presently realising this, they burst with one accord through
the second gate into the mass of greenery, which, either from neglect or
intention, masked this side of the Ostrander homestead.

Never before had they beheld so lawless a growth or a house so
completely lost amid vines and shrubbery. So unchecked had been the
spread of verdure from base to chimney, that the impression made by the
indistinguishable mass was one of studied secrecy and concealment. Not a
window remained in view, and had it not been for some chance glimmers
here and there where some small, unguarded portion of the enshrouded
panes caught and reflected the sunbeams, they could not have told where
they were located in these once well-known walls.

Two solemn fir trees, which were all that remained of an old-time and
famous group, kept guard over the untended lawn, adding their suggestion
of age and brooding melancholy to the air of desolation infecting the
whole place. One might be approaching a tomb for all token that appeared
of human presence. Even sound was lacking. It was like a painted
scene--a dream of human extinction.

Instinctively the women faltered and the men drew back; then the very
silence caused a sudden reaction, and with one simultaneous rush, they
made for the only entrance they saw and burst without further ceremony
into the house.

A common hall and common furnishings confronted them. They had entered
at the side and were evidently close upon the kitchen. More they could
not gather; for blocked as the doorway was by their crowding figures,
the little light which sifted in over their heads was not enough to show
up details.

But it was even darker in the room towards which their determined leader
now piloted them. Here there was no light at all; or if some stray
glimmer forced its way through the network of leaves swathing the outer
walls, it was of too faint a character to reach the corners or even to
make the furniture about them distinguishable.

Halting with one accord in what seemed to be the middle of the
uncarpeted floor, they waited for some indication of a clear passageway
to the great room where the judge would undoubtedly be found in
conversation with his strange guest, unless, forewarned by their noisy
entrance, he should have risen already to meet them. In that case they
might expect at any minute to see his tall form emerging in anger upon
them through some door at present unseen.

This possibility, new to some but recognised from the first by others,
fluttered the breasts of such as were not quite impervious to a sense of
their own presumption, and as they stood in a close group, swaying from
side to side in a vain endeavour to see their way through the gloom
before them, the whimper of a child and the muttered ejaculations of the
men testified that the general feeling was one of discontent which might
very easily end in an outburst of vociferous expression.

But the demon of curiosity holds fast and as soon as their eyes had
become sufficiently used to the darkness to notice the faint line of
light marking the sill of a door directly in front of them, they all
plunged forward in spite of the fear I have mentioned.

The woman of the harsh voice and self-satisfied demeanour, who had
started them upon this adventure, was still ahead; but even she quailed
when, upon laying her hand upon the panel of the door she was the first
to reach, she felt it to be cold and knew it to be made not of wood but
of iron. How great must be the treasure or terrible the secret to make
necessary such extraordinary precautions! Was it for her to push open
this door, and so come upon discoveries which--

But here her doubts were cut short by finding herself face to face with
a heavy curtain instead of a yielding door. The pressure of the crowd
behind had precipitated her past the latter into a small vestibule which
acted as an ante-chamber to the very room they were in search of.

The shock restored her self-possession. Bracing herself, she held her
place for a moment, while she looked back, with a finger laid on her
lip. The light was much better here and they could all see both the move
she made and the expression which accompanied it.

"Look at this!" she whispered, pushing the curtain inward with a quick
movement.

Her hand had encountered no resistance. There was nothing between them
and the room beyond but a bit of drapery.

"Now hark, all of you," fell almost soundlessly from her lips, as she
laid her own ear against the curtain.

And they hearkened.

Not a murmur came from within, not so much as the faintest rustle of
clothing or the flutter of a withheld breath. All was perfectly
still--too still. As the full force of this fact impressed itself upon
them, a blankness settled over their features. The significance of this
undisturbed quiet was making itself felt. If the two were there, or if
he were there alone, they would certainly hear some movement, voluntary
or involuntary--and they could hear nothing. Was the woman gone? Had she
found her way out front while they approached from the rear? And the
judge! Was he gone also?--this man of inalterable habits--gone before
Bela's return--a thing he had not been known to do in the last twelve
years? No, no, this could not be. Yet even this supposition was not so
incredible as that he should still be here and SILENT. Men like him do
not hold their peace under a provocation so great as the intrusion of a
mob of strangers into a spot where he never anticipated seeing anybody,
nor had seen anybody but his man Bela for years. Soon they would hear
his voice. It was not in nature for him to be as quiet as this in face
of such audacity.

Yet who could count upon the actions of an Ostrander, or reckon with the
imperious whims of a man mysterious beyond all precedent?--He may be
there but silent, or--

A single glance would settle all.

The woman drew the curtain.

Sunshine! A stream of it, dazzling them almost to blindness and sending
them, one and all, pellmell back upon each other! However dismal the
approach, here all was in brilliant light with every evidence before
them of busy life.

The room was not only filled, but crammed, with furniture. This was the
first thing they noticed; then, as their blinking eyes became accustomed
to the glare and to the unexpected confusion of tables and chairs and
screens and standing receptacles for books and pamphlets and boxes
labelled and padlocked, they beheld something else; something, which
once seen, held the eye from further wandering and made the
apprehensions from which they had suffered sink into insignificance
before a real and only too present terror.

The judge was there! but in what a condition.

From the end of the forty foot room, his seated figure confronted them,
silent, staring and unmoving. With clenched fingers gripping the arms of
his great chair, and head held forward, he looked like one frozen at the
moment of doom, such the expression of features usually so noble, and
now almost unrecognisable were it not for the snow of his locks and his
unmistakable brow.

Frozen! Not an eyelash quivered, nor was there any perceptible movement
in his sturdy chest. His eyes were on their eyes, but he saw no one; and
down upon his head and over his whole form the sunshine poured from a
large window let into the ceiling directly above him, lighting up the
strained and unnatural aspect of his remarkable countenance and bringing
into sharp prominence the commonplace objects cluttering the table at
his elbow; such as his hat and gloves, and the bundle of papers he had
doubtless made ready for court.

Was he living? Was he dead?--stricken by the sight of so many faces in a
doorway considered sacred from all intrusion? No! the emotion capable of
thus transforming the features of so strong a man must have a deeper
source than that. The woman was to blame for this--the audacious, the
unknown, the mysteriously clad woman. Let her be found. Let her be made
to explain herself and the condition into which she had thrown this good
man.

Indignation burst into words, and pity was beginning to voice itself in
inarticulate murmurs which swelled and ebbed, now louder, now more
faintly as the crowd surged forward or drew back, appalled by that
moveless, breathless, awe-compelling figure. Indignation and pity were
at their height when the strain which held them all in one common leash
was loosed by the movement of a little child.

Attracted possibly by what it did not understand, or simply made
fearless because of its non-comprehension of the mystery before him, a
curly-haired boy suddenly escaped its mother's clutch, and, toddling up
by a pathway of his own to the awesome form in the great chair, laid his
little hand on the judge's rigid arm and, looking up into his face,
babbled out:

"Why don't you get up, man? I like oo better up."

A breathless moment; then the horrified murmur rose here, there and
everywhere: "He's dead! He's dead!" and the mother, with a rush, caught
the child back, and confusion began its reign, when quietly and
convincingly a bluff and masculine voice spoke from the doorway behind
them and they heard:

"You needn't be frightened. In an hour or a half-hour he will be the
same as ever. My aunt has such attacks. They call it catalepsy."




III

BELA THE REDOUBTABLE


CATALEPSY!

A dread word to the ignorant.

Imperceptibly the crowd dwindled; the most discreet among them quite
content to leave the house; others, with their curiosity inflamed anew,
to poke about and peer into corners and curtained recesses while the
opportunity remained theirs and the man of whom they stood in fear sat
lapsed in helpless unconsciousness. A few, and these the most
thoughtful, devoted all their energies to a serious quest for the woman
and child whom they continued to believe to be in hiding somewhere
inside the walls she had so audaciously entered.

Among these was Miss Weeks whose importance none felt more than herself,
and it was at her insistence and under her advice (for she only, of all
who remained, had ever had a previous acquaintance with the house) that
the small party decided to start their search by a hasty inspection of
the front hall. As this could not be reached from the room where its
owner's motionless figure sat at its grim watch, they were sidling
hastily out, with eyes still turned back in awful fascination upon those
other eyes which seemed to follow all their movements and yet gave no
token of life, when a shout and scramble in the passages beyond cut
short their intent and held them panting and eager, each to his place.

"They've seen her! They've found her!" ran in quick, whispered
suggestion from lip to lip, and some were for rushing to see.

But Miss Weeks' trim and precise figure blocked the doorway, and she did
not move.

"Hark!" she murmured in quick admonishment; "what is that other sound?
Something is happening--something dreadful. What is it? It does not seem
to be near here yet, but it is coming--coming."

Frightened in spite of themselves, both by her manner and tone, they
drew their gaze from the rigid figure in the chair, and, with bated
breaths and rapidly paling cheeks, listened to the distant murmur on the
far-off road, plainly to be heard pulsing through the nearer sounds of
rushing feet and chattering voices in the rooms about.

What was it? They could not guess, and it was with unbounded relief they
pressed forward to greet the shadowy form of a young girl hurrying
towards them from the rear, with news in her face. She spoke quickly and
before Miss Weeks could frame her question.

"The woman is gone. Harry Doane saw her sliding out behind us just after
we came in. She was hiding in some of the corners here, and slipped out
by the kitchen-way when we were not looking. He has gone to see--"

But interesting as this was, the wonder of the now rapidly increasing
hubbub was more so. A mob was at the gates! Men, women and children
shouting, panting and making loud calls.

Breathlessly Miss Weeks cut the girl's story short; breathlessly she
rushed to the nearest window, and, helped by willing hands, succeeded in
forcing it up and tearing a hole in the vines, through which they one
and all looked out in eager excitement.

A motley throng of people were crowding in through the double gateway.
Some one was in their grasp. Was it the woman? No; it was Bela! Bela,
the giant! Bela, the terror of the town, but no longer a terror now but
a struggling, half-fainting figure, fighting to free itself and get in
advance, despite some awful hurt which blanched his coal-black features
into an indescribable hue and made his great limbs falter and his
gasping mouth writhe in anguish while still keeping his own and making
his way, by sheer force of will, up the path and the two steps of
entrance--his body alternately sinking back or plunging forward as those
in the rear or those in front got the upper hand.

It was an awful and a terrifying sight to little Miss Weeks and,
screaming loudly, she left her window and ran, scattering her small
party before her like sheep, not into the near refuge of the front hall
and its quiet parlours, but into the very spot towards which this mob
seemed headed--the great library pulsing with its own terror, in the
shape of the yet speechless and unconscious man to whom the loudest
noise and the most utter silence were yet as one, and the worst struggle
of human passion a blank lost in unmeaning chaos.

Why this instinctive move? She could not tell. Impulse prevailed, and
without a thought she flew into Judge Ostrander's presence, and, gazing
wildly about, wormed her way towards a heavily carved screen guarding a
distant corner, and cowered down behind it.

What awaited her?

What awaited the judge?

As the little woman shook with terror in her secret hiding-place she
felt that she had played him false; that she had no right to save
herself by the violation of a privacy she should have held in awe. She
was paying for her temerity now, paying for it with every terrible
moment that her suspense endured. The gasping, struggling men, the
frantic negro, were in the next room now--she could catch the sound of
the latter's panting breath rising above the clamour of strange
entreaties and excited cries with which the air was full; then a quick,
hoarse shout of "Judge! Judge!" rose in the doorway, and she became
conscious of the presence of a headlong, rushing force struck midway
into silence as the frozen figure of his master flashed upon the negro's
eyes;--then,--a growl of concentrated emotion, uttered almost in her
ear, and the screen which had been her refuge was violently thrust away
from before her, and in its place she beheld a terrible being standing
over her, in whose eyes, dilating under this fresh surprise, she beheld
her doom, even while recognising that if she must suffer it would be
simply as an obstacle to some goal at her back which he must
reach--now--before he fell in his blood and died.

What was this goal? As she felt herself lifted, nay, almost hurled
aside, she turned to see and found it to be a door before which the
devoted Bela had now thrown himself, guarding it with every inch of his
powerful but rapidly sinking body, and chattering defiance with his
bloodless, quivering lips--a figure terrible in anger, sublime in
purpose, and piteous in its failing energies.

"Back! all of you!" he cried, and stopped, clutching at the door-casing
on either side to hold himself erect. "You cannot come in here. This is
the judge's--"

Not even his iron resolve or once unequalled physique could stand the
sapping of the terrible gash which disfigured his forehead. He had been
run over by an automobile in a moment of blind abstraction, and his hurt
was mortal. But though his tongue refused to finish, his eye still
possessed its power to awe and restrain. Though the crowd had followed
him almost into the centre of the room, they felt themselves held back
by the spirit of this man, who as long as he lived and breathed would
hold himself a determined barrier between them and what he had been set
to guard.

As long as he lived and breathed. Alas! that would be but a little while
now. Already his head, held erect by the passion of his purpose, was
sinking on his breast; already his glazing eye was losing its power of
concentration, when with a final rally of his decaying strength, he
started erect again and cried out in terrible appeal:

"I have disobeyed the judge, and, as you see, it has killed him. Do not
make me guilty of giving away his secret. Swear that you will leave this
door unpassed; swear that no one but his son shall ever turn this lock;
or I will haunt you, I, Bela, man by man, till you sink in terror to
your graves. Swear! sw--"

The last adjuration ended in a moan. His head fell forward again and in
that intense moment of complete silence they could hear the splash of
his life-blood as it dropped from his forehead on to the polished boards
beneath; then he threw up his arms and fell in a heap to the floor.

They had not been driven to answer. Wherever that great soul had gone,
his ears were no longer open to mortal promise, nor would any oath from
the lip of man avail to smooth his way into the shadowy unknown.

"Dead!" broke from little Miss Weeks as she flung herself down in
reckless abandonment at his side. She had never known an agitation
beyond some fluttering woman's hope she had stifled as soon as born, and
now she knelt in blood. "Dead!" she again repeated. And there was no one
this time to cry: "You need not be frightened; in a few minutes he will
be himself again." The master might reawaken to life, but never more the
man.

A solemn hush, then a mighty sigh of accumulated emotion swept from lip
to lip, and the crowd of later invaders, already abashed if not
terrified by the unexpected spectacle of suspended animation which
confronted them from the judge's chair, shrank tumultuously back as
little Miss Weeks advanced upon them, holding out her meagre arms in
late defence of the secret to save which she had just seen a man die.

"Let us do as he wished," she prayed. "I feel myself much to blame. What
right had we to come in here?"

"The fellow was hurt. We were just bringing him home," spoke up a voice,
rough with the surprise of unaccustomed feeling. "If he had let us carry
him, he might have been alive this minute; but he would run and struggle
to keep us back. He says he killed his master. If so, his death is a
retribution. Don't you say so, fellows? The judge was a good man---"

"Hush! hush! the judge is all right," admonished one of the party;
"he'll be waking up soon"; and then, as every eye flew in fresh wonder
towards the chair and its impassive occupant, the low whisper was
heard,--no one ever could tell from whose lips it fell: "If we are ever
to know this wonderful secret, now is the time, before he wakes and
turns us out of the house."

No one in authority was present; no one representing the law, not even a
doctor; only haphazard persons from the street and a few neighbours who
had not been on social terms with the judge for years and never expected
to be so again. His secret!--always a source of wonder to every
inhabitant of Shelby, but lifted now into a matter of vital importance
by the events of the day and the tragic death of the negro! Were they to
miss its solution, when only a door lay between it and them--a door
which they might not even have to unlock? If the judge should rouse,--if
from a source of superstitious terror he became an active one, how pat
their excuse might be. They were but seeking a proper place--a couch--a
bed--on which to lay the dead man. They had been witness to his hurt;
they had been witness to his death, and were they to leave him lying in
his blood, to shock the eyes of his master when he came out of his long
swoon? No tongue spoke these words, but the cunning visible in many an
eye and the slight start made by more than one eager foot in the
direction of the forbidden door gave Miss Weeks sufficient warning of
what she might expect in another moment. Making the most of her
diminutive figure,--such a startling contrast to the one which had just
dominated there!--she was about to utter an impassioned appeal to their
honour, when the current of her and their thoughts, as well as the
direction of all looks, was changed by a sudden sense common to all, of
some strange new influence at work in the room, and turning, they beheld
the judge upon his feet, his mind awakened, but his eyes still fixed--an
awesome figure; some thought more awesome than before; for the terror
which still held him removed from all about, was no longer passive but
active and had to do with what no man there could understand or
alleviate. Death was present with them--he saw it not. Strangers were
making havoc with his solitude--he was as oblivious of their presence as
he had been unconscious of it before. His faculties and all his
attention were absorbed by the thought which had filled his brain when
the cogs of that subtle mechanism had slipped and his faculties paused
inert.

This was shown by his first question:

"WHERE IS THE WOMAN?"

It was a cry of fear; not of mastery.




IV

"AND WHERE WAS I WHEN ALL THIS HAPPENED?"


The intensity of the question, the compelling, self-forgetful passion of
the man, had a startling effect upon the crowd of people huddled before
him. With one accord, and without stopping to pick their way, they made
for the open doorway, knocking the smaller pieces of furniture about and
creating havoc generally. Some fled the house; others stopped to peer in
again from behind the folds of the curtain which had been only partially
torn from its fastenings. Miss Weeks was the only one to stand her
ground.

When the room was quite cleared and the noise abated (it was a frightful
experience to see how little the judge had been affected by all this
hubbub of combined movement and sound), she stepped within the line of
his vision and lifted her feeble and ineffectual hand in an effort to
attract his attention to herself.

But he did not notice her, any more than he had noticed the others.
Still looking in the one direction, he cried aloud in troubled tones:

"She stood there! the woman stood there and I saw her! Where is she
now?"

"She is no longer in the house," came in gentle reply from the only one
in or out of the room courageous enough to speak. "She went out when she
saw us coming. We knew that she had no right to be here. That is why we
intruded ourselves, sir. We did not like the looks of her, and so
followed her in to prevent mischief."

"Ah!"

The expletive fell unconsciously. He seemed to be trying to adjust
himself to some mental experience he could neither share with others nor
explain to himself.

"She was here, then?--a woman with a little child? It wasn't an
illusion, a--." Memory was coming back and with it a realisation of his
position. Stopping short, he gazed down from his great height upon the
trembling little body of whose identity he had but a vague idea, and
thundered out in great indignation:

"How dared you! How dared she!" Then as his mind regained its full
poise, "And how, even if you had the temerity to venture an entrance
here, did you manage to pass my gates? They are never open. Bela sees to
that."

Bela!

He may have observed the pallor which blanched her small, tense features
as this name fell so naturally from his lips, or some instinct of his
own may have led him to suspect tragedy where all was so abnormally
still, for, as she watched, she saw his eyes, fixed up to now upon her
face, leave it and pass furtively and with many hesitations from object
to object, towards that spot behind him, where lay the source of her
great terror, if not of his. So lingeringly and with such dread was this
done, that she could barely hold back her weak woman's scream in the
intensity of her suspense. She knew just where his glances fell without
following them with her own. She saw them pass the door where so many
faces yet peered in (he saw them not), and creep along the wall beyond,
inch by inch, breathlessly and with dread, till finally, with fatal
precision, they reached the point where the screen had stood, and not
finding it, flew in open terror to the door it was set there to
conceal--when that something else, huddled in oozing blood, on the floor
beneath, drew them unto itself with the irresistibleness of grim
reality, and he forgot all else in the horror of a sight for which his
fears, however great, had failed to prepare him.

Dead! BELA! Dead! and lying in his blood! The rest may have been no
dream, but this was surely one, or his eyes, used to inner visions, were
playing him false.

Grasping the table at his side to steady his failing limbs, he pulled
himself along by its curving edge till he came almost abreast of the
helpless figure which for so many years had been the embodiment of
faithful and unwearied service.

Then and then only, did the truth of his great misfortune burst upon his
bewildered soul; and with a cry which tore the ears of all hearers and
was never forgotten by any one there, he flung himself down beside the
dead negro, and, turning him hastily over, gazed in his face.

Was that a sob? Yes; thus much the heart gave; but next moment the
piteous fact of loss was swallowed up in the recognition of its manner,
and, bounding to his feet with the cry, "Killed! Killed at his post!" he
confronted the one witness of his anguish of whose presence he was
aware, and fiercely demanded: "Where are the wretches who have done
this? No single arm could have knocked down Bela. He has been set
upon--beaten with clubs, and--" Here his thought was caught up by
another, and that one so fearsome and unsettling that bewilderment again
followed rage, and with the look of a haunted spirit, he demanded in a
voice made low by awe and dread of its own sound, "AND WHERE WAS I, WHEN
ALL THIS HAPPENED?"

"You? You were seated there," murmured the little woman, pointing at the
great chair. "You were not--quite--quite yourself," she softly
explained, wondering at her own composure. Then quickly, as she saw his
thoughts revert to the dead friend at his feet, "Bela was not hurt here.
He was down town when it happened; but he managed to struggle home and
gain this place, which he tried to hold against the men who followed
him. He thought you were dead, you sat there so rigid and so white, and,
before he quite gave up, he asked us all to promise not to let any one
enter this room till your son Oliver came."

Understanding partly, but not yet quite clear in his mind, the judge
sighed, and stooping again, straightened the faithful negro's limbs.
Then, with a side-long look in her direction, he felt in one of the
pockets of the dead negro's coat, and drawing out a small key, held it
in one hand while he fumbled in his own for another, which found, he
became on the instant his own man again.

Miss Weeks, seeing the difference in him, and seeing too, that the
doorway was now clear of the wondering, awestruck group which had
previously blocked it, bowed her slight body and proceeded to withdraw;
but the judge, staying her by a gesture, she waited patiently near one
of the book-racks against which she had stumbled, to hear what he had to
say.

"I must have had an attack of some kind," he calmly remarked. "Will you
be good enough to explain exactly what occurred here that I may more
fully comprehend my own misfortune and the death of this faithful
friend?"

Then she saw that his faculties were now fully restored, and came a step
forward. But before she could begin her story, he added this searching
question:

"Was it he who let you in--you and others--I think you said others? Was
it he who unlocked my gates?"

Miss Weeks sighed and betrayed fluster. It was not easy to relate her
story; besides it was wofully incomplete. She knew nothing of what had
happened down town, she could only tell what had passed before her eyes.
But there was one thing she could make clear, to him, and that was how
the seemingly impassable gates had been made ready for the woman's
entrance and afterwards taken such advantage of by herself and others. A
pebble had done it all,--a pebble placed in the gateway by Bela's hands.

As she described this, and insisted upon the fact in face of the judge's
almost frenzied disclaimer, she thought she saw the hair move on his
forehead. Bela a traitor, and in the interests of the woman who had
fronted him from the other end of the room at the moment consciousness
had left him! Evidently this intrusive little body did not know Bela or
his story, or--

Why should interruption come then? Why was he stopped, when in the
passion of the moment, he might have let fall some word of enlightenment
which would have eased the agitated curiosity of the whole town! Miss
Weeks often asked herself this question, and bewailed the sudden access
of sounds in the rooms without, which proclaimed the entrance of the
police and put a new strain upon the judge's faculty of self-control and
attention to the one matter in hand.

The commonplaces of an official inquiry were about to supersede the play
of a startled spirit struggling with a problem of whose complexities he
had received but a glimpse.




V

"SHE WORE PURPLE"


The library again! but how changed! Evening light now instead of blazing
sunshine; and evening light so shaded that the corners seemed far and
the many articles of furniture, cumbering the spaces between, larger for
the shadows in which they stood hidden. Perhaps the man who sat there in
company with the judge regretted this. Perhaps, he would have preferred
to see more perfectly that portion of the room where Bela had taken his
stand and finally fallen. It would have been interesting to note whether
the screen had been replaced before the mysterious door which this most
devoted of servants had protected to his last gasp. Curiosity is
admissible, even in a man, when the cause is really great.

But from the place where he sat there was no getting any possible view
of that part of the wall or of anything connected with it; and so, with
every appearance of satisfaction at being allowed in the room at all,
Sergeant Doolittle from Headquarters, drank the judge's wine and
listened for the judge's commands.

These were slow in coming, and they were unexpected when they came.

"Sergeant, I have lost a faithful servant under circumstances which have
called an unfortunate attention to my house. I should like to have this
place guarded--carefully guarded, you understand--from any and all
intrusion till I can look about me and secure protection of my own. May
I rely upon the police to do this, beginning to-night at an early hour?
There are loiterers already at the corner and in front of the two gates.
I am not accustomed to these attentions, and ask to have my fence
cleared."

"Two men are already detailed for the job, your honour. I heard the
order given just as I left Headquarters."

The judge showed small satisfaction. Indeed, in his silence there was
the hint of something like displeasure. This surprised Sergeant
Doolittle and led him to attempt to read its cause in his host's
countenance. But the shade of the lamp intervened too completely, and he
had to be content to wait till the judge chose to speak, which he
presently did, though not in the exact tones the Sergeant expected.

"Two men! Couldn't I have three? One for each gate and one to patrol the
fence separating these grounds from the adjoining lot?"

The sergeant hesitated; he felt an emotion of wonder--a sense of
something more nearly approaching the uncanny than was usual to his
matter-of-fact mind. He had heard, often enough, what store the judge
set on his privacy and of the extraordinary measures he had taken to
insure it, but that a man, even if he aped the hermit, should consider
three men necessary to hold the public away from a two hundred and fifty
foot lot argued apprehensions of a character verging on the ridiculous.
But he refrained from expressing his surprise and replied, after a
minute of thought:

"If two men are not enough to ensure you a quiet sleep, you shall have
three or four or even more, Judge Ostrander. Do you want one of them to
stay inside? That might do the business better than a dozen out."

"No. While Bela lies above ground, we want no third here. When he is
buried, I may call upon you for a special to watch my room door. But
it's of outside protection we're talking now. Only, who is to protect me
against your men?"

"What do you mean by that, your honour?"

"They are human, are they not? They have instincts of curiosity like the
rest of us. How can I be made sure that they won't yield to the
temptation of their position and climb the fences they are detailed to
guard?"

"And would this be so fatal to your peace, judge?" A smile tempered the
suggestion.

"It would be a breach of trust which would greatly disturb me. I want
nobody on my grounds, nobody at all. Has not my long life of solitude
within these walls sufficiently proved this? I want to feel that these
men of yours would no more climb my fence than they would burst into my
house without a warrant."

"Judge, I will be one of the men. You can trust me."

"Thank you, sergeant; I appreciate the favour. I shall rest now as
quietly as any man can who has met with a great loss. The coroner's
inquiry has decided that the injuries which Bela received in the street
were of a fatal character and would have killed him within an hour, even
if he had not exhausted his strength in the effort he made to return to
his home and die in my presence. But I shall always suffer from regret
that I was not in a condition to receive his last sigh. He was a man in
a thousand. One seldom sees his like among white or black."

"He was a very powerfully built man. It took a sixty horse-power racing
machine, going at a high rate of speed, to kill him."

A spasm of grief or unavailing regret crossed the judge's face as his
head sank back again against the high back of his chair.

"Enough," said he; "tread softly when you go by the sofa on which he
lies. Will you fill your glass again, sergeant?"

The sergeant declined.

"Not if my watch is to be effective to-night," he smiled, and rose to
depart.

The judge, grown suddenly thoughtful, rapped with his finger-tips on the
table-edge. He had not yet risen to show his visitor out.

"I should like to ask a question," he finally observed, motioning the
other to re-seat himself. "You were not at the inquiry this afternoon,
and may not know that just as Bela and the crowd about him turned this
corner, they ran into a woman leading a small child, who stopped the
whole throng in order to address him. No one heard what she said; and no
one could give any information as to who she was or in what direction
she vanished. But I saw that woman myself, earlier. She was in this
house. She was in this room. She came as far as that open space just
inside the doorway. I can describe her, and will, if you will consent to
look for her. It is to be a money transaction, sergeant, and if she is
found and no stir made and no talk started among the Force, I will pay
all that you think it right to demand."

"Let me hear her description, your honour." The judge, who had withdrawn
into the shadow, considered for a moment, then said:

"I cannot describe her features, for she was heavily veiled; neither can
I describe her figure except to say that she is tall and slender. But
her dress I remember to the last detail, though I am not usually so
observant. She wore purple; not an old woman's purple, but a soft shade
which did not take from her youth. There was something floating round
her shoulders of the same colour, and on her arms were long gloves such
as you see our young ladies wear. The child did not seem to belong to
her, though she held her tightly by the hand. I mean by that, that its
clothes were of a coarser material than hers and perhaps were a little
soiled. If the child wore a hat, I do not remember it. In age it
appeared to be about six--or that was the impression I received
before--"

The sergeant, who had been watching the speaker very closely, leaned
forward with a hasty, inquiring glance expressive of something like
consternation. Was the judge falling again into unconsciousness? Was he
destined to witness in this solitary meeting a return of the phenomenon
which had so startled the intruding populace that morning?

No, or if he had been witness to something of the kind, it was for a
moment only; for the eyes which had gone blank had turned his way again,
and only a disconnected expression which fell from the judge's lips,
showed that his mind had been wandering.

"It's not the same but another one; that's all."

Inconsequent words, but the sergeant meant to remember them, for with
their utterance, a change passed over the judge; and his manner, which
had been constrained and hurried during his attempted description,
became at once more natural, and therefore more courteous.

"Do you think you can find her with such insufficient data? A woman
dressed in purple, leading a little child without any hat?"

"Judge, I not only feel sure that I can find her, but I think she is
found already. Do you remember the old tavern on the Rushville road? I
believe they call it an inn now, or some such fancy name."

The judge sat quiet, but the sergeant who dared not peer too closely,
noticed a sudden constriction in the fingers of the hand with which his
host fingered a paper-cutter lying on the table between them.

"The one where--"

"I respect your hesitation, judge. Yes, the one run by the man you
sentenced--"

A gesture had stopped him. He waited respectfully for the judge's next
words.

They came quickly and with stern and solemn emphasis.

"For a hideous and wholly unprovoked crime. Why do you mention it
and--and his tavern?"

"Because of something I have lately heard in its connection. You know
that the old house has been all made over since that time and run as a
place of resort for automobilists in search of light refreshments. The
proprietor's name is Yardley. We have nothing against him; the place is
highly respectable. But it harbours a boarder, a permanent one, I
believe, who has occasioned no little comment. No one has ever seen her
face; unless it is the landlord's wife. She has all her meals served in
her room, and when she goes out she wears the purple dress and purple
veil you've been talking about. Perhaps she's your visitor of to-day.
Hadn't I better find out?"

"Has she a child? Is she a mother?"

"I haven't heard of any child, but Mrs. Yardley has seven."

The judge's hand withdrew from the table and for an instant the room was
so quiet that you could hear some far-off clock ticking out the minutes.
Then Judge Ostrander rose and in a peremptory tone said:

"To-morrow. After you hear from me again. Make no move to-night. Let me
feel that all your energies are devoted to securing my privacy."

The sergeant, who had sprung to his feet at the same instant as the
judge, cast a last look about him, curiosity burning in his heart and a
sort of desperate desire to get all he could out of his present
opportunity. For he felt absolutely sure that he would never be allowed
to enter this room again.

But the arrangement of light was such as to hold in shadow all but the
central portion of the room; and this central portion held nothing out
of the common--nothing to explain the mysteries of the dwelling or the
apprehensions of its suspicious owner. With a sigh, the sergeant dropped
his eyes from the walls he could barely distinguish, and following Judge
Ostrander's lead, passed with him under the torn folds of the curtain
and through the narrow vestibule whose door was made of iron, into the
room, where, in a stronger blaze of light than they had left, lay the
body of the dead negro awaiting the last rites.

Would the judge pass this body, or turn away from it towards a door
leading front? The sergeant had come in at the rear, but he greatly
desired to go out front, as this would give him so much additional
knowledge of the house. Unexpectedly to himself, the judge's intentions
were in the direction of his own wishes. He was led front; and, entering
an old-fashioned hall dimly lighted, passed a staircase and two closed
doors, both of which gave him the impression of having been shut upon a
past it had pleasured no one to revive in many years.

Beyond them was the great front door of Colonial style and workmanship,
a fine specimen once, but greatly disfigured now by the bolts and bars
which had been added to it in satisfaction of the judge's ideas of
security.

Many years had passed since Judge Ostrander had played the host; but he
had not lost a sense of its obligations. It was for him to shoot the
bolts and lift the bars; but he went about it so clumsily and with such
evident aversion to the task, that the sergeant instinctively sprang to
help him.

"I shall miss Bela at every turn," remarked the judge, turning with a
sad smile as he finally pulled the door open. "This is an unaccustomed
effort for me. Excuse my awkwardness."

Something in his attitude, something in the way he lifted his hand to
push back a fallen lock from his forehead, impressed itself upon the
sergeant's mind so vividly that he always remembered the judge as he
appeared to him at that minute. Certainly there were but few men like
him in the country, and none in his own town. Of a commanding
personality by reason of his height, his features were of a cast to
express his mental attributes and enforce attention, and the incongruity
between his dominating figure and the apprehensions which he displayed
in these multiplied and extraordinary arrangements for personal security
was forcible enough to arouse any man's interest.

The sergeant was so occupied by the mystery of the man and the mystery
of the house that they had passed the first gate (which the judge had
unlocked without much difficulty) before he realised that there still
remained something of interest for him to see and to talk about later.
The two dark openings on either side, raised questions which the most
unimaginative mind would feel glad to hear explained. Ere the second
gate swung open and he found himself again in the street, he had built
up more than one theory in explanation of this freak of parallel fences
with the strip of gloom between.

Would he have felt the suggestion of the spot still more deeply, had it
been given him to see the anxious and hesitating figure which,
immediately upon his departure entered this dark maze, and with feeling
hands and cautious step, wound its way from corner to corner--now
stopping abruptly to listen, now shrinking from some imaginary
presence--a shadow among shadows--till it stood again between the gates
from which it had started.

Possibly; even the hardiest of men respond to the unusual, and prove
themselves not ungifted with imagination when brought face to face with
that for which their experience furnishes no precedent.




VI

ACROSS THE BRIDGE


It was ten o'clock, not later, when the judge re-entered his front door.
He was alone,--absolutely alone, as he had never been since that night
of long ago, when with the inner fence completed and the gates all
locked, he turned to the great negro at his side and quietly said:

"We are done with the world, Bela. Are you satisfied to share this
solitude with me?" And Bela had replied: "Night and day, your honour.
And when you are not here,--when you are at court, to bear it alone."

And now this faithful friend was dead, and it was he who must bear it
alone,--alone! How could he face it! He sought for no answer, nor did he
allow himself to dwell for one minute on the thought. There was
something else he must do first,--do this very night, if possible.

Taking down his hat from the rack he turned and went out again, this
time carefully locking the door behind him, also the first gate. But he
stopped to listen before lifting his hand to the second one.

A sound of steady breathing, accompanied by a few impatient movements,
came from the other side. A man was posted there within a foot of the
gate. Noiselessly the judge recoiled, and made his way around to the
other set of gates. Here all was quiet enough, and sliding quickly out,
he cast a hasty glance up and down the lane, and seeing nothing more
alarming than the back of a second officer lounging at the corner,
pulled the gate quietly to, and locked it.

He was well down the road towards the ravine, before the officer turned.

The time has now come for giving you a clearer idea of this especial
neighbourhood. Judge Ostrander's house, situated as you all know at the
juncture of an unimportant road with the main highway, had in its rear
three small houses, two of them let and one still unrented. Farther on,
but on the opposite side of the way, stood a very old dwelling in which
there lived and presumably worked, a solitary woman, the sole and final
survivor of a large family. Beyond was the ravine, cutting across the
road and terminating it. This ravine merits some description.

It was a picturesque addition to the town through which it cut at the
point of greatest activity. With the various bridges connecting the
residence portion with the lower business streets we have nothing to do.
But there was a nearer one of which the demands of my story necessitate
a clear presentation.

This bridge was called Long, and spanned the ravine and its shallow
stream of water not a quarter of a mile below the short road or lane we
have just seen Judge Ostrander enter. Between it and this lane, a narrow
path ran amid the trees and bushes bordering the ravine. This path was
seldom used, but when it was, it acted as a short cut to a certain part
of the town mostly given over to factories. Indeed the road of which
this bridge formed a part was called Factory on this account. Starting
from the main highway a half mile or so below Ostrander Lane, it ran
diagonally back to the bridge, where it received a turn which sent it
south and east again towards the lower town. A high bluff rose at this
point, which made the farther side of the ravine much more imposing than
the one on the near side where the slope was gradual.

This path, and even the bridge itself, were almost wholly unlighted.
They were seldom used at night--seldom used at any time. But it was by
this route the judge elected to go into town; not for the pleasure of
the walk, as was very apparent from the extreme depression of his
manner, but from some inward necessity which drove him on, against his
wishes, possibly against his secret misgivings.

He had met no one in his short walk down the lane, but for all that, he
paused before entering the path just mentioned, to glance back and see
if he were being watched or followed. When satisfied that he was not, he
looked up, from the solitary waste where he stood, to the cheerless
heavens and sighed; then forward into the mass of impenetrable shadow
that he must yet traverse and shuddered as many another had shuddered
ere beginning this walk. For it was near the end of this path, in full
sight of the bridge he must cross, that his friend, Algernon Etheridge,
had been set upon and murdered so many years before; and the shadow of
this ancient crime still lingered over the spot, deepening its natural
gloom even for minds much less sympathetic and responsive to spiritual
influences than Judge Ostrander.

But this shudder, whether premonitory or just the involuntary tribute of
friend to friend, did not prevent his entering the path or following its
line of shadow as it rose and dipped in its course down the gorge.

I have spoken of the cheerlessness of the heavens. It was one of those
nights when the sky, piled thick with hurrying clouds, hangs above one
like a pall. But the moon, hidden behind these rushing masses, was at
its full, and the judge soon found that he could see his way better than
he had anticipated--better than was desirable, perhaps. He had been on
the descent of the path for some little time now, and could not be far
from the more level ground which marked the approach to Long Bridge.
Determined not to stop or to cast one faltering look to right or left,
he hurried on with his eyes fixed upon the ground and every nerve braced
to resist the influence of the place and its undying memories. But with
the striking of his foot against the boards of the bridge, nature was
too much for him, and his resolve vanished. Instead of hastening on, he
stopped; and, having stopped, paused long enough to take in all the
features of the scene, and any changes which time might have wrought. He
even forced his shrinking eyes to turn and gaze upon the exact spot
where his beloved Algernon had been found, with his sightless eyes
turned to the sky.

This latter place, singular in that it lay open to the opposite bank
without the mask of bush or tree to hide it, was in immediate proximity
to the end of the bridge he had attempted to cross. It bore the name of
Dark Hollow, and hollow and dark it looked in the universal gloom. But
the power of its associations was upon him, and before he knew it, he
was retracing his steps as though drawn by a magnetism he could not
resist, till he stood within this hollow and possibly on the very foot
of ground from the mere memory of which he had recoiled for years.

A moment of contemplation--a sigh, such as only escapes the bursting
heart in moments of extreme grief or desolation--and he tore his eyes
from the ground to raise them slowly but with deep meaning to where the
high line of trees on the opposite side of the ravine met the grey vault
of the sky. Darkness piled itself against darkness, but with a
difference to one who knew all the undulations of this bluff and just
where it ended in the sheer fall which gave a turn to the road at the
farther end of the bridge.

But it was not upon the mass of undistinguishable tree-tops or the line
they made against the sky that his gaze lingered. It was on something
more material; something which rose from the brow of the hill in stark
and curious outline not explainable in itself, but clear enough to one
who had seen its shape by daylight. Judge Ostrander had thus seen it
many times in the past, and knew just where to look for the one
remaining chimney and solitary gable of a house struck many years before
by lightning and left a grinning shell to mock the eye of all who walked
this path or crossed this bridge.

Black amid blackness, with just the contrast of its straight lines to
the curve of natural objects about it, it commanded the bluff, summoning
up memories of an evil race cut short in a moment by an outraged
Providence, and Judge Ostrander marking it, found himself muttering
aloud as he dragged himself slowly away: "Why should Time, so
destructive elsewhere, leave one stone upon another of this accursed
ruin?"

Alas! Heaven has no answer for such questions.

When he had reached the middle of the bridge, he stopped short to look
back at Dark Hollow and utter in a smothered groan, which would not be
repressed, a name which by all the rights of the spot should have been
Algernon's, but was not.

The utterance of this name seemed to startle him, for, with a shuddering
look around, he hastily traversed the rest of the bridge, and took the
turn about the hill to where Factory Road branched off towards the town.
Here he stopped again and for the first time revealed the true nature of
his destination. For when he moved on again it was to take the road
along the bluff, and not the one leading directly into town.

This meant a speedy passing by the lightning-struck house. He knew this
of course, and evidently shrunk from the ordeal, for once up the hill
and on the level stretch above, he resolutely forbore to cast a glance
at its dilapidated fence and decayed gate posts. Had he not done
this--had his eyes followed the long line of the path leading from these
toppling posts to the face of the ruin, he would have been witness to a
strange sight. For gleaming through the demolished heart of it,--between
the chimney on the one side and the broken line of the gable on the
other--could be seen the half circle of the moon suddenly released from
the clouds which had hitherto enshrouded it. A weird sight, to be seen
only when all conditions favoured. It was to be seen here to-night; but
the judge's eye was bent another way, and he passed on, unnoting.

The ground was high along this bluff; almost fifty feet above the level
of the city upon, which he had just turned his back. Of stony formation
and much exposed to the elements, it had been considered an undesirable
site by builders, and not a house was to be seen between the broken
shell of the one he had just left, and the long, low, brilliantly
illuminated structure ahead, for which he was evidently making. The
sight of these lights and of the trees by which the house was
surrounded, suggested festival and caused a qualm of indecision to
momentarily disturb him in his purpose. But this purpose was too strong,
and the circumstances too urgent for him to be deterred by anything less
potent than a stroke of lightning. He rather increased his pace than
slackened it and was rewarded by seeing lamp after lamp go out as he
approached.

The pant of a dozen motors, the shouting of various farewells and then
the sudden rushing forth of a long line of automobiles, proclaimed that
the fete of the day was about over and that peace and order would soon
prevail again in Claymore Inn.

Without waiting for the final one to pass, the judge slid around to the
rear and peered in at the kitchen door. If Mrs. Yardley were the woman
he supposed her to be from the sergeant's description, she would be just
then in the thick of the dish-washing. And it was Mrs. Yardley he wished
to see.

Three women were at work in this busiest of scenes, and, deciding at a
glance which was the able mistress of the house, he approached the
large, pleasant and commanding figure piling plates at the farther end
of the room and courteously remarked:

"Mrs. Yardley, I believe?"

The answer came quickly, and not without a curious smile of constraint:

"Oh, no. Mrs. Yardley is in the entry behind."

Bowing his thanks, he stepped in the direction named, just as the three
women's heads came simultaneously together. There was reason for their
whispers. His figure, his head, his face, were all unusual, and at that
moment highly expressive, and coming as he did out of the darkness, his
presence had an uncanny effect upon their simple minds. They had been
laughing before; they ceased to laugh now. Why?

Meanwhile, Judge Ostrander was looking about him for Mrs. Yardley. The
quiet figure of a squat little body blocked up a certain doorway.

"I am looking for Mrs. Yardley," he ventured.

The little figure turned; he was conscious of two very piercing eyes
being raised to his, and heard in shaking accents, which yet were not
the accents of weakness, the surprised ejaculation:

"Judge Ostrander!"

Next minute they were together in a small room, with the door shut
behind them. The energy and decision of this mite of a woman were
surprising.

"I was going--to you--in the morning--" she panted in her excitement.
"To apologise," she respectfully finished.

"Then," said he, "it was your child who visited my house to-day?"

She nodded. Her large head was somewhat disproportioned to her short and
stocky body. But her glance and manner were not unpleasing. There was a
moment of silence which she hastened to break.

"Peggy is very young; it was not her fault. She is so young she doesn't
even know where she went. She was found loitering around the bridge--a
dangerous place for a child, but we've been very busy all day--and she
was found there and taken along by--by the other person. I hope that you
will excuse it, sir."

Was she giving the judge an opportunity to recover from his
embarrassment, or was she simply making good her own cause? Whichever
impulse animated her, the result was favourable to both. Judge Ostrander
lost something of his strained look, and it was no longer difficult for
her to meet his eye.

Nevertheless, what he had to say came with a decided abruptness.

"Who is the woman, Mrs. Yardley? That's what I have come to learn, and
not to complain of your child."

The answer struck him very strangely, though he saw nothing to lead him
to distrust her candour.

"I don't know, Judge Ostrander. She calls herself Averill, but that
doesn't make me sure of her. You wonder that I should keep a lodger
about whom I have any doubts, but there are times when Mr. Yardley uses
his own judgment, and this is one of the times. The woman pays well and
promptly," she added in a lower tone.

"Her status? Is she maid, wife or widow?"

"Oh, she says she is a widow, and I see every reason to believe her."

A slight grimness in her manner, the smallest possible edge to her
voice, led the judge to remark:

"She's good-looking, I suppose."

A laugh, short and unmusical but not without a biting humour, broke
unexpectedly from the landlady's lips.

"If she is, HE don't know it. He hasn't seen her."

"Not seen her?"

"No. Her veil was very thick the night she came and she did not lift it
as long as he was by. If she had--"

"Well, what?"

"I'm afraid that he wouldn't have exacted as much from her as he did.
She's one of those women--"

"Don't hesitate, Mrs. Yardley."

"I'm thinking how to put it. Who has her will of your sex, I might say.
Now I'm not."

"Pretty?"

"Not like a girl, sir. She's old enough to show fade; but I don't
believe that a man would mind that. She has a look--a way, that even
women feel. You may judge, sir, if we, old stagers at the business, have
been willing to take her in and keep her, at any price,--a woman who
won't show her face except to me, and who will not leave her room
without her veil and then only for walks in places where no one else
wants to go,--she must have some queer sort of charm to overcome all
scruples. But she's gone too far to-day. She shall leave the Inn
to-morrow. I promise you that, sir, whatever Samuel says. But sit down;
sit down; you look tired, judge. Is there anything you would like? Shall
I call Samuel?"

"No. I'm not much used to walking. Besides, I have had a great loss
to-day. My man, Bela--" Then with his former abruptness: "Have you no
idea who this Mrs. Averill is, or why she broke into my house?"

"There's but one explanation, sir. I've been thinking about it ever
since I got wind of where she took my Peggy. The woman is not
responsible. She has some sort of mania. Why else should she go into a
strange gate just because she saw it open?"

"She hasn't confided in you?"

"No, sir. I haven't seen her since she brought Peggy back. We've had
this big automobile party, and I thought my reckoning with her would
keep. I heard about what had happened at your place from the man who
brought us fruit."

"Mrs. Yardley, you've seen this woman's face?"

"Yes, I've seen her."

"Describe it more particularly."

"I can't. She has brown hair, brown eyes and a skin as white as milk;
but that don't describe her. Lots of women have all that."

"No, it doesn't describe her." His manner seemed to pray for further
details, but she stared back, unresponsive. In fact, she felt quite
helpless. With a sigh of impatience, he resorted again to question.

"You speak of her as a stranger. Are you quite sure that she is a
stranger to Shelby? You have not been so very many years here, and her
constant wearing of a veil in-doors and out is very suspicious."

"So I'm beginning to think. And there is something else, judge, which
makes me suspect you may be quite correct about her not being an entire
stranger here. She knows this house too well."

The judge started. The strength of his self-control had relaxed a bit,
and he showed in the look he cast about him what it had cost him to
enter these doors.

"It is not the same, of course," continued Mrs. Yardley, affected in a
peculiar way by the glimpse she had caught of the other's emotion
unnatural and incomprehensible as it appeared to her. "The place has
been greatly changed, but there is a certain portion of the old house
left which only a person who knew it as it originally was would be apt
to find; and yesterday, on going into one of these remote rooms I came
upon her sitting in one of the windows looking out. How she got there or
why she went, I cannot tell you. She didn't choose to tell me, and I
didn't ask. But I've not felt real easy about her since."

"Excuse me, Mrs. Yardley, it may be a matter of no moment, but do you
mind telling me where this room is?"

"It's on the top floor, sir; and it looks out over the ravine. Perhaps
she was spying out the path to your house."

The judge's face hardened. He felt baffled and greatly disturbed; but he
spoke kindly enough when he again addressed Mrs. Yardley:

"I am as ignorant as you of this woman's personality and of her reasons
for intruding into my presence this morning. But there is something so
peculiar about this presumptuous attempt of hers at an interview, that I
feel impelled to inquire into it more fully, even if I have to approach
the only source of information capable of giving me what I want--that
is, herself. Mrs. Yardley, will you procure me an immediate interview
with this woman? I am sure that you can be relied upon to do this and to
do it with caution. You have the countenance of a woman unusually
discreet."

The subtle flattery did its work. She was not blind to the fact that he
had introduced it for that very purpose, but it was not in her nature to
withstand any appeal from so exalted a source however made. Lifting her
eyes fearlessly to his, she responded earnestly:

"I am proud to serve you. I will see what I can do. Will you wait here
for just a few minutes?"

He bowed quietly enough; but he was very restless when once he found
himself alone. Those few minutes of waiting seemed interminable to him.
Would the woman come? Was she as anxious to see him now as she had been
in the early morning? Much depended on her mood, but more on the nature
of the errand which had taken her into his house. If that errand was a
vital one, he would soon hear her steps; indeed, he was hearing her
steps now--he was sure of it. Those of Mrs. Yardley were quicker,
shorter, more businesslike. These, now advancing through the corridor,
lingered as if held back by dread or a fateful indecision.

He would fain hasten them, but discretion forbade.

They faltered, turned, then, in an instant, all hesitation was lost in
purpose and they again advanced this time to the threshold. Judge
Ostrander had just time to brace himself to meet the unknown, when the
door fell back and the woman of the morning appeared in the opening.




VII

WITH HER VEIL DOWN


On the instant he recognised that no common interview lay before him.
She was still the mysterious stranger, and she still wore her veil--a
fact all the more impressive that it was no longer the accompaniment of
a hat, but flung freely over her bare head. He frowned as he met her
eyes through this disguising gauze. This attempt at an incognito for
which there seemed to be no adequate reason, had a theatrical look
wholly out of keeping with the situation. But he made no allusion to it,
nor was the bow with which he acknowledged her presence and ushered her
into the room, other than courteous. Nevertheless, she was the first to
speak.

"This is very good of you, Judge Ostrander," she remarked, in a voice
both cultured and pleasant. "I could hardly have hoped for this honour.
After what happened this morning at your house, I feared that my wish
for an interview would not only be disregarded by you, but that you
would utterly refuse me the privilege of seeing you. I own to feeling
greatly relieved. Such consideration shown to a stranger, argues a
spirit of unusual kindliness."

A tirade. He simply bowed.

"Or perhaps I am mistaken in my supposition," she suggested, advancing a
step, but no more. "Perhaps I am no stranger to you? Perhaps you know my
name?"

"Averill? No."

She paused, showing her disappointment quite openly. Then drawing up a
chair, she leaned heavily on its back, saying in low, monotonous tones
from which the former eager thrill had departed:

"I see that the intended marriage of your son has made very little
impression upon you."

Aghast for the moment, this was such a different topic from the one he
expected, the judge regarded her in silence before remarking:

"I have known nothing of it. My son's concerns are no longer mine. If
you have broken into my course of life for no other purpose than to
discuss the affairs of Oliver Ostrander, I must beg you to excuse me. I
have nothing to say in his connection to you or to any one."

"Is the breach between you so deep as that!"

This she said in a low tone and more as if to herself than to him. Then,
with a renewal of courage indicated by the steadying of her form and a
spirited uplift of her head, she observed with a touch of command in her
voice:

"There are some things which must be discussed whatever our wishes or
preconceived resolves. The separation between you and Mr. Oliver
Ostrander cannot be so absolute (since whatever your cause of complaint
you are still his father and he your son) that you will allow his whole
life's happiness to be destroyed for the lack of a few words between
yourself and me."

He had made his bow, and he now proceeded to depart, severity in his
face and an implacable resolution in his eye. But some impulse made him
stop; some secret call from deeply hidden, possibly unrecognised,
affections gave him the will to say:

"A plea uttered through a veil is like an unsigned message. It partakes
too much of the indefinite. Will you lift your veil, madam?"

"In a minute," she assured him. "The voice can convey truth as certainly
as the features. I will not deny you a glimpse of the latter after you
have heard my story. Will you hear it, judge? Issues of no common
importance hang upon your decision. I entreat--but no, you are a just
man; I will rely upon your sense of right. If your son's happiness fails
to appeal to you, let that of a young and innocent girl lovely as few
are lovely either in body or mind."

"Yourself, madam?"

"No, my daughter! Oliver Ostrander has done us that honour, sir. He had
every wish and had made every preparation to marry my child, when--Shall
I go on?"

"You may."

It was shortly said, but a burden seemed to fall from her shoulders at
its utterance. Her whole graceful form relaxed swiftly into its natural
curves, and an atmosphere of charm from this moment enveloped her, which
justified the description of Mrs. Yardley, even without a sight of the
features she still kept hidden.

"I am a widow, sir." Thus she began with studied simplicity. "With my
one child I have been living in Detroit these many years,--ever since my
husband's death, in fact. We are not unliked there, nor have we lacked
respect. When some six months ago, your son, who stands high in every
one's regard, as befits his parentage and his varied talents, met my
daughter and fell seriously in love with her, no one, so far as I know,
criticised his taste or found fault with his choice. I was happy, after
many years of anxiety; for I idolised my child and I had suffered from
many apprehensions as to her future. Not that I had the right to be
happy; I see that now. A woman with a secret,--and my heart held a woful
and desperate one,--should never feel that that secret lacks power to
destroy her because it has long lain quiescent. I thought my child safe,
and rejoiced as any woman might rejoice, and as I would rejoice now, if
Fate were to obliterate that secret and emancipate us all from the
horror of it."

She paused, waiting for some acknowledgment of his interest, but not
getting it, went on bitterly enough, for his stolidity was a very great
mystery to her:

"And she WAS safe, to all appearance, up to the very morning of her
marriage--the marriage of which you say you had received no intimation
though Oliver seems a very dutiful son."

"Madam!"--The hoarseness of his tone possibly increased its peremptory
character--"I really must ask you to lay aside your veil."

It was a rebuke and she felt it to be so; but though she blushed behind
her veil, she did not remove it.

"Pardon me," she begged and very humbly, "but I cannot yet. You will see
why later.--Let me reveal my secret first. I am coming to it, Judge
Ostrander; I cannot keep it back much longer."

He was too much of a gentleman to insist upon his wishes, but she saw by
the gloom of his eye and a certain nervous twitching of his hands that
it was not from mere impassiveness that his features had acquired their
rigidity. Smitten with compunction, she altered her tone into one more
deprecatory:

"My story will be best told," she now said, "if I keep all personal
element out of it. You must imagine Reuther, dressed in her wedding
finery, waiting for her bridegroom to take her to church. We were
sitting, she and I, in our little parlour, watching the clock,--for it
was very near the hour. At times, her face turned towards me for a brief
moment, and I felt all the pang of motherhood again, for her loveliness
was not of this earth but of a land where there is no sin, no--There!
the memory was a little too much for me, sir; but I'll not transgress
again; the future holds too many possibilities of suffering for me to
dwell upon the past. She was lovely and her loveliness sprang from a
pure hope. We will let that suffice, and what I dreaded was not what
happened, inexcusable as such blindness and presumption may appear in a
woman who has had her troubles and seen the desperate side of life.

"A carriage had driven up; and we heard his step; but it was not the
step of a bridegroom, Judge Ostrander, nor was the gentleman he left
behind him at the kerb, the friend who was to stand up with him. To
Reuther, innocent of all deception, this occasioned only surprise, but
to me it meant the end of Reuther's marriage and of my own hopes. I
shrank from the ordeal and stood with my back half turned when, dashed
by his own emotions, he bounded into our presence.

"One look my way and his question was answered before he put it. Judge
Ostrander, the name under which I had lived in Detroit was not my real
one. I had let him court and all but marry my daughter, without warning
him in any way of what this deception on my part covered. But
others--one other, I have reason now to believe--had detected my
identity under the altered circumstances of my new life, and surprised
him with the news at this late hour. We are--Judge Ostrander, you know
who we are. This is not the first time you and I have seen each other
face to face." And lifting up a hand, trembling with emotion, she put
aside her veil.




VIII

WITH HER VEIL LIFTED


"MRS.--"

"You recognise me?"

"Too well." The tone was deep with meaning but there was no accusation
in it; nor was there any note of relief. It was more as if some hope
deeply, and perhaps unconsciously, cherished had suffered a sudden and
complete extinction.

The change this made in him was too perceptible for her not to observe
it. The shadow lying deep in her eyes now darkened her whole face. She
had tried to prepare him for this moment; tried to prepare herself. But
who can prepare the soul for the return of old troubles or make other
than startling the resurrection of a ghost laid, as men thought,
forever.

"You see that it was no fault of my own I was trying to hide," she
finally remarked in her rich and sympathetic voice.

"Put back your veil."

It was all he said.

Trembling she complied, murmuring as she fumbled with its folds:

"Disgrace to an Ostrander! I know that I was mad to risk it for a
moment. Forgive me for the attempt, and listen to my errand. Oliver was
willing to marry my child, even after he knew the shame it would entail.
But Reuther would not accept the sacrifice. When she learned, as she was
obliged to now, that her father had not only been sentenced to death for
the worst crime in the calendar, but had suffered the full penalty,
leaving only a legacy of eternal disgrace to his wife and innocent
child, she showed a spirit becoming a better parentage. In his presence,
and in spite of his dissuasions (for he acted with all the nobility one
might expect) she took off her veil with her own hands and laid it aside
with a look expressive of eternal renunciation. She loves him, sir; and
there is no selfishness in her heart and never has been. For all her
frail appearance and the mildness of her temper, she is like flint where
principle is involved or the welfare of those she loves is at stake. My
daughter may die from shock or shame, but she will never cloud your
son's prospects with the obloquy which has settled over her own. Judge
Ostrander, I am not worthy of such a child, but such she is. If John--"

"We will not speak his name," broke in Judge Ostrander, assuming a
peremptory bearing quite unlike his former one of dignified reserve. "I
should like to hear, instead, your explanation of how my son became
inveigled into an engagement of which you, if no one else, knew the
preposterous nature."

"Judge Ostrander, you do right to blame me. I should never have given my
consent, never. But I thought our past so completely hidden--our
identity so entirely lost under the accepted name of Averill."

"You thought!" He towered over her in his anger. He looked and acted as
in the old days, when witnesses cowered under his eye and voice. "Say
that you KNEW, madam; that you planned this unholy trap for my son. You
had a pretty daughter, and you saw to it that she came under his notice;
nay, more, ignoring the claims of decency, you allowed the folly to
proceed, if you did not help it on in your misguided ambition to marry
your daughter well."

"Judge Ostrander, I did not plan their meeting, nor did I at first
encourage his addresses. Not till I saw the extent of their mutual
attachment, did I yield to the event and accept the consequences. But I
was wrong, wholly wrong to allow him to visit her a second time; but now
that the mischief is done--"

Judge Ostrander was not listening.

"I have a question to put you," said he, when he realised that she had
ceased speaking. "Oliver was never a fool. When he was told who your
daughter was, what did he say of the coincidence which made him the
lover of the woman against whose father, his father had uttered a
sentence of death? Didn't he marvel and call it extraordinary--the work
of the devil?"

"Possibly; but if he did, it was not in any conversation he had with
me."

"Detroit is a large city and must possess hundreds of sweet young girls
within its borders. Could he contemplate without wonder the fact that he
had been led to the door of the one above all others between whom and
himself Fate had set such an insurmountable barrier? He must have been
struck deeply by the coincidence; he must have been, madam."

Astonished at his manner, at the emphasis he placed upon this point
which seemed to her so much less serious than many others, she regarded
him doubtfully before saying:

"I was if he was not. From the very first I wondered. But I got used to
the fact during the five months of his courtship. And I got used to
another fact too; that my secret was safe so far as it ran the risk of
being endangered by a meeting with yourself. Mr. Ostrander made it very
plain to us that we need never expect to see you in Detroit."

"He did? Did he offer any explanation for this lack of--of sympathy
between us?"

"Never. It was a topic he forbore to enter into and I think he only said
what he did, to prevent any expectations on our part of ever seeing
you."

"And your daughter? Was he as close-mouthed in speaking of me to her as
he was to you?"

"I have no doubt of it. Reuther betrays no knowledge of you or of your
habits, and has never expressed but one curiosity in your regard. As you
can imagine what that is, I will not mention it."

"You are at liberty to. I have listened to much and can well listen to a
little more."

"Judge, she is of a very affectionate nature and her appreciation of
your son's virtues is very great. Though her conception of yourself is
naturally a very vague one, it is only to be expected that she should
wonder how you could live so long without a visit from Oliver."

Expectant as he was of this reply, and resolved as he was, to hear it
unmoved, he had miscalculated his strength or his power of concealment,
for he turned aside immediately upon hearing it, and walked away from
her towards the further extremity of the room. Covertly she watched him;
first through her veil, and then with it partly removed. She did not
understand his mood; and she hardly understood her own. When she entered
upon this interview, her mind had been so intent upon one purpose that
it seemed to absorb all her faculties and reach every corner of her
heart; yet here she was, after the exchange of many words between them,
with her purpose uncommunicated and her heart unrelieved, staring at him
not in the interest of her own griefs, but in commiseration of his.

Yet when he faced her once more every thought vanished from her mind
save the one which had sustained her through the extraordinary measures
she had taken to secure herself this opportunity of presenting her lost
cause to the judgment of the only man from whom she could expect aid.

But her impulse was stayed and her thoughts sent wandering again by the
penetrating look he gave her before she let her veil fall again.

"How long have you been in Detroit?" he asked.

"Ever since--"

"And how old is Reuther?"

"Eighteen, but--"

"Twelve years ago, then." He paused and glanced about him before adding,
"She was about the age of the child you brought to my house to-day."

"Yes, sir, very nearly."

His lips took a strange twist. There was self-contempt in it, and some
other very peculiar and contradictory emotion. But when this semblance
of a smile had passed, it was no longer Oliver's father she saw before
her, but the county's judge. Even his tone partook of the change as he
dryly remarked:

"What you have told me concerning your daughter and my son is very
interesting. But it was not for the simple purpose of informing me that
this untoward engagement was at an end that you came to Shelby. You have
another purpose. What is it? I can remain with you just five minutes
longer."

Five minutes! It only takes one to kill a hope but five are far too few
for the reconstruction of one. But she gave no sign of her secret
doubts, as she plunged at once into her subject.

"I will be brief," said she; "as brief as any mother can be who is
pleading for her daughter's life as well as happiness. Reuther has no
real ailment, but her constitution is abnormally weak, and she will die
of this grief if some miracle does not save her. Strong as her will is,
determined as she is to do her duty at all cost, she has very little
physical stamina. See! here is her photograph taken but a short time
ago. Look at it I beg. See what she was like when life was full of hope;
and then imagine her with all hope eliminated."

"Excuse me. What use? I can do nothing. I am very sorry for the child,
but--" His very attitude showed his disinclination to look at the
picture.

But she would not be denied. She thrust it upon him and once his eyes
had fallen upon it, they clung there though evidently against his will.
Ah, she knew that Reuther's exquisite countenance would plead for
itself! God seldom grants to such beauty, so lovely a spirit. If the
features themselves failed to appeal, certainly he must feel the charm
of an expression which had already netted so many hearts. Breathlessly
she watched him, and, as she watched, she noted the heavy lines carved
in his face by thought and possibly by sorrow, slowly relax and his eyes
fill with a wistful tenderness.

In the egotism of her relief, she thought to deepen the impression she
had made by one vivid picture of her daughter as she was now. Mistaking
his temperament or his story, classing him in with other strong men, the
well of whose feeling once roused overflows in sympathetic emotion, she
observed very gently but, as she soon saw, unwisely:

"Such delicacy can withstand a blow, but not a steady heartbreak. When,
on that dreadful night I crept in from my sleepless bed to see how my
darling was bearing her long watch, this was what I saw. She had not
moved, no, not an inch in the long hours which had passed since I left
her. She had not even stirred the hand from which, at her request, I had
myself drawn her engagement ring. I doubt even if her lids had shut once
over her strained and wide-staring eyes. It was as if she were laid out
for her grave--"

"Madam!"

The harsh tone recalled her to herself. She took back the picture he was
holding towards her and was hardly surprised when he said:

"Parents must learn to endure bitterness. I have not been exempt myself
from such. Your child will not die. You have years of mutual
companionship before you, while I have nothing. And now let us end this
interview so painful to both. You have said--"

"No," she broke in with sudden vehemence, all the more startling from
the restraint in which she had--held herself up to this moment, "I have
not said--I have not begun to say what seethes like a consuming fire in
my breast. Judge Ostrander, I do not know what has estranged you from
Oliver. It must be something serious;--for you are both good men. But
whatever it is, of this I am certain: you would not wilfully deliver an
innocent child like mine to a wretched fate which a well-directed effort
might avert. I spoke of a miracle--Will you not listen, judge? I am not
wild; I am not unconscious of presumption. I am only in earnest, in
deadly earnest. A miracle is possible. The gulf between these two may
yet be spanned. I see a way--"

What change was this to which she had suddenly become witness? The face
which had not lost all its underlying benignancy even when it looked its
coldest, had now become settled and hard. His manner was absolutely
repellent as he broke in with the quick disclaimer:

"But there IS no way. What miracle could ever make your daughter, lovely
as she undoubtedly is, a fitting match for my son! None, madam,
absolutely none. Such an alliance would be monstrous; unnatural."

"Why?" The word came out boldly. If she was intimidated by this
unexpected attack from a man accustomed to deference and altogether able
to exact it, she did not show it. "Because her father died the death of
a criminal?" she asked.

The answer was equally blunt:

"Yes; a criminal over whose trial his father presided as judge."

Was she daunted? No. Quick as a flash came the retort.

"A judge, however, who showed him every consideration possible. I was
told at the time and I have been assured by many since that you were
more than just to him in your rulings. Such a memory creates a bond of
gratitude, not hate. Judge Ostrander"--He had taken a step towards the
hall-door; but he paused at this utterance of his name--"answer me this
one question. Why did you do this? As his widow, as the mother of his
child, I implore you to tell me why you showed him this leniency? You
must have hated him deeply--"

"Yes. I have never hated any one more."

"The slayer of your dearest friend; of your inseparable companion; of
the one person who stood next to your son in your affections and
regard!"

He put up his hand. The gesture, the way he turned his face aside showed
that she had touched the raw of a wound still unhealed. Insensibly, the
woman in her responded to this evidence of an undying sorrow, and
modulating her voice, she went on, with just a touch of the subtle
fascination which made her always listened to:

"Your feeling for Mr. Etheridge was well known. THEN WHY SUCH
MAGNANIMITY TOWARDS THE MAN WHO STOOD ON TRIAL FOR KILLING HIM?"

Unaccustomed to be questioned, though living in an atmosphere of
continual yes and no, he stared at the veiled features of one who so
dared, as if he found it hard to excuse such presumption. But he
answered her nevertheless, and with decided emphasis:

"Possibly because his victim was my friend and lifelong companion. A
judge fears his own prejudices."

"Possibly; but you had another reason, judge; a reason which justified
you in your own eyes at the time and which justifies you in mine now and
always. Am I not right? This is no court-room; the case is one of the
past; it can never be reopened; the prisoner is dead. Answer me then, as
one sorrowing mortal replies to another, hadn't you another reason?"

The judge, panoplied though he was or thought he was, against all
conceivable attack, winced at this repetition of a question he had hoped
to ignore, and in his anxiety to hide this involuntary betrayal of
weakness, allowed his anger to have full vent, as he cried out in no
measured terms:

"What is the meaning of all this? What are you after? Why are you raking
up these bygones which only make the present condition of affairs darker
and more hopeless? You say that you know some way of making the match
between your daughter and my son feasible and proper. I say that nothing
can do this. Fact--the sternest of facts is against it. If you found a
way, I shouldn't accept it. Oliver Ostrander, under no circumstances and
by means of no sophistries, can ever marry the daughter of John
Scoville. I should think you would see that for yourself."

"But if John should be proved to have suffered wrongfully? If he should
be shown to have been innocent?"

"Innocent?"

"Yes. I have always had doubts of his guilt, even when circumstances
bore most heavily against him; and now, as I look back upon the trial
and remember certain things, I feel sure that you had doubts of it,
yourself."

His rebuke was quick, instant. With a force and earnestness which
recalled the court-room he replied:

"Madam, your hopes and wishes have misled you. Your husband was a guilty
man; as guilty a man as any judge ever passed sentence upon."

"Oh!" she wailed forth, reeling heavily back and almost succumbing to
the shock, she had so thoroughly convinced herself that what she said
was true. But hers was a courageous soul. She rallied instantly and
approaching him again with face uncovered and her whole potent
personality alive with magnetism, she retorted:

"You say that, eye to my eye, hand on my hand, heart beating with my
heart above the grave of our children's mutual happiness?"

"I do."

Convinced; for there was no wavering in his eye, no trembling in the
hand she had clasped; convinced but ready notwithstanding to repudiate
her own convictions, so much of the mother-passion, if not the wife's,
tugged at her heart, she remained immovable for a moment, waiting for
the impossible, hoping against hope for a withdrawal of his words and
the reillumination of hope. Then her hand fell away from his; she gave a
great sob, and, lowering her head, muttered:

"John Scoville smote down Algernon Etheridge! O God! O God! what
horror!"

A sigh from her one auditor welled up in the silence, holding a note
which startled her erect and brought back a memory which drove her again
into passionate speech:

"But he swore the day I last visited him in the prison, with his arms
pressed tight about me and his eye looking straight into mine as you are
looking now, that he never struck that blow. I did not believe him then,
there were too many dark spots in my memory of old lies premeditated and
destructive of my happiness; but I believed him later, AND I BELIEVE HIM
NOW."

"Madam, this is quite unprofitable. A jury of his peers condemned him as
guilty and the law compelled me to pass sentence upon him. That his
innocent child should be forced, by the inexorable decrees of fate, to
suffer for a father's misdoing, I regret as much, perhaps more, than you
do; for my son--beloved, though irreconcilably separated from
me--suffers with her, you say. But I see no remedy;--NO REMEDY, I
repeat. Were Oliver to forget himself so far as to ignore the past and
marry Reuther Scoville, a stigma would fall upon them both for which no
amount of domestic happiness could ever compensate. Indeed, there can be
no domestic happiness for a man and woman so situated. The inevitable
must be accepted. Madam, I have said my last word."

"But not heard mine," she panted. "For me to acknowledge the inevitable
where my daughter's life and happiness are concerned would make me seem
a coward in my own eyes. Helped or unhelped, with the sympathy or
without the sympathy of one who I hoped would show himself my friend, I
shall proceed with the task to which I have dedicated myself. You will
forgive me, judge. You see that John's last declaration of innocence
goes farther with me than your belief, backed as it is by the full
weight of the law."

Gazing at her as at one gone suddenly demented, he said:

"I fail to understand you, Mrs.--I will call you Mrs. Averill. You speak
of a task. What task?"

"The only one I have heart for: the proving that Reuther is not the
child of a wilful murderer; that another man did the deed for which he
suffered. I can do it. I feel confident that I can do it; and if you
will not help me--"

"Help you! After what I have said and reiterated that he is guilty,
GUILTY, GUILTY?"

Advancing upon her with each repetition of the word, he towered before
her, an imposing, almost formidable figure. Where was her courage now?
In what pit of despair had it finally gone down? She eyed him
fascinated, feeling her inconsequence and all the madness of her
romantic, ill-digested effort, when from somewhere in the maze of
confused memories there came to her a cry, not of the disappointed heart
but of a daughter's shame, and she saw again the desperate, haunted look
with which the stricken child had said in answer to some plea, "A
criminal's daughter has no place in this world but with the suffering
and the lost"; and nerved anew, she faced again his anger which might
well be righteous, and with almost preternatural insight, boldly
declared:

"You are too vehement to quite convince me, Judge Ostrander. Acknowledge
it or not, there is more doubt than certainty in your mind; a doubt
which ultimately will lead you to help me. You are too honest not to.
When you see that I have some reason for the hopes I express, your sense
of justice will prevail and you will confide to me the point untouched
or the fact unmet, which has left this rankling dissatisfaction to
fester in your mind. That known, my way should broaden;--a way, at the
end of which I see a united couple--my daughter and your son. Oh, she is
worthy of him--" the woman broke forth, as he made another repellent and
imperative gesture. "Ask any one in the town where we have lived."

Abruptly, and without apology for his rudeness, Judge Ostrander again
turned his back and walked away from her to an old-fashioned bookcase
which stood in one corner of the room. Halting mechanically before it,
he let his eyes roam up and down over the shelves, seeing nothing, as
she was well aware, but weighing, as she hoped, the merits of the
problem she had propounded him. She was, therefore, unduly startled when
with a quick whirl about which brought him face to face with her once
more, he impetuously asked:

"Madam, you were in my house this morning. You came in through a gate
which Bela had left unlocked. Will you explain how you came to do this?
Did you know that he was going down street, leaving the way open behind
him? Was there collusion between you?"

Her eyes looked up clearly into his. She felt that she had nothing to
disguise or conceal.

"I had urged him to do this, Judge Ostrander. I had met him more than
once in the street when he went out to do your errands, and I used all
my persuasion to induce him to give me this one opportunity of pleading
my cause with you. He was your devoted servant, he showed it in his
death, but he never got over his affection for Oliver. He told me that
he would wake oftentimes in the night feeling about for the boy he used
to carry in his arms. When I told him--"

"Enough! He knew who you were then?"

"He remembered me when I lifted my veil. Oh, I know very well that I had
not the right to influence your own man to disobey your orders. But my
cause was so pressing and your seclusion seemingly so arbitrary. How
could I dream that your nerves could not bear any sudden shock? or that
Bela--that giant among negroes--would be so affected by his emotions
that he would not see or hear an approaching automobile? You must not
blame me for these tragedies; and you must not blame Bela. He was torn
by conflicting duties, and only yielded because of his great love for
the absent."

"I do not blame Bela."

Startled, she looked at him with wondering eyes. There was a brooding
despair in his tone which caught at her heart, and for an instant made
her feel the full extent of her temerity. In a vain endeavour to regain
her confidence, she falteringly remarked.

"I had listened to what folks said. I had heard that you would receive
nobody; talk to nobody. Bela was my only resource."

"Madam, I do not blame YOU."

He was scrutinising her keenly and for the first time understandingly.
Whatever her station past or present, she was certainly no ordinary
woman, nor was her face without beauty, lit as it was by passion and
every ardour of which a loving woman is capable. No man would be likely
to resist it unless his armour were thrice forged. Would he himself be
able to? He began to experience a cold fear,--a dread which drew a black
veil over the future; a blacker veil than that which had hitherto rested
upon it.

But his face showed nothing. He was master of that yet. Only his tone.
That silenced her. She was therefore scarcely surprised when, with a
slight change of attitude which brought their faces more closely
together, he proceeded, with a piercing intensity not to be withstood:

"When you entered my house this morning, did you come directly to my
room?"

"Yes. Bela told me just how to reach it."

"And when you saw me indisposed--unable, in fact, to greet you--what did
you do then?"

With the force and meaning of one who takes an oath, she brought her
hand, palm downward on the table before her, as she steadily replied:

"I flew back into the room through which I had come, undecided whether
to fly the house or wait for what might happen to you, I had never seen
any one in such an attack before, and almost expected to hear you fall
forward to the floor. But when you did not and the silence, which seemed
so awful, remained unbroken, I pulled the curtain aside and looked in
again. There was no change in your posture; and, alarmed now for your
sake rather than for my own, I did not dare to go till Bela came back.
So I stayed watching."

"Stayed where?"

"In a dark corner of that same room. I never left it till the crowd came
in. Then I slid out behind them."

"Was the child with you--at your side I mean, all this time?"

"I never let go her hand."

"Woman, you are keeping nothing back?"

"Nothing but my terror at the sight of Bela running in all bloody to
escape the people pressing after him. I thought then that I had been the
death of servant as well as master. You can imagine my relief when I
heard that yours was but a passing attack."

Sincerity was in her manner and in her voice. The judge breathed more
easily, and made the remark:

"No one with hearing unimpaired can realise the suspicion of the deaf,
nor can any one who is not subject to attacks like mine conceive the
doubts with which a man so cursed views those who have been active about
him while the world to him was blank."

Thus he dismissed the present subject, to surprise her by a renewal of
the old one.

"What are your reasons," said he, "for the hopes you have just
expressed? I think it your duty to tell me before we go any further."

It was an acknowledgment, uttered after his own fashion, of the truth of
her plea and the correctness of her woman's insight. She contemplated
his face anew, and wondered that the dart she had so inconsiderately
launched should have found the one weak joint in this strong man's
armour. But she made no immediate reply, rather stopped to ponder,
finally saying, with drooped head and nervously working fingers:

"Excuse me for to-night. What I have to tell--or rather, what I have to
show you,--requires daylight." Then, as she became conscious of his
astonishment, added falteringly:

"Have you any objection to meeting me to-morrow on the bluff overlooking
Dark---"

The voice of the clock, and that only! Tick! Tick! Tick! Tick! That
only! Why then had she felt it impossible to finish her sentence? The
judge was looking at her; he had not moved; nor had an eyelash stirred,
but the rest of that sentence had stuck in her throat, and she found
herself standing as immovably quiet as he.

Then she remembered. He had loved Algernon Etheridge. Memory still
lived. The spot she had mentioned was a horror to him. Weakly she strove
to apologise.

"I am sorry," she began, but he cut her short at once.

"Why there?" he asked.

"Because"--her words came slowly, haltingly, as she tremulously, almost
fearfully, felt her way with him--"because--there--is--no--other
place--where--I can make--my point."

He smiled. It was his first smile in years and naturally was a little
constrained,--and to her eyes at least, almost more terrifying than his
frown.

"You have a point, then, to make?"

"A good one."

He started as if to approach her, and then stood stock-still.

"Why have you waited till NOW?" he called out, forgetful that they were
not alone in the house, forgetful apparently of everything but his
surprise and repulsion. "Why not have made use of this point before it
was too late? You were at your husband's trial; you were even on the
witness-stand?"

She nodded, thoroughly cowed at last both by his indignation and the
revelation contained in this question of the judicial mind--"Why now,
when the time was THEN?"

Happily, she had an answer.

"Judge Ostrander, I had a reason for that too; and, like my point, it is
a good one. But do not ask me for it to-night. To-morrow I will tell you
everything. But it will have to be in the place I have mentioned. Will
you come to the bluff where the ruins are one-half hour before sunset?
Please, be exact as to the time. You will see why, if you come."

He leaned across the table--they were on opposite sides of it--and
plunging his eyes into hers stood so, while the clock ticked out one
slow minute more, then he drew back, and remarking with an aspect of
gloom but with much less appearance of distrust:

"A very odd request, madam. I hope you have good reason for it;" adding,
"I bury Bela to-morrow and the cemetery is in this direction. I will
meet you where you say and at the hour you name."

And, regarding him closely as he spoke, she saw that for all the
correctness of his manner and the bow of respectful courtesy with which
he instantly withdrew, that deep would be his anger and unquestionable
the results to her if she failed to satisfy him at this meeting of the
value of her POINT in reawakening justice and changing public opinion.




IX

EXCERPTS


One of the lodgers at the Claymore Inn had great cause for complaint the
next morning. A restless tramping over his head had kept him awake all
night. That it was intermittent had made it all the more intolerable.
Just when he thought it had stopped, it would start up again,--to and
fro, to and fro, as regular as clockwork and much more disturbing.

But the complaint never reached Mrs. Averill. The landlady had been
restless herself. Indeed, the night had been one of thought and feeling
to more than one person in whom we are interested. The feeling we can
understand; the thought--that is, Mrs. Averill's thought--we should do
well to follow.

The one great question which had agitated her was this: Should she trust
the judge? Ever since the discovery which had changed Reuther's
prospects, she had instinctively looked to this one source for aid and
sympathy. Her reasons she has already given. His bearing during the
trial, the compunction he showed in uttering her husband's sentence were
sufficient proof to her that for all his natural revulsion against the
crime which had robbed him of his dearest friend, he was the victim of
an undercurrent of sympathy for the accused which could mean but one
thing--a doubt of the prisoner's actual guilt.

But her faith had been sorely shaken in the interview just related. He
was not the friend she had hoped to find. He had insisted upon her
husband's guilt, when she had expected consideration and a thoughtful
recapitulation of the evidence; and he had remained unmoved, or but very
little moved, by the disappointment of his son--his only remaining link
to life.

Why? Was the alienation between these two so complete as to block out
natural sympathy? Had the separation of years rendered them callous to
every mutual impression? She dwelt in tenderness upon the bond uniting
herself and Reuther and could not believe in such unresponsiveness. No
parent could carry resentment or even righteous anger so far as that.
Judge Ostrander might seem cold,--both manner and temper would naturally
be much affected by his unique and solitary mode of life,--but at heart
he must love Oliver. It was not in nature for it to be otherwise. And
yet--

It was at this point in her musing that there came one of the breaks in
her restless pacing. She was always of an impulsive temperament, and
always giving way to it. Sitting down before paper and ink she wrote the
following lines:

     My Darling if Unhappy Child:

     I know that this sudden journey on my part must strike you as
     cruel, when, if ever, you need your mother's presence and care. But
     the love I feel for you, my Reuther, is deep enough to cause you
     momentary pain for the sake of the great good I hope to bring you
     out of this shadowy quest. I believe, what I said to you on
     leaving, that a great injustice was done your father. Feeling so,
     shall I remain quiescent and see youth and love slip from you,
     without any effort on my part to set this matter straight? I
     cannot. I have done you the wrong of silence when knowledge would
     have saved you shock and bitter disillusion, but I will not add to
     my fault the inertia of a cowardly soul. Have patience with me,
     then; and continue to cherish those treasures of truth and
     affection which you may one day feel free to bestow once more upon
     one who has a right to each and all of them.

     This is your mother's prayer.

     DEBORAH SCOVILLE.

It was not easy for her to sign herself thus. It was a name which she
had tried her best to forget for twelve long, preoccupied years. But how
could she use any other in addressing her daughter who had already
declared her intention of resuming her father's name, despite the
opprobrium it carried and the everlasting bar it must in itself raise
between herself and Oliver Ostrander?

Deborah Scoville!

A groan broke from her lips as she rapidly folded that name in, and hid
it out of sight in the envelope she as rapidly addressed.

But her purpose had been accomplished, or would be when once this letter
reached Reuther. With these words in declaration against her she could
not retreat from the stand she had therein taken. It was another
instance of burning one's ships upon disembarking, and the effect made
upon the writer showed itself at once in her altered manner. Henceforth,
the question should be not what awaited her, but how she should show her
strength in face of the opposition she now expected to meet from this
clear-minded, amply equipped lawyer and judge she had called to her aid.

[Illustration: AFTER ONE LOOK HE ASSUMED SOME SHOW OF HIS OLD
COMMANDING PRESENCE AND ADVANCED BRAVELY DOWN THE STEPS.]

"A task for his equal, not for an ignorant, untried woman like myself,"
she thought; and, following another of her impulses, she leaped from her
seat at the table and rushed across to her dresser on which she placed
two candles, one at her right and another at her left. Then she sat down
between them and in the stillness of midnight surveyed herself in the
glass, as she might survey the face of a stranger.

What did she see? A countenance no longer young, and yet with some of
the charm of youth still lingering in the brooding eyes and in the
dangerous curves of a mobile and expressive mouth. But it was not for
charm she was looking, but for some signs of power quite apart from that
of sex. Did her face express intellect, persistence and, above all,
courage? The brow was good;--she would so characterise it in another.
Surely a woman with such a forehead might do something even against
odds. Nor was her chin weak; sometimes she had thought it too pronounced
for beauty; but what had she to do with beauty now? And the neck so
proudly erect! the heaving breast! the heart all aflame! Defeat is not
for such; or only such defeat as bears within it the germ of future
victory.

Is her reading correct? Time will prove. Meanwhile she will have
confidence in herself, and that this confidence might be well founded
she decided to spend the rest of the night in formulating her plans and
laying out her imaginary campaign.

Leaving the dresser she recommenced that rapid walking to and fro which
was working such havoc in the nerves of the man in the room below her.
When she paused, it was to ransack a trunk and bring out a flat wallet
filled with newspaper clippings, many of them discoloured by time, and
all of them showing marks of frequent handling.

A handling now to be repeated. For after a few moments spent in
arranging them, she deliberately set about their complete reperusal, a
task in which it has now become necessary for us to join her.

The first was black with old head-lines:

[Illustration: CRIME IN DARK HOLLOW]

           CRIME IN DARK HOLLOW

                   ----

Algernon Etheridge, One of Our Most Esteemed
Citizens, Waylaid and Murdered at Long Bridge.

                   ----

       A DIRECT CLUE TO THE MURDERER

                   ----

 The Stick With Which the Crime was Committed
         Easily Traced to Its Owner.
      The Landlord of Claymore Tavern
        in the Toils. He Denies His
        Guilt But Submits Sullenly
               to Arrest.

Particulars followed.

"Last evening Shelby's clean record was blackened by outrageous crime.
Some time after nightfall a carter was driving home by Factory Road,
when just as he was nearing Long Bridge one of his horses shied so
violently that he barely escaped being thrown from his seat. As he had
never known the animal to shy like this before, he was curious enough to
get down and look about him for the cause. Dark Hollow is never light,
but it is impenetrable after dark, and not being able to see anything,
he knelt down in the road and began to feel about with his hand. This
brought results. In a few moments he came upon the body of a man lying
without movement, and seemingly without life.

"Long Bridge is not a favourite spot at night, and, knowing that in all
probability an hour might elapse before assistance would arrive in the
shape of another passer-by, he decided to carry his story straight to
Claymore Tavern. Afterwards he was heard to declare that it was
fortunate his horses were headed that way instead of the other, or he
might have missed seeing the skulking figure which slipped down into the
ravine as he made the turn at the far end of the bridge--a figure which
had no other response to his loud 'Hola!' than a short cough, hurriedly
choked back. He could not see the face or identify the figure, but he
knew the cough. He had heard it a hundred times; and, saying to himself,
'I'll find fellers enough at the tavern, but there's one I won't find
there and that's John Scoville,' he whipped his horse up the hill and
took the road to Claymore.

"And he was right. A dozen fellows started up at his call, but Scoville
was not among them. He had been out for two hours; which the carter
having heard, he looked down, but said nothing except 'Come along, boys!
I'll drive you to the turn of the bridge.'

"But just as they were starting Scoville appeared. He was hatless and
dishevelled and reeled heavily with liquor. He also tried to smile,
which made the carter lean quickly down and with very little ceremony
drag him up into the cart. So with Scoville amongst them they rode
quickly back to the bridge, the landlord coughing, the men all grimly
silent.

"In crossing the bridge he made more than one effort to escape, but the
men were determined, and when they finally stooped over the man lying in
Dark Hollow, he was in their midst and was forced to stoop also.

"One flash of the lantern told the dismal tale. The man was not only
dead, but murdered. His forehead had been battered in with a knotted
stick; all his pockets hung out empty; and from the general disorder of
his dress it was evident that his watch had been torn away by a ruthless
hand. But the face they failed to recognise till some people, running
down from the upper town where the alarm had by this time spread, sent
up the shout of 'It's Mr. Etheridge! Judge Ostrander's great friend. Let
some one run and notify the judge.'

"But the fact was settled long before the judge came upon the scene, and
another fact too. In beating the bushes, they had lighted on a heavy
stick. When it was brought forward and held under the strong light made
by a circle of lanterns, a big movement took place in the crowd. The
stick had been recognised. Indeed, it was well known to all the Claymore
men. They had seen it in Scoville's hands a dozen times. Even he could
not deny its ownership; explaining, or trying to, that he had been in
the ravine looking for this stick only a little while before, and
adding, as he met their eyes:

"'I lost it in these woods this afternoon. I hadn't anything to do with
this killing.'

"He had not been accused; but he found it impossible to escape after
this, and when at the instance of Coroner Haines he was carefully looked
over and a small red ribbon found in one of his pockets, he was
immediately put under arrest and taken to the city lock-up. For the
ribbon had been identified as well as the stick. Oliver Ostrander, who
had accompanied his father to the scene of crime, declared that he had
observed it that very afternoon, dangling from one end of Mr.
Etheridge's watch-chain where it had been used to fasten temporarily a
broken link.

"As we go to press we hear that Judge Ostrander has been prostrated by
this blow. The deceased had been playing chess up at his house, and in
taking the short cut home had met with his death.

"Long Bridge should be provided with lights. It is a dangerous place for
foot passengers on a dark night."

A later paragraph.

"The detectives were busy this morning, going over the whole ground in
the vicinity of the bridge.

"They were rewarded by two important discoveries. The impression of a
foot in a certain soft place halfway up the bluff; and a small heap of
fresh earth nearby which, on being dug into, revealed the watch of the
murdered man. The broken chain lay with it.

"The footprint has been measured. It coincides exactly with the shoe
worn that night by the suspect.

"The case will be laid before the Grand Jury next week."

       *       *       *       *       *

"The prisoner continues to deny his guilt. The story he gives out is to
the effect that he left the tavern some few minutes before seven
o'clock, to look for his child who had wandered into the ravine. That he
entered the woods from the road running by his house, and was searching
the bushes skirting the stream when he heard little Reuther's shout from
somewhere up on the bluff. He had his stick with him, for he never went
out without it, but, finding it in his way, he leaned it against a tree
and went plunging up the bluff without it. Why he didn't call out the
child's name he doesn't know; he guessed he thought he would surprise
her; and why, when he got to the top of the bluff and didn't find her,
he should turn about for his stick instead of hunting for her on the
road, he also fails to explain, saying again, he doesn't know. What
circumstances force him to tell and what he declares to be true is this:
That instead of going back diagonally through the woods to the lone
chestnut where he had left his stick, he crossed the bridge and took the
path running along the edge of the ravine: That in doing this he came
upon the body of a man in the black recesses of the Hollow, a man so
evidently beyond all help that he would have hurried by without a second
look if it had not been for the watch he saw lying on the ground close
to the dead man's side. It was a very fine watch, and it seemed like
tempting Providence to leave it lying there exposed to the view of any
chance tramp who might come along. It seemed better for him to take it
into his own charge till he found some responsible person willing to
carry it to Police Headquarters. So, without stopping to consider what
the consequences might be to himself, he tore it away by the chain from
the hold it had on the dead man's coat and put it in his pocket. He also
took some other little things; after which he fled away into town, where
the sight of a saloon was too much for him and he went in to have a
drink to take the horrors out of him. Since then, the detectives have
followed all his movements and know just how much liquor he drank and to
whom, in tipsy bravado, he showed the contents of his pockets. But he
wasn't so far gone as not to have moments of apprehension when he
thought of the dead man lying with his feet in Dark Hollow, and of the
hue and cry which would soon be raised, and what folks might think if
that accursed watch he had taken so innocently should be found in his
pocket. Finally his fears overcame his scruples, and, starting for home,
he stopped at the bluff, meaning to run down over the bridge and drop
the watch as near as possible to the spot where he had found it. But as
he turned to descend, he heard a team approaching from the other side
and, terrified still more, he dashed into the woods, and, tearing up the
ground with his hands, buried his booty in the loose soil, and made for
home. Even then he had no intention of appropriating the watch, only of
safe-guarding himself, nor did he have any hand at all in the murder of
Mr. Etheridge. This he would swear to; also, to the leaving of the stick
where he said.

"It is understood that in case of his indictment, his lawyer will follow
the line of defence thus indicated."

       *       *       *       *       *

"To-day, John Scoville was taken to the tree where he insists he left
his stick. It is a big chestnut some hundred and fifty feet beyond the
point where the ravine turns west. It has a big enough trunk for a stick
to stand upright against it, as was shown by Inspector Snow who had
charge of this affair. But we are told that after demonstrating this
fact with the same bludgeon which had done its bloody work in the
Hollow, the prisoner showed a sudden interest in this weapon and begged
to see it closer. This being granted, he pointed out where a splinter or
two had been freshly whittled from the handle, and declared that no
knife had touched it while it remained in his hands. But, as he had no
evidence to support this statement (a knife having been found amongst
the other effects taken from his pocket at the time of his arrest), the
impression made by this declaration is not likely to go far towards
influencing public opinion in his favour.

"A true bill was found to-day against John Scoville for the murder of
Algernon Etheridge."

       *       *       *       *       *

A third clipping:

"We feel it our duty, as the one independent paper of this city, to
insist upon the right of a man to the consideration of the public till a
jury of his peers has pronounced upon his guilt and thus rendered him a
criminal before the law. The way our hitherto sufficiently respected
citizen, John Scoville, has been maligned and his every fault and
failing magnified for the delectation of a greedy public is unworthy of
a Christian community. No man saw him kill Algernon Etheridge, and he
himself denies most strenuously that he did so, yet from the first
moment of his arrest till now, not a voice has been raised in his
favour, or the least account taken of his defence. Yet he is the husband
of an estimable wife and the father of a child of such exceptional
loveliness that she has been the petted darling of high and low ever
since John Scoville became the proprietor of Claymore Tavern.

"Give the man a chance. It is our wish to see justice vindicated and the
guilty punished; but not before the jury has pronounced its verdict."

"The Star was his only friend," sighed Deborah Scoville, as she laid
this clipping aside and took up another headed by a picture of her
husband. This picture she subjected to the same scrutiny she had just
given to her own reflection in the glass: "Seeing him anew," as she said
to herself, "after all these years of determined forgetfulness."

It was not an unhandsome face. Indeed, it was his good looks which had
prevailed over her judgment in the early days of their courtship.
Reuther had inherited her harmony of feature from him,--the chiselled
nose, the well-modelled chin, and all the other physical graces which
had made him a fine figure behind his bar. But even with the softening
of her feelings towards him since she had thus set herself up in his
defence, Deborah could not fail to perceive under all these surface
attractions an expression of unreliability, or, as some would say, of
actual cruelty. Ruddy-haired and fair of skin, he should have had an
optimistic temperament; but, on the contrary, he was of a gloomy nature,
and only infrequently social. No company was better for his being in it.
Never had she seen any man sit out the evening with him without effort.
Yet the house had prospered. How often had she said to herself, in
noting these facts: "Yet the house prospers!" There was always money in
the till even when the patronage was small. Their difficulties were
never financial ones. She was still living on the proceeds of what they
had laid by in those old days.

Her mind continued to plunge back. He had had no business worries; yet
his temper was always uncertain. She had not often suffered from it
herself, for her ascendency over men extended even to him. But Reuther
had shrunk before it more than once--the gentle Reuther, who was the
refined, the etherealised picture of himself. And he had loved the child
as well as he could love anybody. Great gusts of fondness would come
over him at times, and then he would pet and cajole the child almost
beyond a parent's prerogative. But he was capable of striking her
too--had struck her frequently. And for nothing--an innocent look; a
shrinking movement; a smile when he wasn't in the mood for smiles. It
was for this Deborah had hated him; and it was for this the mother in
her now held him responsible for the doubts which had shadowed their
final parting. Was not the man, who could bring his hand down upon so
frail and exquisite a creature as Reuther was in those days, capable of
any act of violence? Yes; but in this case he had been guiltless. She
could not but concede this even while yielding to extreme revulsion as
she laid his picture aside.

       *       *       *       *       *

The next slip she took up contained an eulogy of the victim.

"The sudden death of Algernon Etheridge has been in more than one sense
a great shock to the community. Though a man of passive rather than
active qualities, his scholarly figure, long, lean and bowed, has been
seen too often in our streets not to be missed, when thus suddenly
withdrawn. His method of living; the rigid habits of an almost ascetic
life; such an hour for this thing, such an hour for that--his smile,
which made you soon forget his irascibility and pride of learning; made
up a character unique in our town and one that we can ill afford to
spare. The closed doors of the little cottage, so associated with his
name that it will be hard to imagine it occupied by any one else,
possess a pathos of their own which is felt by young and old alike. The
gate that never would latch, the garden, where at a stated hour in the
morning his bowed figure would always be seen hoeing or weeding or
raking, the windows without curtains showing the stacks of books within,
are eloquent of a presence gone, which can never be duplicated. Alone on
its desolate corner, it seems to mourn the child, the boy, the man who
gave it life, and made it, in its simplicity, more noted and more
frequently pointed at than any other house in town.

"Why he should have become the target of Fate is one of the mysteries of
life. His watch, which aside from his books was his most valuable
possession, was the gift of Judge Ostrander. That it should be
associated in any way with the tragic circumstances of his death is a
source of the deepest regret to the unhappy donor."

       *       *       *       *       *

This excerpt she hardly looked at; but the following she studied
carefully:

"Judge Ostrander has from the first expressed a strong desire that some
associate judge should be called upon to preside over the trial of John
Scoville for the murder of Algernon Etheridge. But Judge Saunders'
sudden illness and Judge Dole's departure for Europe have put an end to
these hopes. Judge Ostrander will take his seat on the bench as usual
next Monday. Fortunately for the accused, his well-known judicial mind
will prevent any unfair treatment of the defence."

       *       *       *       *       *

"The prosecution, in the able hands of District Attorney Foss, made all
its points this morning. Unless the defence has some very strong plea in
the background, the verdict seems foredoomed. A dogged look has replaced
the callous and indifferent sneer on the prisoner's face, and sympathy,
if sympathy there is, is centred entirely upon the wife, the able,
agreeable and bitterly humiliated landlady of Claymore Tavern. She it is
who has attracted the most attention during this trial, little as she
seems to court it."

       *       *       *       *       *

"Only one new detail of evidence was laid before the jury to-day.
Scoville has been known for some time to have a great hankering after a
repeating watch. He had once seen that of Algernon Etheridge, and was
never tired of talking about it. Several witnesses testified to his
various remarks on this subject. Thus the motive for his dastardly
assault upon an unoffending citizen, which to many minds has seemed
lacking, has been supplied.

"The full particulars of this day's proceedings will be found below."

       *       *       *       *       *

We omit these to save repetition; but they were very carefully conned by
Deborah Scoville. Also the following:

"The defence is in a line with the statement already given out. The
prisoner acknowledges taking the watch but from motives quite opposed to
those of thievery. Unfortunately he can produce no witnesses to
substantiate his declaration that he had heard voices in the direction
of the bridge while he was wandering the woods in search of his lost
child. No evidence of any other presence there is promised or likely to
be produced. It was thought that when his wife was called to the stand
she might have something to say helpful to his case. She had been the
one to ultimately find and lead home the child, and, silent as she had
been up to this time, it has been thought possible that she might swear
to having heard these voices also.

"But her testimony was very disappointing. She had seen nobody, heard
nobody but the child whom she had found playing with stones in the old
ruin. Though by a close calculation of time she could not have been far
from Dark Hollow at the instant of the crime, yet neither on direct or
cross-examination could anything more be elicited from her than what has
been mentioned above. Nevertheless, we feel obliged to state that,
irreproachable as her conduct was on the stand, the impression she made
was, on the whole, whether intentionally or unintentionally,
unfavourable to her husband.

"Some anxiety was felt during the morning session that an adjournment
would have to be called, owing to some slight signs of indisposition on
the part of the presiding judge. But he rallied very speedily, and the
proceedings continued without interruption."

       *       *       *       *       *

"Ah!"

The exclamation escaped the lips of Deborah Scoville as she laid this
clipping aside. "I remember his appearance well. He had the ghost of one
of those attacks, the full force of which I was a witness to this
morning. I am sure of this now, though nobody thought of it then. I
happened to glance his way as I left the stand, and he was certainly for
one minute without consciousness of himself or his surroundings. But it
passed so quickly it drew little attention; not so, the attack of
to-day. What a misfortune rests upon this man. Will they let him
continue on the bench when his full condition is known?" These were her
thoughts, as she recalled that day and compared it with the present.

There were other slips, which she read but which we may pass by. The
fate of the prisoner was in the hands of a jury. The possibility
suggested by the defence made no appeal to men who had the unfortunate
prisoner under their eye at every stage of the proceedings. The shifty
eye, the hang-dog look, outweighed the plea of his counsel and the call
for strict impartiality from the bench. He was adjudged guilty of murder
in the first degree, and sentence called for.

This was the end; and as she read these words, the horror which
overwhelmed her was infinitely greater than when she heard them uttered
in that fatal court room. For then she regarded him as guilty and
deserving his fate and now she knew him to be innocent.

Well, well! too much dwelling on this point would only unfit her for
what lay before her on the morrow. She would read no more. Sleep were a
better preparation for her second interview with the judge than this
reconsideration of facts already known to their last detail.

Alas, when her eyelids finally obeyed the dictates of her will, the
first glimmering rays of dawn were beginning to scatter the gloom of her
darkened chamber!




X

THE SHADOW


Bela was to be buried at four. As Judge Ostrander prepared to lock his
gate behind the simple cortege which was destined to grow into a vast
crowd before it reached the cemetery, he was stopped by the sergeant who
whispered in his ear:

"I thought your honour might like to know that the woman--you know the
one I mean without my naming her--has been amusing herself this morning
in a very peculiar manner. She broke down some branches in the
ravine,--small ones, of course,--and would give no account of herself
when one of my men asked her what she was up to. It may mean nothing,
but I thought you would like to know."

"Have you found out who she is?"

"No, sir. The man couldn't very well ask her to lift her veil, and at
the tavern they have nothing to say about her."

"It's a small matter. I will see her myself to-day and find out what she
wants of me. Meanwhile, remember that I leave this house and grounds
absolutely to your protection for the next three hours. I shall be known
to be absent, so that a more careful watch than ever is necessary. Not a
man, boy or child is to climb the fence. I may rely on you?"

"You may, judge."

"On my return you can all go. I will guard my own property after to-day.
You understand me, sergeant?"

"Perfectly, your honour."

This ended the colloquy.

Spencer's Folly, as the old ruin on the bluff was called in memory of
the vanished magnificence which was once the talk of the county,
presented a very different appearance to the eye in broad daylight from
what it did at night with a low moon sending its mellow rays through the
great gap made in its walls by that ancient stroke of lightning. Even
the enkindling beams of the westering sun striking level through the
forest failed to adorn its broken walls and battered foundations. To the
judge, approaching it from the highway, it was as ugly a sight as the
world contained. He hated its arid desolation and all the litter of
blackened bricks blocking up the site of former feastings and reckless
merriment, and, above all, the incongruous aspect of the one gable still
standing undemolished, with the zigzag marks of vanished staircases
outlined upon its mildewed walls. But, most of all, he shrank from a
sight of the one corner still intact where the ghosts of dead memories
lingered, making the whole place horrible to his eye and one to be
shunned by all men. How long it had been shunned by him he realised when
he noticed the increased decay of the walls and the growth of the
verdure encompassing the abominable place!

The cemetery from which he had come looked less lonesome to his eyes and
far less ominous; and, for a passing instant, as he contemplated the
scene hideous with old memories and threatening new sorrows, he envied
Bela his narrow bed and honourable rest.

A tall figure and an impressive presence are not without their
disadvantages. This he felt as he left the highway and proceeded up the
path which had once led through a double box hedge to the high, pillared
entrance. He abhorred scandal and shrank with almost a woman's distaste
from anything which savoured of the clandestine. Yet here he was about
to meet on a spot open to the view of every passing vehicle, a woman
who, if known to him, was a mystery to every one else. His expression
showed the scorn with which he regarded his own compliance, yet he knew
that no instinct of threatened dignity, no generous thought for her or
selfish one for himself would turn him back from this interview till he
had learned what she had to tell him and why she had so carefully
exacted that he should hear her story in a spot overlooking the Hollow
it would beseem them both to shun.

There had originally been in the days of Spencer's magnificence a lordly
portico at the end of this approach, girt by pillars of extraordinary
height. But no sign remained of pillar, or doorway--only a gap, as I
have said. Towards this gap he stepped, feeling a strange reluctance in
entering it. But he had no choice. He knew what he should see--No, he
did not know what he should see, for when he finally stepped in, it was
not an open view of the Hollow which met his eyes, but the purple-clad
figure of Mrs. Averill with little Peggy at her side. He had not
expected to see the child, and, standing as they were with their backs
to him, they presented a picture which, for some reason to be found in
the mysterious recesses of his disordered mind, was exceedingly
repellent to him. Indeed, he was so stricken by it that he had actually
made a move to withdraw, when the exigency of the occasion returned upon
him in full force, and, with a smothered oath, he overcame his weakness
and stepped firmly up into the ruins.

The noise he made should have caused Deborah's tall and graceful figure
to turn. But the spell of her own thoughts was too great; and he would
have found himself compelled to utter the first word, if the child, who
had heard him plainly enough, had not dragged at the woman's hand and so
woke her from her dream.

"Ah, Judge Ostrander," she exclaimed in a hasty but not ungraceful
greeting, "you are very punctual. I was not looking for you yet." Then,
as she noted the gloom under which he was labouring, she continued with
real feeling, "Indeed, I appreciate this sacrifice you have made to my
wishes. It was asking a great deal of you to come here; but I saw no
other way of making my point clear. Come over here, Peggy, and build me
a little house out of these stones. You don't mind the child, do you,
judge? She may offer a diversion if our retreat is invaded."

The gesture of disavowal which he made was courteous but insincere. He
did mind the child, but he could not explain why; besides he must
overcome such folly.

"Now," she continued as she rejoined him on the place where he had taken
his stand, "I will ask you to go back with me to the hour when John
Scoville left the tavern on that fatal day. I am not now on oath, but I
might as well be for any slip I shall make in the exact truth. I was
making pies in the kitchen, when some one came running in to say that
Reuther had strayed away from the front yard. She was about the age of
the little one over there, and we never allowed her out alone for fear
of her tumbling off the bluff. So I set down the pie I was just putting
in the oven, and was about to run out after her when my husband called
to me from the front, and said he would go. I didn't like his tone--it
was sullen and impatient, but I knew he loved the child too well to see
her suffer any danger, and so I settled back to work and was satisfied
enough till the pies were all in. Then I got uneasy, and, hearing
nothing of either of them, I started in this direction because they told
me John had taken the other. And here I found her, sir, right in the
heart of these ruins. She was playing with stones just as Peggy dear is
doing now. Greatly relieved, I was taking her away when I thought I
heard John calling. Stepping up to the edge just behind where you are
standing, sir--yes, there, where you get such a broad outlook up and
down the ravine, I glanced in the direction from which I had heard his
call--Just wait a moment, sir; I want to know the exact time."

Stopping, she pulled out her watch and looked at it, while he, faltering
up to the verge which she had pointed out, followed her movements with
strange intensity as she went on to say in explanation of her act:

"The time is important, on account of a certain demonstration I am
anxious to make. You will remember that I was expecting to see John,
having heard his voice in the ravine. Now if you will lean a little
forward and look where I am pointing, you will notice at the turn of the
stream, a spot of ground more open than the rest. Please keep your eyes
on that spot, for it was there I saw at this very hour twelve years ago
the shadow of an approaching figure; and it is there you will presently
see one similar, if the boy I have tried to interest in this experiment
does not fail me. Now, now, sir! We should see his shadow before we see
him. Oh, I hope the underbrush and trees have not grown up too thick! I
tried to thin them out to-day. Are you watching, sir?"

He seemed to be, but she dared not turn to look. Both figures leaned,
intent, and in another moment she had gripped his arm and clung there.

"Did you see?" she whispered, "Don't mind the boy; it's the shadow I
wanted you to notice. Did you observe anything marked about it?"

She had drawn him back into the ruins. They were standing in that one
secluded corner under the ruinous gable, and she was gazing up at him
very earnestly. "Tell me, judge," she entreated as he made no effort to
answer.

With a hurried moistening of his lips, he met her look and responded,
with a slight emphasis:

"The boy held a stick. I should say that he was whittling it."

"Ah!" Her tone was triumphant. "That was what I told him to do. Did you
see anything else?"

"No. I do not understand this experiment or what you hope from it."

"I will tell you. The shadow which I saw at a moment very like this,
twelve years ago, showed a man whittling a stick and wearing a cap with
a decided peak in front. My husband wore such a cap--the only one I knew
of in town. What more did I need as proof that it was his shadow I saw?"

"And wasn't it?"

"Judge Ostrander, I never thought differently till after the trial--till
after the earth closed over my poor husband's remains. That was why I
could say nothing in his defence--why I did not believe him when he
declared that he had left his stick behind him when he ran up the bluff
after Reuther. The tree he pointed out as the one against which he had
stood it, was far behind the place where I saw this advancing shadow.
Even the oath he made to me of his innocence at the last interview we
held in prison did not impress me at the time as truthful. But later,
when it was all over, when the disgrace of his death and the necessity
of seeking a home elsewhere drove me into selling the tavern and all its
effects, I found something which changed my mind in this regard, and
made me confident that I had done my husband a great injustice."

"You found? What do you mean by that? What could you have found?"

"His peaked cap lying in a corner of the garret. He had not worn it that
day."

The judge stared. She repeated her statement, and with more emphasis:

"He had not worn it that day; for when he came back to be hustled off
again by the crowd, he was without hat of any kind, and he never
returned again to his home--you know that, judge. I had seen the shadow
of some other man approaching Dark Hollow. WHOSE, I AM IN THIS TOWN NOW
TO FIND OUT."




XI

"I WILL THINK ABOUT IT"


Judge Ostrander was a man of keen perception, quick to grasp an idea,
quick to form an opinion. But his mind acted slowly to-night. Deborah
Scoville wondered at the blankness of his gaze and the slow way in which
he seemed to take in this astounding fact.

At last he found voice and with it gave some evidence of his usual
acumen.

"Madam, a shadow is an uncertain foundation on which to build such an
edifice as you plan. How do you know that the fact you mention was
coincident with the crime? Mr. Etheridge's body was not found till after
dark. A dozen men might have come down that path with or without sticks
before he reached the bridge and fell a victim to the assault which laid
him low."

"I thought the time was pretty clearly settled by the hour he left your
house. The sun had not set when he turned your corner on his way home.
So several people said who saw him. Besides--"

"Yes; there is a BESIDES. I'm sure of it."

"I saw the tall figure of a man, whom I afterwards made sure was Mr.
Etheridge, coming down Factory Road on his way to the bridge when I
turned about to get Reuther."

"All of which you suppressed at the trial."

"I was not questioned on this point, sir."

"Madam,"--he was standing very near to her now, hemming her as it were
into that decaying corner--"I should have a very much higher opinion of
your candour if you told me the whole story."

"I have, sir."

His hands rose, one to the right hand wall, the other to the left, and
remained there with their palms resting heavily against the rotting
plaster. She was more than ever hemmed in; but, though she felt a trifle
frightened at his aspect which certainly was not usual, she faced him
without shrinking and in very evident surprise.

"You went immediately home with the child after that glimpse you got of
Mr. Etheridge?"

"Yes; I had no reason in the world to suppose that anything was going to
happen in the ravine below us. Of course, I went straight on; there were
things to be done at home, and--you don't believe me, sir."

His hands fell; an indefinable change had come over his aspect; he bowed
and seemed about to utter an ironic apology. She felt puzzled and
unconsciously she began to think. What was lacking in her statement?
Something. Could she remember what? Something which he had expected;
something which as presiding judge over John's trial he had been made
aware of and now recalled to render her story futile. It couldn't be
that one little thing--But yes, it might be. Nothing is little where a
great crime is concerned. She smiled a dubious smile, then she said:

"It seems too slight a fact to mention, and, indeed, I had forgotten it
till you pressed me, but after we had passed the gates and were well out
on the highway, I found that Reuther had left her little pail behind her
here, and we came back and got it. Did you mean that, sir?"

"I meant nothing; but I felt sure you had not told all you could about
that fatal ten minutes. You came back. It is quite a walk from the road.
The man whose shadow you saw must have reached the bridge by this time.
What did you see then or--hear?"

"Nothing. Absolutely nothing, judge. I was intent on finding the baby's
pail, and having found it I hurried back home all the faster."

"And tragedy was going on or was just completed, in plain sight from
this gap!"

"I have no doubt, sir; and if I had looked, possibly John might have
been saved."

The silence following this was broken by a crash and a little cry.
Peggy's house had tumbled down.

The small incident was a relief. Both assumed more natural postures.

"So the shadow is your great and only point," remarked the judge.

"It is sufficient for me."

"Ah, perhaps."

"But not enough for the public?"

"Hardly."

"Not enough for you, either?"

"Madam, I have already told you that, in my opinion, John Scoville was a
guilty man."

"And this fact, with which I have just acquainted you, has done nothing
to alter this opinion?"

"I can only repeat what I have just said."

"Oh, Reuther! Oh, Oliver!"

"Do not speak my son's name. I am in no mood for it. The boy and girl
are two and can never become one. I have other views for her--she is an
innocent victim and she has my sympathy. You, too, madam, though I
consider you as following a will-o'-the-wisp which will only lead you
hopelessly astray."

"I shall not desist, Judge Ostrander."

"You are going to pursue this Jack-o'-Lanthorn?"

"I am determined to. If you deny me aid and advice, I shall seek another
counsellor. John's name must be vindicated."

"Obstinacy, madam."

"No; conscience."

He gave her a look, turned and glanced down at the child piling stone on
stone and whimpering just a little when they fell.

"Watch that baby for a while," he remarked, "and you will learn the
lesson of most human endeavour. Madam, I have a proposition to make you.
You cannot wish to remain at the inn, nor can you be long happy
separated from your daughter. I have lost Bela. I do not know how, nor
would I be willing, to replace him by another servant. I need a
housekeeper; some one devoted to my interests and who will not ask me to
change my habits too materially. Will you accept the position, if I add
as an inducement my desire to have Reuther also as an inmate of my home?
This does not mean that I countenance or in any way anticipate her union
with my son. I do not; but any other advantages she may desire, she
shall have. I will not be strict with her."

"Judge Ostrander!"

Deborah Scoville was never more taken aback in her life. The recluse
opening his doors to two women! The man of mystery flinging aside the
reticences of years to harbour an innocence which he refused to let
weigh against the claims of a son he has seen fit to banish from his
heart and home!

"You may take time to think of it," he continued, as he watched the
confused emotions change from moment to moment the character of her
mobile features. "I shall not have my affairs adjusted for such a change
before a week. If you accept, I shall be very grateful. If you decline,
I shall close up my two rear gates, and go into solitary seclusion. I
can cook a meal if I have to."

And she saw that he would do it; saw and wondered still more.

"I shall have to write to Reuther," she murmured. "How soon do you want
my decision?"

"In four days."

"I am too disturbed to thank you, judge. Should--should we have to keep
the gates locked?"

"No. But you would have to keep out unwelcome intruders. And the rights
of my library will have to be respected. In all other regards I should
wish, under these new circumstances, to live as other people live. I
have been very lonely these past twelve years."

"I will think about it."

"And you may make note of these two conditions: Oliver's name is not to
be mentioned in my hearing, and you and Reuther are to be known by your
real names."

"You would--"

"Yes, madam. No secrecy is to be maintained in future as to your
identity or my reasons for desiring you in my house. I need a
housekeeper and you please me. That you have a past to forget and
Reuther a disappointment to overcome, gives additional point to the
arrangement."

Her answer was:

"I cannot take back what I have said about my determined purpose." In
repeating this, she looked up at him askance.

He smiled. She remembered that smile long after the interview was over
and only its memory remained.




XII

SOUNDS IN THE NIGHT


Dearest Mother:

Where could we go that disgrace would not follow us? Let us
then accept the judge's offer. I am the more inclined to do
this because of the possible hope that some day he may come
to care for me and allow me to make life a little brighter
for him. The fact that for some mysterious reason he feels
himself cut off from all intercourse with his son, may prove
a bond of sympathy between us. I, too, am cut off from all
companionship with Oliver. Between us also a wall is raised.
Do not mind that tear-drop, mamma. It is the last.

Kisses for my comforter. Come soon.

REUTHER.

Over this letter Deborah Scoville sat for two hours, then she rang for
Mrs. Yardley.

The maid who answered her summons surveyed her in amazement. It was the
first time that she had seen her uncovered face.

Mrs. Yardley was not long in coming up.

"Mrs. Averill--" she began in a sort of fluster, as she met her strange
guest's quiet eye.

But she got no further. That guest had a correction to make.

"My name is not Averill," she protested. "You must excuse the temporary
deception. It is Scoville. I once occupied your present position in this
house."

Mrs. Yardley had heard all about the Scovilles; and, while a flush rose
to her cheeks, her eyes snapped with sudden interest.

"Ah!" came in quick exclamation, followed, however, by an apologetic
cough and the somewhat forced and conventional remark: "You find the
place changed, no doubt?"

"Very much so, and for the better, Mrs. Yardley." Then, with a
straightforward meeting of the other's eye calculated to disarm whatever
criticism the situation might evoke, she quietly added, "You need no
longer trouble yourself with serving me my meals in my room. I will eat
dinner in the public dining-room to-day with the rest of the boarders. I
have no further reason for concealing who I am or what my future
intentions are. I am going to live with Judge Ostrander, Mrs.
Yardley;--keep house for him, myself and daughter. His man is dead and
he feels very helpless. I hope that I shall be able to make him
comfortable."

Mrs. Yardley's face was a study. In all her life she had never heard
news that surprised her more. In fact, she was mentally aghast. Judge
Ostrander admitting any one into his home, and this woman above all!
Yet, why not? He, certainly, would have to have some one. And this woman
had always been known as a notable housekeeper. In another moment, she
had accepted the situation, like the very sensible woman she was, and
Mrs. Scoville had the satisfaction of seeing the promise of real
friendly support in the smile with which Mrs. Yardley remarked:

"It's a good thing for you and a very good thing for the judge. It may
shake him out of his habit of seclusion. If it does, you will be the
city's benefactor. Good luck to you, madam. And you have a daughter, you
say?"

       *       *       *       *       *

After Mrs. Yardley's departure, Mrs. Scoville, as she now expected
herself to be called, sat for a long time brooding. Would her quest be
facilitated or irretrievably hindered by her presence in the judge's
house? She had that yet to learn. Meanwhile, there was one thing more to
be accomplished. She set about it that evening.

Veiled, but in black now, she went into town. Getting down at the corner
of Colburn Avenue and Perry Street, she walked a short distance on
Perry, then rang the bell of an attractive-looking house of moderate
dimensions. Being admitted, she asked to see Mr. Black, and for an hour
sat in close conversation with him. Then she took a trolley-car which
carried her into the suburbs. When she alighted, it was unusually late
for a woman to be out alone; but she had very little physical fear, and
walked on steadily enough for a block or two till she came to a corner,
where a high fence loomed forbiddingly between her and a house so dark
that it was impossible to distinguish between its chimneys and the
encompassing trees whose swaying tops could be heard swishing about
uneasily in the keen night air. An eerie accompaniment, this latter, to
the beating of Deborah's heart already throbbing with anticipation and
keyed to an unusual pitch by her own daring.

Was she quite alone in the seemingly quiet street? She could hear no
one, see no one. A lamp burned in front of Miss Weeks' small house, but
the road it illumined (I speak of the one running down to the ravine)
showed only darkened houses.

She had left the corner and was passing the gate of the Ostrander
homestead, when she heard, coming from some distant point within, a low
and peculiar sound which held her immovable for a moment, then sent her
on shuddering.

It was the sound of hammering.

What is there in a rat-tat-tat in the dead of night which rouses the
imagination and fills the mind with suggestions which we had rather not
harbour when in the dark and alone? Deborah Scoville was not
superstitious, but she had keen senses and mercurial spirits and was
easily moved by suggestion.

Hearing this sound and locating it where she did, she remembered, with a
quick inner disturbance, that the judge's house held a secret; a secret
of such import to its owner that the dying Bela had sought to preserve
it at the cost of his life.

Oh, she had heard all about that! The gossip at Claymore Inn had been
great, and nothing had been spared her curiosity. There was something in
this house which it behooved the judge to secrete from sight yet more
completely before her own and Reuther's entrance, and he was at work
upon it now, hammering with his own hand while other persons slept! No
wonder she edged her way along the fence with a shrinking, yet
persistent, step. She was circling her future home and that house held a
mystery.

And yet, like any other imaginative person under a stress of aroused
feeling, she might very easily be magnifying some commonplace act into
one of terrifying possibilities. One can hammer very innocently in his
own house, even at night, when making preparations to receive fresh
inmates after many years of household neglect.

She recognised her folly before reaching the adjoining field. But she
went on. Where the fence turned, she turned, there being no obstruction
to her doing so. This brought her into a wilderness of tangled grasses
where free stepping was difficult. As she groped her way along, she had
ample opportunity to hear again the intermittent sounds of the hammer,
and to note that they reached their maximum at a point where the ell of
the judge's study approached the fences.

Rat-tat-tat; rat-tat-tat. She hated the sound even while she whispered
to herself:

"It is just some household matter he is at work upon;--rehanging
pictures or putting up shelves. It can be nothing else."

Yet on laying her ear to the fence, she felt her sinister fears return;
and, with shrinking glances into a darkness which told her nothing, she
added in fearful murmur to herself:

"What am I taking Reuther into? I wish I knew. I wish I knew."




BOOK II

THE HOUSE AND THE ROOM




XIII

A BIT OF STEEL


"When are you going to Judge Ostrander's?"

"To-morrow. This is my last free day. So if there is anything for me to
do, do tell me, Mr. Black, and let me get to work at once."

"There is nothing you can do. The matter is hopeless."

"You think so?"

There was misery in the tone, but the seasoned old lawyer, who had
conducted her husband's defence, did not allow his sympathies to run
away with his judgment.

"I certainly do, madam. I told you so the other night, and now, after a
couple of days of thought on the subject, I am obliged to repeat my
assertion. Your own convictions in the matter, and your story of the
shadow and the peaked cap may appeal to the public and assure you some
sympathy, but for an entire reversal of its opinion you will need
substantial and incontrovertible evidence. You must remember--you will
pardon my frankness--that your husband's character failed to stand the
test of inquiry. His principles were slack, his temper violent. You have
suffered from both and must know. A poor foundation I found it for his
defence; and a poor one you will find it for that reversal of public
opinion upon which you count, without very strong proof that the crime
for which he was punished was committed by another man. You think you
have such proof, but it is meagre, very meagre. Find me something
definite to go upon and we will talk."

"Discouragement; discouragement everywhere," she complained. "Yet I know
John to have been innocent of this crime."

The lawyer raised his brows, and toyed impatiently with his watch-chain.
If her convictions found any echo in his own mind, he gave no evidence
of it. Doubtfully she eyed him.

"What you want," she observed at length, with a sigh, "is the name of
the man who sauntered down the ravine ahead of my husband. I cannot give
it to you now, but I do not despair of learning it."

"Twelve years ago, madam; twelve years ago."

"I know; but I have too much confidence in my cause to be daunted even
by so serious an obstacle as that. I shall yet put my finger on this
man. But I do not say that it will be immediately. I have got to renew
old acquaintances; revive old gossip; possibly, recall to life almost
obliterated memories."

Mr. Black, dropping his hand from his vest, gave her his first look of
unqualified admiration.

"You ring true," said he. "I have met men qualified to lead a Forlorn
Hope; but never before a woman. Allow me to express my regret that it is
such a forlorn one." Then, with a twinkle in his eye which bespoke a
lighter mood, he remarked in a curiously casual tone.

"Talking of gossip, there is but one person in town who is a complete
repository of all that is said or known this side of Colchester." (The
next town.) "I never knew her to forget anything; and I never knew her
to be very far from the truth. She lives near Judge Ostrander--a quaint
little body, not uninteresting to talk to; a regular character, in fact.
Do you know what they say about her house? That everything on God's
earth can be found in it. That you've but to name an object, and she
will produce it. She's had strange opportunities for collecting odds and
ends, and she's never neglected one of them. Yet her house is but a box.
Miss Weeks is her name."

"I will remember it."

Mrs. Scoville rose. Then she sat down again, with the remark:

"I have a strange notion. It's a hard thing to explain and you may not
understand me, but I should like to see, if it still exists, the
stick--my husband's stick--with which this crime was committed. Do the
police retain such things? Is there any possibility of my finding it
laid away in some drawer at Headquarters or on some dusty shelf?"

Mr. Black was again astonished. Was this callousness or a very deep and
determined purpose.

"I don't know. I never go pottering about at Headquarters. What do you
want to see that for? What help can you get out of that?"

"None probably; but in the presence of defeat you grasp at every hope. I
dreamt of that stick last night. I was in an awful wilderness, all
rocks, terrific gorges and cloud-covered, unassailable peaks. A
light--one ray and one only--shone on me through the darkness. Towards
this ray I was driven through great gaps in the yawning rocks and along
narrow galleries sloping above an unfathomable abyss. Hope lay beyond,
rescue, light. But a wall reared its black length between. I came upon
it suddenly; a barrier mighty and impenetrable with its ends lost in
obscurity. And the ray! the one long beam! It was still there. It shone
directly upon me from an opening in this wall. It marked a gate,--a gate
for which I only lacked the key. Where should I find one to fit a lock
so gigantic! Nowhere! unless the something which I held--which had been
in my hands from the first--would be found to move its stubborn wards. I
tried it and it did! it did! I hear the squeak of those tremendous
hinges now, and--Mr. Black, you must have guessed what that something
was. My husband's stick! the bludgeon with whose shape I was so familiar
twelve years ago! It is that and that only which will lead us to the
light. Of this I feel quite sure."

A short and ironical grunt answered her. Mr. Black was not always the
pink of politeness even in the presence of ladies.

"Most interesting," he commented sarcastically. "The squeak you heard
was probably the protest of the bed you were reclining on against such a
misuse of the opportunities it offered you. A dream listened to as
evidence in this office! You must have a woman's idea of the value of my
time."

Flushing with discomfiture, she attempted to apologise, when he cut her
short. "Nevertheless, you shall see the stick if it is still to be
found. I will take you to Police Headquarters if you will go heavily
veiled. We don't want any recognition of you there YET."

"You will take me--"

"The fact that I never go there may make my visit not unwelcome. I'll do
it; yes, I'll do it."

"Mr. Black, you are very good. How soon--"

"Now," he announced, jumping up to get his hat. "A woman who can take up
a man's time, with poetry and dreams, might as well have the whole
afternoon. Are you ready? Shall we go?"

All alacrity, in spite of the irony of his bow and smile, he stood at
the door waiting for her to follow him. This she did slowly and with
manifest hesitation. She did not understand the man. People often said
of her that she did not understand her own charm.

There was one little fact of which Mr. Black was ignorant;--that the
police had had their eye on the veiled lady at Claymore Inn for several
days now and knew who his companion was the instant they stepped into
Headquarters. In vain his plausible excuses for showing his lady friend
the curiosities of the place; her interest in the details of criminology
was well understood by Sergeant Doolittle, though of course he had not
sounded its full depths, and could not know from any one but Judge
Ostrander himself, her grave reasons for steeping her mind again in the
horrors of her husband's long-since expiated crime. And Judge Ostrander
was the last man who would be likely to give him this information.

Therefore, when he saw the small, mocking eye of the lawyer begin to
roam over the shelves, and beheld his jaw drop as it sometimes did when
he sought to veil his purpose in an air of mild preoccupation, he knew
what the next request would be, as well as if the low sounds which left
Mr. Black's lips at intervals had been words instead of inarticulate
grunts. He was, therefore, prepared when the question did come.

"Any memorial of the Etheridge case?"

"Nothing but a stick with blood-marks on it. That, I'm afraid, wouldn't
be a very agreeable sight for a lady's eye."

"She's proof," the lawyer whispered in the officer's ear. "Let's see the
stick."

The sergeant considered this a very interesting experience--quite a
jolly break in the dull monotony of the day. Hunting up the stick, he
laid it in the lawyer's hands, and then turned his eye upon the lady.

She had gone pale, but it took her but an instant to regain her
equanimity and hold out her own hand for the weapon.

With what purpose? What did she expect to see in it which others had not
seen many times? She did not know, herself. She was simply following an
impulse, just as she had felt herself borne on by some irresistible
force in her dream. And so, the three stood there, the men's faces
ironic, inquisitive, wondering at the woman's phlegm if not at her
motive; hers, hidden behind her veil, but bent forward over the weapon
in an attitude of devouring interest. Thus for a long, slow minute; then
she impulsively raised her head and, beckoning the two men nearer, she
directed attention to a splintered portion of the handle and asked them
what they saw there.

"Nothing; just stick," declared the sergeant. "The marks you are looking
for are higher up."

"And you, Mr. Black?"

He saw nothing either but stick. But he was little less abrupt in his
answer.

"Do you mean those roughnesses?" he asked. "That's where the stick was
whittled. You remember that he had been whittling at the stick--"

"Who?"

The word shot from her lips so violently that for a moment both men
looked staggered by it. Then Mr. Black, with unaccustomed forbearance,
answered gently enough:

"Why, Scoville, madam; or so the prosecution congratulated itself upon
having proved to the jury's satisfaction. It did not tally with
Scoville's story or with common sense I know. You remember,--pardon
me,--I mean that any one who read a report of the case, will remember
how I handled the matter in my speech. But the prejudice in favour of
the prosecution--I will not say against the defence--was too much for
me, and common sense, the defendant's declarations, and my eloquence all
went for nothing."

"Of course they produced the knife?"

"Yes, they produced the knife."

"It was in his pocket?"

"Yes."

"Have they that here?"

"No, we haven't that here."

"But you remember it?"

"Remember it?"

"Was it a new knife, a whole one, I mean, with all its blades sharp and
in good order?"

"Yes. I can say that. I handled it several times."

"Then, whose blade left that?" And again she pointed to the same place
on the stick where her finger had fallen before.

"I don't know what you mean." The sergeant looked puzzled. Perhaps, his
eyesight was not very keen.

"Have you a magnifying-glass? There is something embedded in this wood.
Try and find out what it is."

The sergeant, with a queer look at Mr. Black, who returned it with
interest, went for a glass, and when he had used it, the stare he gave
the heavily veiled woman drove Mr. Black to reach out his own hand for
the glass.

"Well," he burst forth, after a prolonged scrutiny, "there is something
there."

"The point of a knife blade. The extreme point," she emphasised. "It
might easily escape the observation even of the most critical, without
such aid as is given by this glass."

"No one thought of using a magnifying-glass on this," blurted out the
sergeant. "The marks made by the knife were plain enough for all to see,
and that was all which seemed important."

Mr. Black said nothing; he was feeling a trifle cheap;--something which
did not agree with his crusty nature. Not having seen Mrs. Scoville for
a half-hour without her veil, her influence over him was on the wane,
and he began to regret that he had laid himself open to this
humiliation.

She saw that it would be left for her to wind up the interview and get
out of the place without arousing too much attention. With a
self-possession which astonished both men, knowing her immense interest
in this matter, she laid down the stick, and, with a gentle shrug of her
shoulders, remarked in an easy tone:

"Well, it's curious! The inns and outs of a crime, I mean. Such a
discovery ten years after the event (I think you said ten years) is very
interesting." Then she sighed: "Alas! it's too late to benefit the one
whose life it might have saved. Mr. Black, shall we be going? I have
spent a most entertaining quarter of an hour."

Mr. Black glanced from her to the sergeant before he joined her. Then,
with one of his sour smiles directed towards the former, he said:

"I wouldn't be talking about this, sergeant. It will do no good, and may
subject us to ridicule."

The sergeant, none too well pleased, nodded slightly. Seeing which, she
spoke up:

"I don't know about that, I should think it but proper reparation to the
dead to let it be known that his own story of innocence has received
this late confirmation."

But the lawyer continued to shake his head, with a very sharp look at
the sergeant. If he could have his way, he would have this matter stop
just where it was.

Alas! he was not to have his way, as he saw, when at parting he essayed
to make a final protest against a public as well as premature reopening
of this old case. She did not see her position as he did, and wound up
her plea by saying:

"The public must lend their aid, if we are to get the evidence we need
to help us. Can we find the man who whittled that stick? Never. But some
one else may. I am going to give the men and women of this town a
chance. I'm too anxious to clear my husband's memory to shrink from any
publicity. You see, I believe that the real culprit will yet be found."

The lawyer dropped argument. When a woman speaks in that tone,
persuasion is worse than useless. Besides, she had raised her veil.
Strange, what a sensitive countenance will do!




XIV

ALL IS CLEAR


"This is my daughter, Judge Ostrander, Reuther, this is the judge."

The introduction took place at the outer gates whither the judge had
gone to receive them.

Reuther threw aside her veil, and looked up into the face bent
courteously towards her. It had no look of Oliver. Somehow she felt
glad. She could hardly have restrained herself if he had met her gaze
with Oliver's eyes. They were fine eyes notwithstanding, piercing by
nature but just now misty with a feeling that took away all her fear. He
was going to like her; she saw it in every trembling line of his
countenance, and at the thought a smile rose to her lips which, if
fleeting, lent such an ethereal aspect to her beauty that he forgave
Oliver then and there for a love which never could be crowned, but which
henceforth could no longer be regarded by him as despicable.

With a courteous gesture he invited them in, but stopping to lock one
gate before leading them through the other, Mrs. Scoville had time to
observe that since her last visit with its accompanying inroad of the
populace, the two openings which at this point gave access to the walk
between the fences had been closed up with boards so rude and dingy that
they must have come from some old lumber pile in attic or cellar.

The judge detected her looking at them.

"I have cut off my nightly promenade," said he. "With youth in the
house, more cheerful habits must prevail. To-morrow I shall have my lawn
cut, and if I must walk after sundown I will walk there."

The two women exchanged glances. Perhaps their gloomy anticipations were
not going to be realised.

But once within the house, the judge showed embarrassment. He was
conscious of its unfitness for their fastidious taste and yet he had not
known how to improve matters. In his best days he had concerned himself
very little with household affairs, and for the last few years he had
not given a thought to anything outside his own rooms. Bela had done
all--and Bela was pre-eminently a cook, not a general house-servant. How
would these women regard the disorder and the dust?

"I have few comforts to offer," said he, opening a door at his right and
then hastily closing it again. "This part of the house is, as you see,
completely dismantled and not--very clean. But you shall have carte
blanche to arrange to your liking one of these rooms for your
sitting-room and parlour. There is furniture in the attic and you may
buy freely whatever else is necessary. I don't want to discourage little
Reuther. As for your bedrooms--" He stopped, hemmed a little and flushed
a vivid red as he pointed up the dingy flight of uncarpeted stairs
towards which he had led them. "They are above; but it is with shame I
admit that I have not gone above this floor for many years.
Consequently, I don't know how it looks up there or whether you can even
find towels and things. Perhaps you will go up first, Mrs. Scoville. I
will stay here while you take a look. I really, couldn't have a strange
cleaning-woman here, or any one who would make remarks. Have I counted
too much on your good-nature?"

"No; not at all. In fact, you simply arouse all the housekeeping
instincts within me. I will be down in a minute. Reuther, I leave you
with the judge."

She ran lightly up. The next instant they heard her sneeze, then they
caught the sound of a window rattling up, followed by a streak of light
falling slant-wise across the dismal stairs.

The judge drew a breath of relief and led Reuther towards a door at the
end of the hall.

"This is the way to the dining-room and kitchen," he explained. "I have
been accustomed to having my meals served in my own room, but after this
I shall join you at table. Here," he continued, leading her up to the
iron door, "is the entrance to my den. You may knock here if you want
me, but there is a curtain beyond, which no one lifts but myself. You
understand, my dear, and will excuse an old man's eccentricities?"

She smiled, rejoicing only in the caressing voice, and in the yearning,
almost fatherly, manner with which he surveyed her.

"I quite understand," said she; "and so will mother."

"Reuther," he now observed with a strange intermixture of gentleness and
authority, "there is one thing I wish to say to you at the very start. I
may grow to love you--God knows that a little affection would be a
welcome change in my life--but I want you to know and know now, that all
the love in the world will not change my decision as to the impropriety
of a match between you and my son Oliver. That settled, there is no
reason why all should not be clear between us."

"All is clear."

Faint and far off the words sounded, though she was standing so near he
could have laid his hand on her shoulder. Then she gave one sob as
though in saying this she heard the last clod fall upon what would never
see resurrection again in this life, and, lifting her head, looked him
straight in the eye with a decision and a sweetness which bowed his
spirit and caused his head in turn to fall upon his breast.

"What a father can do for a child, I will do for you," he murmured, and
led her back to her mother, who was now coming down stairs.

A week, and Deborah Scoville had evolved a home out of chaos. That is,
within limits. There was one door on that upper story which she had
simply opened and shut; nor had she entered the judge's rooms, or even
offered to do so. The ban which had been laid upon her daughter she felt
applied equally to herself; that is for the present. Later, there must
be a change. So particular a man as the judge would soon find himself
too uncomfortable to endure the lack of those attentions which he had
been used to in Bela's day. He had not even asked for clean sheets, and
sometimes she had found herself wondering, with a strange shrinking of
her heart, if his bed was ever made, or whether he had not been driven
at times to lie down in his clothes.

She had some reason for these doubtful conclusions. In her ramblings
through the house she had come upon Bela's room. It was in a loft over
the kitchen and she had been much amazed at its condition. In some
respects it looked as decent as she could expect, but in the matter of
bed and bedclothes it presented an aspect somewhat startling. The
clothes were there, tossed in a heap on the floor, but there was no bed
in sight nor anything which could have served as such.

IT HAD BEEN DRAGGED OUT. Evidences of this were everywhere; dragged out,
and down the narrow, twisted staircase which was the only medium of
communication between the lower floor and this loft. As she noted the
marks made by its passage down the steps, the unhappy vision rose before
her of the judge, immaculate in attire and unaccustomed of hand, tugging
at this bed and alternately pushing and pulling it by main strength down
this contracted, many-cornered staircase. A smile, half pitiful, half
self-scornful curved her lips as she remembered the rat-tat-tat she had
heard on that dismal night when she clung listening to the fence, and
wondered now if it had not been the bumping of this cot sliding from
step to step.

But no! the repeated stroke of a hammer is unmistakable. He had played
the carpenter that night as well as the mover, and with no visible
results. Mystery still reigned in the house for all the charm and order
she had brought into it; a mystery which deeply interested her, and
which she yet hoped to solve, notwithstanding its remoteness from the
real problem of her existence.




XV

THE PICTURE


NIGHT! and Deborah Scoville waiting anxiously for Reuther to sleep, that
she might brood undisturbed over a new and disturbing event which for
the whole day had shaken her out of her wonted poise, and given, as it
were, a new phase to her life in this house.

Already had she stepped several times to her daughter's room and looked
in, only to meet Reuther's unquiet eye turned towards hers in silent
inquiry. Was her own uneasiness infectious? Was the child determined to
share her vigil? She would wait a little longer this time and see.

Their rooms were over the parlour and thus as far removed as possible
from the judge's den. In her own, which was front, she felt at perfect
ease, and it was without any fear of disturbing either him or Reuther
that she finally raised her window and allowed the cool wind to soothe
her heated cheeks.

How calm the aspect of the lawn and its clustering shrubs. Dimly seen
though they were through the leaves of the vines she had but partially
clipped, she felt the element of peace which comes with perfect quiet,
and was fain to forget for awhile the terrors it so frequently conceals.
The moon, which had been invisible up to this moment, emerged from
skurrying clouds as she quietly watched the scene; and in an instant her
peace was gone and all the thronging difficulties of her position came
rushing back upon her in full force, as all the details of the scene, so
mercifully hidden just now, flashed again upon her vision.

Perched, as she was, in a window overlooking the lane, she had but to
lift her eyes from the double fence (that symbol of sad seclusion) to
light on the trees rising above that unspeakable ravine, black with
memories she felt strangely like forgetting to-night. Beyond ... how it
stood out on the bluff! it had never seemed to stand out more
threateningly!... the bifurcated mass of dismal ruin from which men had
turned their eyes these many years now! But the moon loved it; caressed
it; dallied with it, lighting up its toppling chimney and empty, staring
gable. There, where the black streak could be seen, she had stood with
the judge in that struggle of wills which had left its scars upon them
both to this very day. There, hidden but always seen by those who
remembered the traditions of the place, mouldered away the walls of that
old closet where the timorous, God-stricken suicide had breathed out his
soul. She had stood in it only the other day, penned from outsiders'
view by the judge's outstretched arms. Then, she had no mind for bygone
horrors, her own tragedy weighed too heavily upon her; but to-night, as
she gazed, fascinated, anxious to forget herself, anxious to indulge in
any thought which would relieve her from dwelling on the question she
must settle before she slept, she allowed her wonder and her revulsion
to have free course. Instead of ignoring, she would recall the story of
the place as it had been told her when she first came to settle in its
neighbourhood.

Spencer's Folly! Well, it had been that, and Spencer's den of
dissipation too! There were great tales--but it was not of these she was
thinking, but of the night of storm--(of the greatest storm of which any
record remained in Shelby) when the wind tore down branches and toppled
down chimneys; when cattle were smitten in the field and men on the
highway; when the old bridge, since replaced, buckled up and sank in the
roaring flood it could no longer span, and the bluff towering overhead,
flared into flame, and the house which was its glory, was smitten apart
by the descending bolt as by a Titan sword, and blazed like a beacon to
the sky.

This was long before she herself had come to Shelby; but she had been
told the story so often that it was quite as vivid to her as if she had
been one of the innumerable men and women who had crowded the
glistening, swimming streets to view this spectacle of destruction. The
family had been gone for months, and so no pity mingled with the
excitement. Not till the following day did the awful nature of the event
break in its full horror upon the town. Among the ruins, in a closet
which the flames had spared, they found hunched up in one corner, the
body of a man, in whose seared throat a wound appeared which had not
been made by lightning or fire. Spencer! Spencer himself, returned they
knew not how, to die of this self-inflicted wound, in the dark corner of
his grand but neglected dwelling.

And this was what made the horror of the place till the tragedy of the
opposite hollow added crime to crime, and the spot became outlawed to
all sensitive citizens. Folly and madness and the vengeance of high
heaven upon unhallowed walls, spoke to her from that towering mass,
bathed though it was just now in liquid light under the impartial moon.

But as she continued to survey it, the clouds came trooping up once
more, and the vision was wiped out and with it all memories save those
of a nearer trouble--a more pressing necessity.

Withdrawing from the window, she crept again to Reuther's room and
peered carefully in. Innocence was asleep at last. Not a movement
disturbed the closed lids on the wax-like cheek. Even the breath came so
softly that it hardly lifted the youthful breast. Repose the most
perfect and in the form of all others the sweetest to a tender mother,
lay before her and touched her already yearning heart to tears. Lighting
a candle and shielding it with her hand, she gazed long and earnestly at
Reuther's sweet face. Yes, she was right. Sorrow was slowly sapping the
fountain of her darling's youth. If Reuther was to be saved, hope must
come soon. With a sob and a prayer, the mother left the room, and
locking herself into her own, sat down at last to face the new
perplexity, the monstrous enigma which had come into her life.

It had followed in natural sequence from a proposal made by the judge
that some attention should be given his long-neglected rooms. He had
said on rising from the breakfast table--(the words are more or less
important):

"I am really sorry to trouble you, Mrs. Scoville; but if you have time
this morning, will you clean up my study before I leave? The carriage is
ordered for half-past nine."

The task was one she had long desired to perform, and would have urged
upon him daily had she dared, but the limitations he set for its
accomplishment struck her aghast.

"Do you mean that you wish to remain there while I work? You will be
choked, Judge."

"No more than I have been for the last two days. You may enter any
time." And going in, he left the door open behind him.

"He will lock it when he goes out," she commented to herself. "I had
better hasten."

Giving Reuther the rest of the work to do, she presently appeared before
him with pail and broom and a pile of fresh linen. Nothing more
commonplace could be imagined, but to her, if not to him, there underlay
this especial act of ordinary housewifery a possible enlightenment on a
subject which had held the whole community in a state of curiosity for
years. She was going to enter the room which had been barred from public
sight by poor Bela's dying body. She was going to see--or had he only
meant that she was to have her way with the library--the room where she
had already been and much of which she remembered. The doubt gave a
tremulous eagerness to her step and caused her eye to wander immediately
to that forbidden corner soon as she had stepped over the threshold.

The bedroom door was open;--proof that she was expected to enter there.
Meanwhile, she felt the eye of the judge upon her and endeavoured to
preserve a perfect composure and to sink the curious and inquiring woman
in the diligent housekeeper.

But she could not, quite. Two facts of which she immediately became
cognisant, prevented this. First, the great room before her presented a
bare floor, whereas on her first visit it had been very decently, if not
cheerfully, covered by a huge carpet rug. Secondly, the judge's chair,
which had once looked immovable, had been dragged forward into such a
position that he could keep his own eye on the bedroom door. Manifestly
she was not to be allowed to pursue her duties unwatched. Certainly she
had to take more than one look at the every-day implements she carried to
retain that balance of judgment which should prevent her from becoming
the dupe of her own expectations.

"I do not expect you to clean up here as thoroughly as you have your own
rooms up stairs," he remarked, as she passed him. "You haven't the time,
or I the patience for too many strokes of the broom. And Mrs. Scoville,"
he called out as she slipped through the doorway, "leave the door open
and keep away as much as possible from the side of the room where I have
nailed up the curtain. I had rather not have that touched."

She turned with a smile and nodded. She felt that she had been set to
work with a string tied round her feet. Not touch the curtain! Why, that
was the one thing in the room she wanted to touch; for in it she not
only saw the carpet which had been taken up from the floor of the study,
but a possible screen behind which anything might lurk--even his
redoubtable secret.

Or had it another and much simpler explanation? Might it not have been
hung there merely as a shield to the window. The room must have a window
and there was none to be seen elsewhere. It would be like him to shut
out light and air. She would ask.

"There is no window," she observed, looking back at the judge.

"No," was his short reply.

Slowly she set down her pail. One thing was settled. It was Bela's cot
she saw before her--a cot without any sheets. These had been left behind
in the dead negro's room, and the judge had been sleeping just as she
had feared, wrapped in a rug and with uncovered pillow. This pillow was
his own; it had not been brought down with the bed. She hastily slipped
a cover on it, and without calling any further attention to her act,
began to make up the bed.

Conscious that the papers he made

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