distinctly in sight; and there were also unmistakable glimpses of
snow-white ruffles of an antiquated fashion, like the delicate feathers
about the feet of a white bantam.

"I wanted to see you, John, before the suit could come up," she began
pantingly at once. "I thought it all over last night,--after you were
gone."

"Everything is right, Miss Judy. I considered the matter again when I
went back to the tavern. Don't give it another thought. The suit is
barred by limitation long ago," the judge said gently, as if soothing a
frightened child.

"But is it really a note of my father's? Did he ever owe the money? And
is it true that the debt never has been paid? That is what I wish to
know," persisted Miss Judy, with all the earnestness of a woman who
knows well the meaning of her words.

Her blue eyes were uplifted to his face, and she read in it the answer
which he would have been glad to withhold.

"Then it must be paid," she said firmly, promptly, conclusively. She had
been drifting out of her depth ever since the stunned plunge of the
first shock; but she now felt solid ground once more under her feet.
"There is my dear and honored father's pension for his services in the
War for Independence. A portion of that could scarcely be better used
than in discharging any pecuniary obligation of his, which he may
naturally have forgotten, or chanced to overlook."

This was said loftily, almost carelessly, as though the large size of
the pension made any unexpected demand upon it a mere trifle, and with a
gentle, sweet look of pride. The judge could not help smiling,
notwithstanding that he was touched and even troubled, knowing how grave
a matter any call for money must be to Miss Judy. Looking down upon her
from his great height, he thought he never before had known what a frail
pretty little creature she was, nor how deeply, purely blue her eyes
were, with the blue of fresh-blown flax-flowers, nor how like silver
floss her hair was, till he now saw it new burnished by the sunlight.
But he stood in silence, uncertain what to say, fearing to wound her.

"And the amount of the note? How much is it?" Miss Judy asked suddenly,
after the momentary silence.

Nothing could have been more like her, more entirely characteristic of
her whole life, than that this question, which would have been the first
with many, should have been the last with her. Yet now that it had
occurred to her, she held her breath with fear. If it should be more
than the amount of the whole pension,--more than she had or ever hoped
to have in the wide world,--what should she do then?

"It was drawn for a hundred dollars. I have not yet calculated the
interest," the judge answered reluctantly.

Miss Judy gasped and turned white; the earth seemed suddenly sliding
beneath her feet. Then in another instant a scarlet tide swept the
paleness from her alarmed face. The blood in her gentle veins was, after
all, the blood of a soldier, and she fought on to the last trench.

"It must be paid, as soon as possible," she said formally, as if
speaking to a stranger; but she laid her trembling little hand in John
Stanley's warm, firm clasp with a look of perfect love and trust before
she turned from him and went on her troubled way homeward.

He stood still for a moment when she had left him, gazing after the
little figure in black fluttering against the warm wind. Then he turned
slowly and went back to his seat on the bench, and the routine of the
court forthwith began to drone throughout the long, hot day. A feeling
of foreboding, a vague dread of some unknown calamity, had hung over him
when he had first awakened on that morning; as though a formless warning
had come through the mists of unremembered dreams. He was not able to
cast off the depression which it caused, and the feeling deepened with
the dragging of the heavy hours. But it wavered still without distinct
form. It had nothing to do with his hourly, momentary expectation of
seeing the Spaniard's threatening face and wild eyes confronting him
through the gloom of the low-ceiled court-room. He was used to the sight
and he never had feared it, save as he always feared himself and the
enforced shedding of blood. The only unusual thing was that Alvarado
should not be in his accustomed place that day, as he invariably had
been heretofore, whenever the judge had been on the bench; but this fact
gave the judge no uneasiness, he hardly thought of it at all, for his
mind was filled with other things. He leaned his aching head on his hand
as the business of the court droned dully along and the heat grew
steadily greater. He thought, vaguely, that it must be the heat and the
scent of the catalpa flowers which weighed so heavily upon him. For a
few large, white bells swung uncommonly late amongst the heavy, dusty
foliage of the catalpa trees, crowding close to the deep windows,
darkening the court-room and shutting out every breath of the fitful,
sultry breeze.

He left the court-house as soon as he could get away, and strolled
slowly toward the farthest, highest hillside, whither he often went at
the close of a tiring day. The warm wind had died out of the valley, but
the air would, so he thought, be cooler on the hilltop; a cool breeze
nearly always stirred the tall cedars of the graveyard, as if with the
chill air of the tomb. He found the gate open, as it always was. There
was never any need for closing it. Within were no gilded bones to be
stolen: without were no inhuman robbers of graves. So that here those
who rested within had nothing more to fear; and those who strove without
could not be barred when they also came to stay.

Leaning on the fence, he turned and looked down upon the drowsing
village; at the men, white and black, who were going homeward with the
unhasting pace of the country; at the black women with milk-pails,
crossing the back lots whence the cows were calling; at the farmers,
already far in the distance, riding away from court; at the great road
wagons, with their mighty teams of four and six horses. These great
wagons were the huge ships of this vast inland sea of wheat and corn and
tobacco, and now but lately launched, heavy-laden, with the newly
garnered grain.

And then, as his wandering, absent gaze fell near by, upon the path from
the village leading up the hillside, he saw that Lynn and Doris were
slowly climbing it after him toward the graveyard. He had met the young
man at the tavern on the previous day, and he had known his father. He
had always known Doris in the distant way in which he knew all the
people of Oldfield, with the sole exception of Miss Judy. He therefore
greeted them with the formal courtesy that he gave to every one; and he
talked with them for a few moments, in his grave, impersonal way, but he
was disappointed in his wish for solitude, and he lingered no longer
than good breeding required. He did not stay to go over to an isolated
corner of the graveyard as he had intended, to see if the tangle of
weeds and briers, which makes the desolation of neglected
burial-grounds, had been taken away from one solitary grave, as it
always was when he came and never at any other time. He could not do
this in the presence of any one, so that, lifting his hat with a faint
smile, he now turned his face toward the village and the tavern.

At the foot of the hill he happened upon the little Frenchman, who sat
groaning by the roadside, unable to walk because he had wrenched his
ankle, spraining it very badly, in getting over the fence.

"But it is not that I do care for the pain. Bah!" cried monsieur, with a
Gallic gesture and an inflection that belonged to no nation and was
wholly his own. "It is--hélas!--the ploughing for the spring wheat. A
man may not hobble after the plough, neither may he follow with
crutches."

"Oh, you needn't trouble about that. There's plenty of time, and you
can't plough, anyway, until a rainfall has softened the ground," said
the judge, kindly.

"The black man, devoid of intelligence, who tills the fields of monsieur
the doctor, ploughs to-day in the dust. Should the grain of the fields
of monsieur the doctor grow quicker and thrive better than the grain of
the fields of madame the mistress, whose fields I myself do till, then I
shall surely mortify."

"There's nothing to be done in the fields now," the judge said, trying
not to smile. "Let me help you," bending over and offering his strong
arm and broad shoulder. "You'll be all right again in good time for the
spring wheat. A sprained ankle is no Waterloo!"

The Frenchman shrunk, dropping away from the outstretched arm as though
it had struck him down. His face, open and transparent as a child's, had
been confidingly upturned; now it fell, reddened and clouded with anger,
indignation, and shame. Falling back, he tried at once to rise again,
only to sink--groaning and helpless--more prone than before, while
hissing through his clenched teeth something about _le sentiment du
fer_.

"It is the fatal misfortune of my father that you do insult!" he said
fiercely, in English, striving vainly to maintain an icy civility. "When
it is that I may again stand on my feet, your Highness will perhaps--"

"Come, come, Beauchamp. You are suffering. Here, let me help you."

"_Jamais! Jamais!_--not to ze death!" cried monsieur, shrieking with
mingled rage and pain.

The judge, from his calm height, looked silently down on the pathetic
little form stretched at his feet, at the gray head resting now on the
hard earth, and, seeing the dignity, the tragedy, which strangely
invested it, a great surge uplifted the deep pity for the mystery and
the sorrow of living which always filled his sad heart.

"As you please about that, Mr. Beauchamp. But you must allow me to pull
off your boot before your leg becomes worse swollen. You are risking
permanent injury by keeping it on; the hurt seems more serious than any
mere sprain," he said, with the gentle patience that great strength
always has for real weakness.

And then this stately gentleman, this famous judge, knelt down in the
dust of the common highway, beside this poor distraught, angry,
resisting, atom of humanity, and tenderly released the injured ankle
from the pressure that was torturing it.

"Now, that's better," he said, rising, and looking round in some
perplexity. "Ah, yonder is a cart coming up the big road. I can get the
driver of it to take you home."

He spoke to the negro who was driving the swaying oxen, and gave him
some money, and stood waiting until he saw the Frenchman lifted
carefully and safely into the cart, and well started on the way toward
his home. Then the judge went on his own lonely, homeless road to the
tavern. The lengthening shadows of the hills were already darkening the
valley, although a wonderful golden light still lingered above the
summits, making the new moon look wan. There was only daylight enough
for the judge to see old lady Gordon sitting alone at her window, and
seeing her, he was reminded that it was his duty to tell her of the
accident which had befallen the manager of her farm.

She looked up suddenly, almost eagerly, at the sound of his approach,
and peered into the gloaming with the sad intentness of weary eyes which
are no longer sure of what they see. When she recognized the judge, she
suddenly settled heavily back in her chair with an abrupt movement of
angry disappointment. She did not thank him for coming to tell her, and
she did not ask him to come in. She merely nodded with the rude
taciturnity which, with her, always marked some disturbance of mind.

XXIV

OLD LADY GORDON'S ANGER

For this breaker from a sea of troubles, gradually overspreading all
Oldfield, had now gone so far that it had stirred, at last, even the
long unstirred level of old lady Gordon's vast indifference.

It had been many a long year since she had been moved to such anger as
she was feeling on that day; few things seemed to her worth real anger;
she accepted almost everything with careless, almost amiable, tolerance.
Selfishness as absolute as hers often wears a manner very like good
nature, because it is far too great to be moved by trifles.

Poor old lady Gordon! She had managed to sink her disappointment in
self-indulgence, as wretchedness too often sinks itself in opium. She
had eaten rich food because the eating of it helped to pass the dull
days of her distasteful life; she had read all the novels within her
reach--good, bad, and indifferent--because reading was not so tiresome
as thinking, when there was nothing pleasant to think about; she had
laughed at many follies and mistakes which she saw clearly enough,
because it seemed to her useless to try to prevent folly or the making
of mistakes.

And yet none knew the true from the false better than this honest,
scornful old pagan, who had buried more than one talent, more than
ordinary intelligence, under habitual sloth of mind and body; and none
had a more genuine respect for all that was finest and highest. But her
own early striving toward it had met too complete a defeat for
her--being what she was--to go on striving or to think it worth while
for others to strive. A nature like hers can never submit, unembittered
and unhardened, to wrong and unhappiness; nor is it ever winged by the
spiritual so that it may rise above its false place in the world. It can
only beat itself against the stone wall of environment, or recoil in
fatalistic indifference. And in this last poor old lady Gordon had found
refuge so long ago that she had quite forgotten the pain--and the
pleasure--which comes with suffering through loving.

And then, after she had thus lived through many wasted days, and many
empty nights, it seemed as if this grandson had come at the eleventh
hour to open the door of her prison-house. She had not believed it at
first; more than a half-century is so long to wait for everything which
the heart most craves, that it cannot believe at once when its supreme
desire seems about to be granted at last. But, nevertheless, old lady
Gordon's pleasure and pride in her grandson had grown fast and steadily
through those perfect days and weeks of summer. It had pleased her more
and more to hear his strong, gay young voice ringing through the silence
of the dull old house. It had pleased her more and more to look at his
bright, handsome young face across the table, which had been lonely so
long. It had pleased her most of all to have his cheering young
presence--so over-flowing with hope and spirits--at her side, through
the dreary hours of the lingering twilight, when she had been forced, in
the solitude of the old time, to face alone the dreaded muster of
disappointment's mocking spectres.

Thus had old lady Gordon regarded her grandson in the beginning of her
acquaintance with him. But she gradually began to know him, to see him
as he really was, to think that he might be what he meant to be. And so,
little by little, this hard, embittered, lonely old soul came finally to
believe that a grudging fate was, after all, about to grant to her age
the true son of her own heart, of her great pride, of her unbounded
ambition--the son whom it had so cruelly denied to her youth and
maturity. Then there came a strange and piteous stirring of all her
long-numbed sensibilities; a powerful, and even terrible, uprising of
all her intensest feelings. It was as if a mighty old grapevine, long
stripped of fruit and foliage, long fallen away from every living thing,
long trailing along the earth--deeply covered with mould and weeds--as
if such a mighty, twisted, hard old grapevine were suddenly to put forth
strong new tendrils, and, entwining them around a young tree, should
thus begin to rise again toward the last light of life's sunset.

And now, just as this late warmth was sending its rays through the chill
veins of unloved and unloving old age,--the coldest and the saddest
thing in the whole world,--old lady Gordon once more found herself
facing the same danger which had wrecked all her earlier hopes. She had
shut her keen old eyes to it at first, and had merely smiled, although
she had seen her grandson's interest in Doris quite clearly ever since
its commencement. The girl seemed to her so far beneath her grandson in
station as to be safely outside any serious consideration. For no
Brahmin was ever more deeply imbued with the prejudice of caste than
this slothful old lady Gordon; and no consideration other than a serious
one could disturb her in the least. Moreover, she rested for a while
upon her confidence in Lynn's singleness of purpose, believing in his
determination to allow nothing to turn him from the pursuit of his
ambition. But later, as the summer days went by and she saw him giving
more and more of his time to this yellow-haired, brown-eyed,
sweet-spoken, soft-mannered daughter of the village news-monger, and
less and less to the thought and study of his chosen profession, a doubt
entered her mind, and began to rankle like a thorn in the flesh. As she
was left more and more alone, till she had scarcely any of her
grandson's society, which was now become so sweet, she had time to
remember the folly and weakness of his father, and the folly and
wickedness of his grandfather. These dark memories, surging back, as she
brooded in solitude, brought old bitterness to her new uneasiness; and
yet, recalling many mistakes which she had made in the old time through
the rashness of inexperience, she still kept silence, resolving not to
fall into such errors again. She did not speak slightingly of the girl,
recalling that as one of her most fatal errors; and she was also
withheld by a grim sense of justice which was always lurking,
half-forgotten, within her hard old breast. She accordingly wisely
confined herself to passing comments upon Sidney, and to occasional
references to Uncle Watty, directing most of her witty, satirical talk
toward love and marriage in the abstract. One day she read Lynn a couple
of lines from an old novel which said that:--

"Falling in love is like falling downstairs; it is always an accident,
and nearly always a misfortune."

She had many such dry and stinging epigrams at her sharp tongue's end in
those days, when she was using wit, satire, irony, and ridicule as
weapons to defend her late-coming happiness. Poor old lady Gordon! it
was very hard. Selfishness always makes opposition bitterly hard, and it
is hard indeed to have been compelled to wait through the space of a
generation for the supreme desire of the heart. It was harder than a
nature so imperious as hers could endure, to meet such ignoble
interference at this eleventh hour, now that its late fulfilment seemed
so near, now that she herself had so little time for longer waiting.

So thus it was that scornful impatience gradually gave way to bitter
anger, to the fierce, compelling anger of the autocrat long unused to
having her will crossed, much less lightly set aside, and, least of all,
to having it totally disregarded. It was lightly and even gayly that
Lynn had gone his own way in opposition to hers; but when their wills
had clashed slightly once or twice, old lady Gordon had seen that they
were made of the same piece of cold steel. She had recognized the fact
with a queer mixture of pride and displeasure, but the recognition had
turned her away from all thought of force, and she had henceforth
resorted to subtler measures. She had tried--with a gentleness so
foreign to her nature that it was pathetic--to keep him at her side, as
a tigress might softly stretch out a paw--every cruel claw sheathed in
velvet--to draw a cub away from danger. But this too failed, as the
efforts of the old to hold the young always must fail when nature calls.
And thus it was that the lingering twilights of those last summer days
found old lady Gordon again alone, as the judge had found her; again
solitary at lonely nightfall; again--with the long night so near--gazing
into the gathering darkness at the ghostly assemblage of all her dead
hopes.

Lynn did not come that night until she had turned and tossed through
more than one sleepless hour. At breakfast the next morning they had
little to say to one another. It was nearly always so now, although Lynn
had scarcely noted the fact that all ease and confidence had gone out of
their companionship. He was always in haste of late to get away; every
morning he went earlier to join Doris, forgetting all about the law
books which lay on the table in his room, and which his grandmother used
to go and look at and turn over--most piteously. She now used rarely to
stir from her chair except to do this. Every evening he was later in
leaving Doris, and slower in coming home; and he never lingered now on
the dark porch to think over his plans. And day by day old lady Gordon's
secret wrath burned more fiercely, although she still kept it carefully
covered with the ashes of assumed indifference. But on the evening of
the judge's visit her long-smouldering anger had, for the first time,
burst into flame beyond her control. She had seen Lynn and Doris passing
on their way to the graveyard; she had watched the flutter of the girl's
white skirt at her grandson's side all along the slow, winding way up to
the high hilltop. The sight had been as wind and fuel to raging fire. It
was well for the judge that he had not lingered while the flames thus
raged; it was well for Lynn that he had been for the moment beyond the
reach of his grandmother's burning contempt; it was well for
Doris--though as innocent of all offence as one of the white lambs
feeding on the hillside--well that her return was unseen in the
gloaming; it had been well--most of all--for this fierce old spirit
itself that certain strong, dark drops, from the bag hanging at the head
of her bed, could lay for a few hours the mocking ghosts of dead hopes,
all slain by folly and weakness, even as this last one seemed now being
put to death before her very eyes.

The morning found her spent in strength; and the fire of her anger,
although uncooled, was again covered by the silence of exhaustion. Moods
of silence were, however, not unusual with her, and Lynn was too deeply
absorbed in his own pleasant thoughts to observe his grandmother's
ominous brooding. When the meal was over, with the exchange of hardly a
dozen thoughtless words upon his part, and of taciturn responses upon
her side, Lynn took up his hat and went out of the house and toward the
gate. Pausing under the cypress tree, he looked back and smiled and
waved his hand; and then he went swiftly along the big road toward the
silver poplars.

Old lady Gordon sat quite still in her chair, gazing after him with
darkly drawn brows, with her turkey-wing fan lying forgotten on her lap,
and her novel cast, neglected, on a chair by her side. She had not told
Lynn of the accident to the manager of the farm; she had not spoken of
her intended visit to the Frenchman on that morning; she had not asked
her grandson to go with her, although she walked with difficulty and
even with pain, and longed with age's helplessness to have him near by
to lean upon. When Lynn was quite out of sight she arose--a fine,
majestic old figure in her loose white drapery--and started across the
fields, making her slow, painful way to the Beauchamp cottage. She found
the Frenchman in bed, and, seeing how seriously he was hurt, and
remembering the farm work which must go undirected, she was not in a
better humor when she turned her face homeward. Still she held her wrath
with an iron hand, exercising perhaps the greatest self-control that she
had ever brought to bear upon anything during her whole life. She even
forced herself to make some gruffly civil response when Lynn came back
to dinner at noon, and hastened away again as soon as he could, with a
few hurried, happy words and another gay smile and careless wave of his
hand. But all through the afternoon hours of that long, dull, solitary
day old lady Gordon's anger grew as thunder clouds gather, and when,
after supper, Lynn again took up his hat and turned, intending again to
leave her, the brewing tempest suddenly burst upon him.

"Have you ever stopped to think where all this philandering must lead?
It's high time," she broke out, hoarse with passionate rage.

The young man, holding his hat in his hand, wheeled and looked at his
grandmother in utter amazement, startled, almost alarmed, by the
violence of her tone and by the suddenness of the attack.

"I don't understand. I don't know in the least what you mean," he said
honestly enough, and yet, even as he spoke, a glimmering consciousness
came into his open face.

"Oh, yes, you do. You know perfectly well, but I'll put it plainer if
you want me to," she went on, roughly, sneeringly.

Lynn reddened, putting up his hand with a gesture imposing silence.
"Perhaps I do understand something of what you mean," he said
hesitatingly, with the hesitation which every right-minded man feels at
referring--however distantly--in any such connection to a girl whom he
reveres. "And if I do understand anything of what you mean, you must
allow me to tell you that there has been no philandering, nor any
semblance of it."

"Then what do you call it?" she demanded, with even greater violence and
roughness than before. "May I ask how you characterize this perpetual
dawdling, all day and nearly all night, at the heels of a girl whose
rank is hardly above that of a servant--a girl whom even the son of your
father, or the grandson of your grandfather, could scarcely be fool or
rake enough to think of--except as something to philander after."

She hurled the brutal words at him as she would have thrown stones in
his face, far too furious to think or to care how they might hurt.

He recoiled, shocked, revolted, by the sight of such unrestrained anger
in age. It seemed an incredibly monstrous thing. Then he stood still,
looking at her with a cool courage which matched her flaming rage. He
now moved farther away, but it was solely because he felt a sudden
extreme repulsion.

"Pardon me," he said icily, moving still farther, still nearer the open
door. "It is you who do not understand. There certainly is nothing that
any one else can possibly have misunderstood. I have been scrupulously
careful all along that there should not be. I have guarded every act,
every word, every look--"

Old lady Gordon burst out laughing like a coarse old man deep in his
cups.

"Oh ho!" she scoffed. "So that's how the matter stands, is it? How
high-minded! How prudently virtuous! How perfectly Sidney's daughter
must understand. How highly the girl must appreciate it. Of course she
does understand and appreciate your prudence, your thought--of yourself.
What woman wouldn't? Even a simpleton of a country girl must have been
overcome by it. She can't help forgiving you for trying your best to
make her fall in love with you, if you have been as steadfast--as you
say you have--in warning her that you didn't mean to fall in love with
her. How she must honor and admire you!" she taunted, with something
masculine in her voice, and laughing again like a coarse old man.

The shafts of her merciless scorn pierced the armor of the young man's
cool calmness like arrows barbed with fire. It seemed to him for an
instant as though flame suddenly wrapped him from head to foot. He felt
literally scorched by a burning sense of shame, although, dazed and
bewildered, he could not yet see whence it came. The blood rushed into
his face, into his head; his eyes fell; he could not keep them on his
grandmother's mocking, scornful face.

Old lady Gordon's fiery gaze did not fall, but it softened. A strange
look, one which was hard to read, came to replace the expression of
contemptuous anger. There was still some scorn in it, yet the scorn was
curiously mingled with vanity.

"Well, after all, you are more like me than you're like the men of the
family," she said abruptly, with a sudden return to her usual manner.

Lynn could not speak; he could not look at her. He silently bent down
and took up his hat, which had dropped from his nerveless grasp, and
with bowed head he went silently out into the shielding dusk.

XXV

THE REVELATION OF THE TRUTH

The first wound received by true self-respect is always a terrible
thing. And the truer the self-esteem and the better founded, the more
the slightest blow must bruise it. The deepest stabbing of the derelict
can never hurt so much or be so hard to heal. It may indeed be doubted
whether a touch on the real quick of a fine sense of honor ever entirely
heals.

A man coarser and duller than Lynn Gordon was, less high-minded, less
essentially honorable, could not have suffered as he was suffering when
he went out that night into the dusky peace of the drowsing village. Yet
he could hardly tell at first whence came the blow which had wounded him
so deeply. The suddenness of the arraignment had dazed him; the violence
of the attack had stunned him; so that he was conscious mainly of a
strange bewilderment of pain and humiliation, as though he had been
struck down in the dark.

He went through the gate as if walking in a distressful dream, and
turned toward the silver poplars, as he had turned at that time of the
evening for many weeks, but turning through sheer force of habit,
scarcely knowing whither he went. It was not yet quite nightfall; the
starlight was just beginning to meet the twilight, only commencing to
arch vast violet spaces high above the dim trees on the far-folded
hills. The silvery mists, ever lurking among the fringing willows of the
stream murmuring through the meadows, were already rising to cloud the
lowlands with fleecy whiteness, radiantly starred with fireflies. The
few languid sounds of living heard in the day, now had all passed away
before the coming of night. Only the plaintive song of the white cricket
came from the misty distance; only the lonely chime of the brown cricket
rang from the near-by grass; only the chilling prophecy of the katydid's
cry shrilled through the peaceful silence of the warm, fragrant
gloaming.

But the softest dusk of heaven, the completest peace of earth, is
powerless to calm the storm which beats upon the spirit. Lynn Gordon
strode on as though to confront the full glare of life's fiercest
turmoil. He was driven by such stinging humiliation as he had never
expected to know; he was goaded by such pain of mind as made his very
body ache. So that he thus went forward, swiftly, fiercely, for a score
of paces, and then he stopped and stood still, arrested by a sudden
thought which was as blasting as a flash of lightning. For an instant
his hot and heavy-beating heart seemed to cease its rapid throbbing and
to grow suddenly cold with sickening fear. Another moment and he felt as
if a living flame wrapped him again from head to foot, so intolerable
was the burning shame that flashed over him. Had Doris seen him--as his
grandmother had seen him? Had Doris recognized in his guarded attitude
toward her an intended warning to guard her own heart--as his
grandmother had said? Had Doris felt--as his grandmother had
charged--that he had thus offered her the most unpardonable indignity
that an honorable man can offer a modest woman?

Under the shock of the thought he recoiled from it as too monstrous to
be true. That exquisite, spotless child! That sacred embodiment of
peerless beauty! He could have groaned aloud as the unbearable thought
clung like a flaming garment. Yet he could not cast it from him; and out
of the smoke of memory there now came swirling many little
half-forgotten incidents. Small things, which had then seemed at the
time to be trifles light as air, now came back, seeming confirmations
strong as proof of holy writ. Under the light of this fiery revelation
one recollection stood out more distinctly than any other. He remembered
giving Doris some simple little gift. He saw again in this dim,
unpeopled dusk, even more clearly than he had seen it then, the
bewitching brightness of her beautiful face, the soft radiance of her
lovely, uplifted eyes, as he had put the bauble in her eager little
hands. And now, while he still saw her thus, he heard his own voice
saying an incredible thing. He now heard himself--not some dull,
blundering, brutal dolt--saying something vague about its being strictly
an "impersonal" sort of present.

Ay, he heard again the very tone in which his own voice uttered these
inconceivable words. And then he saw again the dawning bewilderment
which crept over the sunny transparency of the exquisite face; the slow
shadowing of the soft dark eyes, raised so frankly, so confidingly to
his; the quick-coming, quicker-going, quiver of the sweet rose-red lips.
At last, as though the glass through which he had seen darkly were
miraculously become as clear as crystal, he saw again the quivering fall
of the long, curling lashes over the lily cheeks, which reddened
suddenly, as they rarely did, before growing swiftly whiter than ever;
the sudden proud lifting of the golden head, which naturally drooped
like some rare orchid too heavy for its delicate waxen stem: the brave,
steady, upward look from the soft eyes, now suddenly grown very bright:
the abrupt laying down of the simple gift by the little hand, which was
always so gently deliberate in all that it did: the hasty moving away of
the slender form, which had, up to that time, rested at his side in the
perfect trust which only the timid ever give.

All this rushed back, bringing an unendurable self-revelation. The
firmest, deepest foundations of his character were shaken in his own
estimation. His pride of uprightness, his pride of intelligence, his
pride of good breeding, his belief in his own right feeling, his
reliance upon his own quickness of perception, his faith in his fineness
of sensibility,--all these now stood convicted of weakness and falsity.
Faster and more confusedly many self-delusions flew through the stress
of his mind, as burning brands are borne by violent gusts of wind. Thus
was hurled the recollection of that day in the graveyard, the day from
which had dated this growing aloofness of Doris, an aloofness so gentle
that he had mistaken it for timidity; the day from which had dated her
increasing unwillingness to continue these daily strolls--an
unwillingness so subtle that he had taken it for nothing more than
natural anxiety about Miss Judy. Not until this moment had he had the
remotest suspicion of the truth, even though it had gradually frozen the
sweet freedom of her innocent talk into the silence of cold constraint.

He had been standing still, bowed under this intolerable weight of
humiliation, crushed beneath this overwhelming burden of self-reproach.
Now he went slowly onward, unseen and unheard, through the gathering
darkness and the deep dust. When he came within sight of the light
shining behind the white curtain over the one window of Doris's humble
home, he paused again and leaned on the fence and looked at the window
for a long time. He felt that he could not go nearer it that night, that
he could not face Doris until he had more fully faced his own soul. As
he gazed at the white light, he thought how like it was to the girl
herself, so simple, so clear, so steady, so open, shielded only by the
single whiteness of purity. A soft breeze coming over the hills rippled
the silver leaves,--grown as dark now as the sombre plumes of the
cypress tree,--and stirred the white curtain as if with spirit hands.
And then as he lingered there came to him a wonderful change of feeling.
The thought of her stole softly to him through the warm starlight, sweet
as the breath of the white jessamine. A great, deep tenderness welled up
in his heart and went out to her, sweeping all before it--all untrue
dreams of ambition, all false thinking, all self-delusion. Then he knew
that he loved her; then he knew that he had loved her from the instant
that his eyes had fallen upon her, a vision of beauty framed in roses;
then he knew that he would love her with the highest and finest love
that was his to bestow--so long as he should live.

When this bitter-sweet truth came home to his troubled heart, it brought
with it a calm, tender sadness. Even as he recognized it he felt that
his own blind folly, his foolish conceit of wisdom, had robbed him of
whatever chance, whatever hope he might have had, of winning her love in
return. The fatal, unforgivable blunders into which he had fallen so
blindly must forever stand in the way. And he hardly dared think there
ever could have been any hope, even had he not so hopelessly offended.
For humility is always the hall-mark of true love. To be loved by the
one beloved is always true love's most wondrous miracle.

With a last lingering look at the light shining through the white
curtain, Lynn turned slowly and went down the big road toward his
grandmother's house, now lying dark and silent beneath the tall trees
which stood over it and amid the thick shrubbery which crowded around
it. The passionate emotion with which he had left it had passed wholly
away. The love filling his mind and heart, as with the sudden unfurling
of soft wings, left no room for anything hard or unkind or bitter. He
had almost forgotten the hard words with which his grandmother had so
cruelly stoned him; he had wholly forgiven them. For newly awakened love
can forgive almost any harshness in the awakening. He was not, in fact,
thinking of his grandmother at all; he was thinking solely of Doris, and
was planning to see her at the earliest possible moment on the morrow.
It was not easy of late to see her alone; he realized this now with a
guilty pang which touched his new peace with the old pain. Only on the
previous evening he had found her gone from her home, without leaving a
message for him, as she always used to leave one. Only by the merest
accident had he met her coming out of Miss Judy's gate; only by the most
urgent persuasion had he been able to induce her to take the accustomed
walk to the graveyard, which she used always to be so ready and even
eager to take. Ah, that walk up the hillside, which had been as a torch
to the tinder of his grandmother's anger! For that, also, as for
everything else, he alone was to blame. It was too late to undo what had
been done; but never again through any fault of his should evil speaking
or evil thinking approach her spotless innocence. It was not for his
strong arms to protect her; his own folly had forfeited all hope of that
sweetest and most sacred privilege. Nevertheless, he might still beg her
to forgive him, even though he knew that forgiveness was impossible for
an offence such as his. And he might still tell her that he loved her
and ask her to be his wife, although he knew only too well that she
would refuse. And then, having done what he could, he would go on with
his work. He had not forgotten his ambition, nor had he thought of
giving it up; but his old foolish belief that the happiest marriage must
hamper a man's life plans had gone with the rest of his blinding
delusions. He no longer thought of needing both hands free for the
climbing of ambition's unsteady, long ladder. It now seemed to him that
he never could win anything worth the winning without Doris to hold up
his hands; that nothing either great or small was worth the winning
unless shared by her. And his self-delusion had forever lost him all
hope of this. Yet he might still beg her to forgive him, he might still
tell her that he loved her and ask her to be his wife. Nothing should
deny him that honor and happiness--if he were but spared to see another
morning's light.

It came with all the misty glory of the late southern summer. There was
something melancholy, something foretelling the saddest days of the
year, in the sighing wind which drifted the browning leaves of the old
locust trees, wafting them down to the thinning grass. The dim woods
belting the purpled horizon already lifted banners of scarlet and gold,
waving them here and there on the hillsides, among the fast-fading
verdure. The sumac bushes were already binding the foot of the far green
hills with brilliant bands of crimson. The near-by blackberry briers
were already richly spotted with red. The trumpet-vine, with the
dazzling cardinal of its splendid flowers and the rich, dark green of
its luxuriant foliage, already made all the crumbling tree-trunks and
all the falling rail fences gorgeous mysteries of beauty. The
golden-rods were already full-flowering, already gilding the meadows
where the black-eyed Susans, too, were aglow, and where the grass was
still vividly green beneath the purple shadows cast by the distant
hills--the sad, beautiful, dark shadows which slant before the coming of
fall. Beyond the shadows and beyond the hills, the summer sun still
flooded the warm fields, turning the vast billowing seas of tobacco from
blue-green into golden green. And the wide, deep corn-fields, now
flowing in silver-crested waves, were already melting into molten gold.

The great ships of this vast inland ocean of grain--the huge,
heavy-laden wagons, rising high at the ends like the stem and stern of a
vessel, and drawn by doubled and trebled teams--already labored,
swayingly, on their way to the Ohio River to deliver their cargoes of
wheat to the big steamers which were waiting to bear them away to the
whole world. Many of these lurched thunderingly by Lynn Gordon, wholly
unheeded, as he went on that morning to seek Doris Wendall. It was very
early, as early as he could hope to find even Doris awake,
notwithstanding that she awakened with the birds. The wild
morning-glories, clinging, wet, fragrant, and sparkling, on all the
fences along the wayside, were not closed, and still held out their
fragrant blue cups, striped with red like streaks of wine, and brimming
with dew. The evening primroses also had forgotten to close, and were
still blooming bright and sweet, close in the corners of the fences.
Lynn bent down to gather the freshest and sweetest, because it somehow
reminded him of Doris, though he knew not why or how. As he straightened
up he suddenly saw her!--with a great leap of his heart. There she was,
within a stone's throw, just entering Miss Judy's gate. He was not quite
near enough to speak had he found any words; and, although he went
swiftly toward her with the long, firm stride of a strong-willed man
approaching a distinct purpose, she had flitted out of sight before he
reached the gate. He was not sure that she had seen him, but he felt
that she had; and the feeling brought back the new distrust of himself,
the new lack of confidence in his own judgment, the new insecurity in
his own knowledge of what was best to do. All these strange and painful
feelings, which he had never known till the humbling revelation of the
previous night, rushed together now, to hold him dumb and helpless, with
his unsteady hand on the little broken gate.

He turned with a nervous start at a sound by his side. Sidney had drawn
near without his seeing her. She stood within a few paces, looking at
him, and knitting as usual, but with a look of trouble on her honest
face. Silently he bowed and stepped aside, holding the gate open for her
to pass through.

"You've come to ask about Miss Judy," she said, lowering her voice. "I'm
afraid she isn't any better. Doris came on ahead of me, but I haven't
seen her since, so that I have had no news from Miss Judy for nearly an
hour."

"I--I didn't know she was ill," said Lynn, simply.

"Well, your grandmother did. I sent her word last night that we hardly
expected Miss Judy to live till daybreak." Sidney spoke a little
severely, and she looked at him with frank curiosity.

"I am sincerely grieved. What is it?" the young man faltered.

"It seems to be the same old weakness of the heart that she's always
had. Any kind of a shock has always made it worse, and this foolish
lawsuit of that crazy Spaniard's--over an old no-account note of her
father's--gave her the hardest blow she's had this many a year, poor
little soft soul. It didn't make any difference to her that the note
wasn't worth the paper it was written on, and that it had been outlawed
long ago. She has always had her own queer little notions about things,
and you couldn't shake her, either, mild as she has always been. And
she's always worshipped her father, so that she couldn't bear to have
anything against his name. He never worried himself much about his
debts. The major was very slack-twisted in business matters, just
between you and me. But the angel Gabriel, himself, couldn't make Miss
Judy believe that, even if he were mean enough to try. Last night she
came by my house, going on to see Mr. Pettus. She hoped he might buy the
house, and that she could raise the money in that way. But she fainted
before she could tell him what she wanted, and he carried her home in
his arms. Such a poor, light, little mite of a thing! She's been
unconscious most of the time since, but whenever she comes to herself
she tries to say something about selling the house--in a whisper, so
that Miss Sophia won't hear. Then she begins to worry, wondering what
Miss Sophia will do if the house is sold, and honestly believing that
poor Miss Sophia will feel disgraced if it isn't, when Miss Sophia
neither knows nor cares a blessed thing about the whole matter, so that
she's let alone to eat and sleep. I am going into the room now to stay
with Miss Judy while Doris goes home for a little rest. She wouldn't
leave the bedside for an instant last night. Wait for her," Sidney
added, assuming a blank, meaningless expression. "When she comes out she
can tell you how the poor little soul is."

With a strange tightening of the throat and a tender aching in his
breast, Lynn then stood waiting, with his eyes on Miss Judy's window. It
seemed a long time before Doris came out, and when she finally appeared,
there was something indefinable in her manner which made him feel that
she had not come of her own accord. But she was very calm, very quiet,
very sad, and very pale; and her soft dark eyes were softer and darker
than ever with unshed tears. She merely said that her mother had sent
her to say that there was no change. The doctor had decided that there
could be but one. And when she had said this she quietly turned back
toward Miss Judy's room. No, she answered in reply to his keenly
disappointed inquiry, she was not going home. She could rest and
sleep--after--Miss Judy was gone. There was so little time now that they
could stay together.

XXVI

THE TRAGEDY

The news of Miss Judy's illness reached the judge as he was leaving the
tavern for the opening of court. It was then too late for him to go at
once in person to ask how she was, as he wished to do, and as he
otherwise would have done. But he nevertheless turned back and went to
his own room, long enough to write her a few hurried lines telling of
his deep and tender concern.

And when this was written he was not satisfied. He sat hesitating for a
moment, listening absently to the ringing of the court-house bell. Then,
again taking up his pen, he went on to beg her not to give another
troubled thought to the note or to the suit. He wrote that possibly the
case might come for trial on that very day,--writing this as lovingly,
as tenderly, as he could have written to his mother whom he had never
known,--and going on to tell her that he wished her to know, only for
her own peace of mind, that the payment of the note, both principal and
interest, had already been arranged for, and would be made, if possible,
before the opening of court. This was, so he wrote, to be quite
regardless of the decision in the case, and solely to set her mind
wholly at rest. After writing thus far he still sat thinking, feeling as
if he had not yet said just what he meant to say, as if he had not been
quite tender enough of the little lady's tender sensibilities. With his
pen poised he looked out at the passing wagons and at the crowd
gathering around the court-house, taking no heed of anything save the
anxiety in his mind. At last a sudden, gentle smile illuminated his
grave, pale face, as he added another paragraph:--

"Of course you understand, my dear little friend, that this money is
advanced as a loan which you may repay at your convenience. You will
also understand, I am sure, that I should not have taken the liberty of
thus settling your private business without your consent, had I not
heard of your illness and feared that you were not able to attend to it
yourself. As soon as you are well enough you may scold me as much as you
like for my presumption. It is, however, to be between ourselves; no one
else must know."

He gave the letter to a negro boy and watched him fly like an arrow
through the clouds of dust which were hanging heavy over the big road.
He saw the child's hazardous dash between the great wagons, close to the
high, grating wheels, under the huge, clanking trace-chains, almost
under the beating iron hoofs. For this quiet morning of late summer
chanced to be the one out of the whole year when the grass-grown
solitude of Oldfield's single street became a thronged, clamorous,
confused thoroughfare.

But the judge cared nothing for all this unwonted turmoil, beyond the
safe, swift passage of the messenger bearing his letter. He did not know
that Miss Judy was too ill to read it, and he was longing to have it
reach her before she could hear any troubling news through the possible
coming up of the case. Turning slowly toward the court-house, he was
thinking solely of her, and the thought of her illness deepened the
sorrow for the pain of the world which always lay heavy on his sad
heart. As he thought of this gentle soul, whose whole life had been
loving sacrifice for others, and whose very life might now be demanded
for the wrong-doing of others, the sorrowful mystery of living perplexed
him more sorely than ever. As he thought of this other innocent woman
suffering, it might be even unto death, through a madman's causeless
hatred of himself--even his great faith, measured by his judicial mind,
seemed for the moment to shrink.

Feeling his danger, he tried to wrench his thoughts away and to turn
them from this morbid brooding. He strove so strenuously that he
presently was able to fix his attention on the matters of merely human
law and justice which began to come before him, as soon as he had taken
his place upon the bench. Thorough training and long practice helped him
so that he was gradually able to bring his eminently legal mind to bear
upon the wearying routine of the docket with the unerring precision of
some marvellous machine.

His fine face was still pale, but there was nothing unusual in its
paleness, and it now grew calm and collected under the very intensity of
his spirit's stress. For the farthest spiritual extremity lies cold and
still beyond all human passion, as the supreme summit of perpetual ice
rises cold and still above all human life. There was, therefore, no
change in his attitude of mind or body when he suddenly saw the dark,
threatening visage and the wild, bloodshot eyes of the Spaniard
confronting him through the crowded gloom of the heated court-room. He
was accustomed to the sight; it had faced him at every term of his
court. There was consequently no disturbance, not the slightest
uneasiness in the abrupt turning away of his eyes. His sole feeling was
one of unutterable weariness of the struggle of living, of utter
sickness of mind and heart and soul. He was so weary that he did not
even fear himself, so utterly weary that he was--for the moment--no
longer afraid even of the unexpected escape of his own fierce temper,
always so hardly held in leash. He no longer dreaded the sudden breaking
of the steel bars of his own stern self-control, the greatest danger
that he had ever found to fear.

When the case against the estate of Major John Bramwell came to trial in
its due turn, during the dragging hours of the long, hot afternoon, the
judge weighed that also, as he had weighed all which had come before,
and as he intended weighing all which were to come after--coolly,
calmly, scrupulously--according to the letter of the law. Having so
weighed it, and found it wanting, he dismissed the complaint on account
of time limitation, and assigned the costs to the plaintiff, as he would
have done in any similar case under like circumstances. Then he passed
composedly to the deliberate consideration of further business, and the
hot, heavy hours droned on.

Through it all he had scarcely glanced at Alvarado; in truth he had
scarcely thought of him save as a party to one of the many suits before
the court. He had had no opportunity to learn that the Spaniard had
refused to accept the money, offered early in the day, in payment of the
note. He did not observe Alvarado's leaving the court-room after the
decision. He did not know that the man was waiting on the steps when he
himself hastened out after the adjournment of court.

Thus it was that the long-coming crisis found him at last wholly
unprepared. Thus it was that the blow from the heavy handle of the
Spaniard's riding-whip struck him without warning. It sent him, stunned
and reeling, down the steps. His hand went out, through blind instinct,
and caught one of the portico pillars, so that he did not fall quite to
the earth; and he was on his feet instantly, springing to his great
height, to his tremendous power--towering above the surrounding crowd.
As he arose, he made one furious leap, like the magnificent bound of a
wounded lion, straight at the Spaniard, who stood--still as a
statue--braced for the encounter.

A cry of terror had gone up from the crowd when the blow had been
struck. Many restraining arms were now raised, as the white fury flashed
over the judge's pale face, as rare and deadly lightning glares from the
paleness of a winter sky. And then this appalling danger-signal faded
even as it flashed forth. The cry of the crowd was suddenly hushed, its
swaying was suddenly stilled. There now followed a strange pause of
strained waiting!

Every man's eyes were on the judge. No man gave a glance to the
Spaniard; every man knew what he meant to do. But the judge--it was on
his noble figure and on his fine face that every man's eyes were
riveted. Every man knew his horror of violence of any description, and
his abhorrence of the taking of human life under any provocation. Yet
every man, thus looking on, held it to be impossible for any man to
suffer the degradation which this man had just suffered, without
resistance. For in every man's eyes this was, with but one exception,
_the most binding of all the many traditions for the shedding of blood_.

No man might suffer it, and ever hope to hold up his head among his
fellow-men, without killing, or at least trying to kill, the man who had
so degraded him. Breathless, indeed, was this instant's terrible
waiting! The bloodthirsty wild beast, which lurks forgotten in most
men's hearts, now leaped up in its secret lair, scenting blood, and
stared fiercely out of the fierce eyes fixed on the judge. And not one
of all these men--all so feeling, all so believing--could credit the
evidence of his own senses when he saw this man, who stood so high above
other men in body, in mind, and in reputation, now stand still, making
no farther advance. Even less could they believe what their own eyes
beheld, when they then saw him draw back, slowly and silently, from the
nearness to the Spaniard to which that single uncontrollable bound had
carried him. And so the crowd stood--stricken dumb and motionless-for a
breath's space! Then--suddenly--every upraised arm came down as the
judge's powerful arms fell at his side. Calmly, almost gently, he
turned, and, raising his majestic form to its fullest height, and
lifting his noble head to its highest level, he rested his calm, clear
gaze on the murderous passion of the Spaniard's eyes. It was a long,
strange look. It was a look which filled every man who saw it with a
feeling of awe; even though not one, of all those who were looking on,
could comprehend its meaning. It was a look such as not many are
permitted to try to comprehend: it was a look such as no mortal men can
ever have seen, save it may have been the few who stood close to the
foot of the Cross.

In his own room at the tavern, late on that afternoon, the judge felt
more alone than ever before through all his lonely life. He had already
begun to suffer the mental reaction which nearly always follows great
spiritual exaltation. He was even now thinking of what he had done--what
he had _not_ done--as if he were another person. He most distinctly saw
its inevitable, far-reaching, and never-ending consequences. He realized
that he, no more--perhaps even less--than any other man, could expect to
evade them or hope to live them down. The very fact of his prominence
could but make the matter more widely known and more disastrous in its
results. The high office which he held--though it personified the
law--would only make his breaking of this unwritten law all the more
unpardonable. Suddenly he felt completely overwhelmed by the weariness
of life, which had so weighed upon him through the day. In terrifying
fear of himself he sprang to the open window and hurriedly leaned out,
finding a measure of safety in the mere presence of the people passing
on their way home from court. But some of them looked up, and stared at
him curiously, so that he drew back. He had not closed the door of his
room, and he was glad to hear footsteps in the passage, although he
merely turned his head without speaking when the man, to whom he had
given the money for the payment of the note, came in quietly, and laid
it on the table within reach of his hand. Nor did the man speak,--there
was nothing for any one to say,--but he stood for a moment hesitatingly,
irresolutely; and then, still without speaking, he drew a pistol from
his pocket, and laid it on the table beside the money.

When he was gone the judge got up and closed the door, and took the
pistol in his hands, which were beginning to tremble now as they had
never trembled before. Hastily he put the temptation down, and walked to
the door and opened it again: taking swift, aimless turns up and down
the room. At the sound of footsteps again passing along the passage, he
called to a servant and asked for some water. The presence of any one
would protect him against himself. Turning this way and that, aimlessly,
he turned once more to the window, and threw it higher and pushed the
curtain further back--as far this time as it would go. He then leaned
out again, caring nothing now for the curious gaze of the passers-by,
caring only that he might escape this overpowering, horrifying,
paralyzing fear of himself.

The highway was heavily overhung with clouds of dust as the huge wagons
with their mighty teams, which had passed in the morning, now rumbled
homeward, returning from the journey to the river. Through the dark haze
the judge could see only the proud face of his wife, and it seemed to
his fevered fancy that her cool smile was cooler than ever with
something very like scorn. It seemed to his sick imagination that he
could see again the half-contemptuous shrug of her graceful shoulders,
the half-scornful lift of her handsome brows, with which she always
greeted any disregard of the established order. Above the rude sounds of
the iron-bound wheels, the clanking chains, and the beating hoofs, he
heard the music of the light laugh with which she had always mocked his
own deviations. She had called him an idealist, a dreamer--even a
fanatic--half in jest, half in earnest. But this was different. She
would not laugh at this, which must alter her position in the world as
well as his own. And then, as he thought of this, a doubt for the first
time assailed him, piercing his breast like a poisoned spear. Had he the
right--toward her? She had married a man who stood fair before all men.
Again, in the anguish of this last thought, this new dread, this worst
doubt, the deadly fear of himself rushed over him. Weakened and sickened
in body by the anguish of mind which was rending him, he dared not turn
his head toward the table where the temptation lay within such easy
reach of his shaking hand.

Leaning as far as possible the other way, he caught sight of the old
Frenchman, toiling along the big road on crutches, threading a passage
through its unusual turmoil with difficulty and pain. Then the wind
tossed the deep dust and sent it swirling upward in thick, dark clouds,
shutting the highway from the judge's unseeing sight. He had hardly been
conscious of seeing Monsieur Beauchamp; everything was passing in a
fearful dream. He scarcely heard a new, strange roar which now suddenly
arose above the voices of the passing people, above the rumble, the
rattle, and clash of the passing wagons and the heavy beating of many
great hoofs. But he heard more consciously as this came nearer and
louder, like the rapid, roaring approach of a sudden terrible storm. He
saw clearly enough when the cause of the violent sounds burst over the
highest hilltop, and dashed down its side--as a gigantic wave is driven
by a hurricane,--a huge wagon thundering behind six mighty, maddened,
runaway horses. Like some monster missile it was hurled this way and
that, crashing terrifically from side to side of the big road; and
threatening the whole highway with destruction. Like death-dealing
thunder-bolts the flying iron hoofs gave little time to flee for safety,
but the danger appeared to give wings to every living creature, brute
and human alike. The old Frenchman alone stood still, paralyzed by
fright and unable to move. His crutches dropped from his powerless
grasp, so that he could no longer even stand, and--tottering and
shrieking for help--he fell helpless, prone upon the highway straight in
the track of that huge, blurred, black bulk of Force which was being
whirled toward him with the speed of a cyclone by the storm-flight of
those frenzied horses.

And then the judge's vision magically cleared, and he saw the little
Frenchman--his weakness, his utter helplessness--as if by a lightning
flash. The judge, starting up with a leap, was down the stairs and
running along the big road almost as soon as he realized what it was
that he was going to meet. He was such a powerful man, so quick and
strong of mind and body, so prompt, so able, so fearless in the doing of
everything that he thought right! Ah, the pity of it all!

He could not see the old man upon first reaching the highway. Blinding
dust-clouds hung more heavily than ever over the wild, furious confusion
of the big road. The people, terror-mad, were fleeing, each one thinking
only of his own peril. The drivers, panic-stricken, whirled the clashing
wagons hither and thither, utterly bewildered. The horses, helpless and
terrified, plunged amid the clanking of the entangled trace-chains. The
dense clouds of smothering dust hung like a blinding pall. But the judge
knew where the little Frenchman was lying and sprang straight toward him
and found him in time,--barely in time to bend down, to lift him in his
mighty arms and toss him like a feather far beyond danger. But there was
no more time,--not an instant,--and then the judge himself went down as
a church spire falls before a tempest,--down into the dust of the earth
under the awful, crushing hoofs of the maddened horses, down under the
cruel, cutting tires of those merciless wheels,--down to death, giving
his life for the humblest of his fellow-creatures.

XXVII

THE LAST ARTFULNESS OF MISS JUDY

To Lynn Gordon, as to most of the Oldfield people, it seemed as if this
sleepless night--the saddest ever known to the village--never would end.
And yet, when he arose at last, with the first faint glimmer of the
day's gray, and looked out through the dew-wet dimness of the green
boughs at the softly whitening east, a sudden feeling of peace fell upon
his deeply troubled spirit.

The sorrow and terror of the darkness fled away, like evil birds of the
night, so peaceful did the world appear, so free from all pain and wrong
and cruelty and death, now that the soft white dawn-light--cool, sweet,
calm, pure as ever--was coming for the perpetual refreshment of the
earth. Under this fresh whiteness from heaven all living creatures
looked to be resting untroubled, completely in harmony with one another.
Three little screech-owls sat as a single bunch of gray feathers,
motionless among the shadows which still lingered in the nearest tree.
Three little brownish heads merely turned slowly as he appeared at the
window, and six big eyes regarded him calmly, as though all belonged to
the one small bunch of dark gray feathers, still huddled sleepily
together almost within reach of his hand.

From the darker and more distant trees gradually swelled the twitter of
many bird voices, rising into a rapturous chorus as the east became
rifted with rose and seamed with silver. Every member of this divine
choir was singing his softest and sweetest in celebration of the dawn's
eternal renewal of creation. And then, as the rose brightened into royal
red, and the silver melted into molten gold, at the nearer approach of
sunrise, the oriole--already wearing the sun's golden livery--sent forth
his ringing welcome to the king, a greeting so brilliant and so ancient
as to make the trumpeter's mediæval salute to the emperor seem but a
poor dull thing of yesterday.

With this heavenly music in his ears and this seeming peace and
happiness before his eyes, Lynn Gordon could hear no sound of the sorrow
of living, nor could he see any sign of the pain of the world. An
unconscious smile even lifted for a moment the weight from his heart as
he idly watched a merry couple of nuthatches, those gay "clowns of the
green tent of the woods," tumbling up and down a giant elm. He did not
see the solitary butcher bird, nature's most cruel executioner, sitting
in motionless, sinister silence in the dark depths of a great thorn
tree, nature's cruelest scaffold.

As the light grew brighter the young man's eyes followed the wood smoke
arising from the tall chimney of the tavern in slender, thin spirals of
pale blue, and going straight up to the bluer blue of the warm, windless
sky. With the sight, the deep sadness of the night came back suddenly
and overwhelmingly. It was not a terrible dream; it was a more terrible
reality. Under that old mossy roof, so simple, so peaceful-seeming, lay
all that was mortal of the noblest presence, the noblest mind, the
noblest heart that this isolated corner of the earth had ever given to
the greater world.

Before a tragedy so overwhelming every earnest soul striving in Oldfield
stood awed, although it was not given to many to comprehend that the
greatest awe which even the simplest felt was for the awful Mystery of
Life. Never in the history of the village had its simple people been so
slow in taking up the petty burden of daily struggle and strife. It
seemed as if the least imaginative must be feeling the littleness of all
earthly things.

Even old lady Gordon's look and manner were almost gentle, certainly
more gentle than her grandson had ever seen them. Scarcely a word passed
between the two after bidding each other good morning on meeting at the
breakfast table; and she saw him go in silence when the uneaten meal was
over. He hastened straight up the road, looking neither to the right nor
the left. Doris was with Miss Judy; he knew that she was, because he had
haunted the house through the greater part of the terrible night, and,
although he had not been able to speak to her, he had seen her shadow on
the white curtain of Miss Judy's room. The sight had comforted him
somewhat at the moment, but he now was longing more than ever to see
her, to speak to her--longing with the unspeakably softened tenderness
that comes to love through grief.

And he saw her through the window from Miss Judy's gate. The poor old
white curtain, with its quaint border of little snowballs, had been
pushed back as far as it would go, much farther than it ever had been
before when Miss Judy was lying in the high old bed. There was too
desperate need for every wandering breeze, for every straying breath of
air, for appearances to be remembered. Miss Judy herself could no longer
guard the sacred privacy of that spotless chamber. She could no longer
even blush faintly when the doctor laid his shaggy head against her
hard-laboring little heart, listening for its weak fluttering, and
hearing the soft knell of the pericardial murmur. For even this, which
rings so harshly from sterner breasts, rang softly from Miss Judy's
gentle breast. Yet it rang unmistakably, nevertheless, and there was
nothing more that the doctor could do--nothing save to grieve, and he
never stood idle for futile grieving when the suffering needed him
elsewhere. After the doctor was gone to other duties, only Miss Sophia
sat at the bedside, striving piteously to realize what was happening;
and Doris alone hovered silently over it and flitted softly around it;
doing the little that she found to do, and holding back her tears for
Miss Judy's sake. But many others who loved Miss Judy were already
gathering, and waited in the passage, looking out at the passers-by and
shaking their heads speechlessly and sadly at those who paused at the
gate to make anxious inquiry.

Lynn Gordon did not enter the house, and he quickly turned his eyes away
from the uncurtained window. Even his reverend gaze seemed a profanation
of the holiness of that quiet, shadowed old room, whence the soul of a
saint was so near taking its flight from the earth. He crossed the
narrow strip of front yard with noiseless steps and sat down on a broken
bench under the window. He could hear Miss Sophia's heavy breathing as
the little sister tried to understand; and he caught the soft rustle of
Doris's skirts as the girl moved now and then in her loving
ministrations; he could almost hear the swaying of the fan in her hand.
Presently he became conscious of a familiar scent--faint, pure,
delicate, like the spirit of perfume. He did not know at first what it
was, but it seemed to float out through the open window; and after a
little while he knew it to be the old-fashioned, natural, wholesome
sweetness of dried rose leaves, the fragrance which had always clung
round Miss Judy's life, the fragrance which would forever cling round
her memory.

As he sat there waiting,--as so many were now waiting,--others came and
went. Anne Watson crossed the big road before sitting down to the
card-table, and stood for a moment at the door, talking in a low tone to
some one whom Lynn could not see. But her husband's wistful, restless,
compelling gaze followed her, drawing her back, and she did not linger.
Nothing, not even her grateful affection for Miss Judy, could hold her
long away from her post; nothing, save death alone, could ever free her
from it. And even after death--! What then? Always, Anne Watson was
asking herself that question; never was she able so to answer it that
her soul was set at rest. She now went slowly and sadly to her place at
the card-table, and she did not leave it again that day. But Lynn
Gordon, keeping his vigil, saw her strange, mystical gaze wander many
times from the burning stake to which she was bound,--a hopeless,
tortured captive for life,--to the shadowed peace of the window behind
his head. Ah, the inscrutableness of those strange eyes. The eyes of
Anne Watson were the eyes of a fanatic, yet none the less the eyes of a
martyr.

He glanced now and then at the people who were coming and going so
stilly and so sadly through the little broken gate. All gave him a
friendly nod in passing, no matter whether they knew him or not, for
that was the kind custom of the country. But no one stopped to speak to
him; all appeared to be too deeply absorbed in their own sad thoughts.

Only Kitty Mills smiled at him, and she did not know that she smiled,
for her light heart was heavy enough that day. But she never had known
what it was to have her eyes meet other eyes without smiling; and her
merry brown ones smiled now of themselves without her knowledge, through
mere force of habit. They had been sad indeed an instant before, and her
round ruddy cheeks were drawn and pale, and bore traces of tears. She
had been tirelessly running back and forth between her own house and
Miss Judy's, coming and going more often than any one else, as often, in
truth, as she found herself momentarily released from her
father-in-law's ceaseless clamor for attention, and as his querulous
summons recalled her to her perpetual bondage. His shrill, imperious cry
now suddenly made itself distinctly heard through the reigning
stillness; through that awesome stillness which reigns wherever death is
expected; that stillness which awes all, save the very young, who feel
too far away to be afraid, and the very old, who are come too near to
heed the awe.

In response to the call Kitty Mills started to run across the big road
as she had sped many times that day, and in so doing she encountered
Miss Pettus, who had gone home and was now returning in great haste,
bearing a small covered dish with the greatest care. At the sight of her
the sadness instantly flitted from poor Kitty Mills's face--which was
newly wet with tears--and the old quizzical, bantering challenge flashed
into it without her dreaming that it was there. But Miss Pettus saw it
as quickly as it came, and her fiery temper flared up forthwith, like a
flame in a sudden gust of wind. Her sharp little black eyes snapped with
all the old fire, although they were red and swollen with weeping and
watching the whole night through. Her homely, hard, faithful features
stiffened at once with all the old scornful wrath as she caught Kitty
Mills looking at the dish.

"_Yes_, it's a chicken for Miss Judy! And no bigger than a bird
either--and tenderer too. There's no law--that I know of--against my
having late chickens, even if that stubborn old dorminica _won't_ set,"
she said, as fiercely defiant as ever.

She gave the usual contemptuous toss of her head in its gingham
sunbonnet, and the accustomed excited swish of her starched calico
skirt, as she passed Kitty Mills. And then she turned for the parting
shot, which she could not even then bring herself to forego:--

"What if I _have_ cooked this chicken for Miss Judy with my own hands?
Don't _I_ know as well as you do that she can't eat it--nor anything
else--ever again in this world? And what's that got to do with my
cooking this chicken, and thinking that--maybe Miss Judy might feel a
little better--if"--with a burst of angry sobbing, "--if she could see
Miss Sophia eat it. She always liked that better than anything for
herself. You know as well as _I_ do, Kitty Mills, that she always was
just that silly and soft!"

Miss Pettus went on toward the gate, and Lynn Gordon got up to open it
for her, some passer-by having thoughtlessly dropped over the post the
loop of faded blue ribbon which served in the place of a latch. How like
Miss Judy that poor little scrap of daintiness was! As he stood holding
the gate back for Miss Pettus to pass, seeing that her hands were full,
he heard the rumble of wheels, the rattle of some approaching vehicle.
The great, brown cloud of dust lifted, drifting farther down the big
road, and out of it came an old-fashioned buggy drawn by an old gray
horse. This was driven by a white-haired negro, who had once been
Colonel Fielding's coachman, and who was now long since become his
nurse. Beside the driver sat the colonel himself, and Lynn sprang to
assist him in getting down from the buggy; but the negro made a sly
restraining gesture, and when the young man came near he saw that the
colonel's beautiful old head was shaking strangely, and that his fine
old eyes appeared not to see what they were resting upon. The colonel
gazed vaguely down at Lynn before he spoke:--

"Ah, yes--my compliments to little Mistress Judy. _That_ was what I came
to say. Will you be so very kind, young sir, as to give my compliments
to the elder of the major's daughters, and also to the major himself?
Say, if you please, that Colonel Fielding has called this morning to pay
his compliments to her and to her honored father. A man of honor, sir, a
soldier, and a gentleman. Gad--sir--what more would you have? What more
could any man be?" he said, suddenly turning upon his servant with a
piteous touch of bewildered asperity.

"_Toe_-be-shore, sir! _Toe_-be-shore!" said the old negro, soothingly.

"I--I seem--to disremember something," the colonel went on, forgetting
this momentary, formless annoyance. He sat still and silent for a space,
trying to remember why he had come. He put his shapely hand to his high
forehead in mild confusion. His thick, curling, silver hair fell around
his face and upon his shoulders in rather wild disorder.

"Little Judy is a mighty pretty girl--delicate, sweet, and fair as a
sweet-brier blossom. No prettier nor sweeter girl ever footed the
Virginia Reel in this whole Pennyroyal Region. You will give her and her
honored father my message, if you please, young sir. 'Colonel Fielding's
compliments and also Miss Alice Fielding's compliments to Major Bramwell
and his daughter.' You will not forget?"

"I will not forget, sir," said Lynn Gordon, as steadily as he could
speak.

"And--and what else was it? What else did I come for? Tell me this
instant, you black rascal!" the colonel now cried, again turning upon
his servant in excited, displeased bewilderment. "What do you mean--I
say, sir--by sitting there without saying a word? What was it I wanted
to say about that young John Stanley, who's eternally hanging round my
house? What did somebody tell me about him--only this morning? What's
the matter with you, can't you speak, boy?"

The old negro's heavy lips were trembling so that he could not have
spoken had there been anything to say. He sat bolt upright, gazing
straight before him at the dust of the deserted highway; his ragged coat
was as carefully buttoned as his fine livery used to be; he held the
reins--broken and spliced with rope--over the poor old horse, which
stood with a dejected droop, precisely as he used to hold the fine,
strong, lines over his master's spirited bays.

"Well--drive on home, then," the colonel said, after a moment's
hesitation, suddenly recovering his usual mildness. "Perhaps I may
remember--and if so you may fetch me back."

Lynn watched the buggy disappear amid the thickening clouds of dust, and
when it was out of sight he turned with a sigh toward the people who
were still coming and going, looking sadder when they went than when
they came. He was surprised to see how many were passing through that
humble little broken gate, with its pathetic fastening of a loop of
faded ribbon, too weak to bar a butterfly. He had not thought there were
so many in all Oldfield, counting both black and white, for both were
now coming and going. He presently realized that some of these sad
comers and sadder goers were not Oldfield people, that some lived
farther away, and this knowledge filled him with greater surprise. For
he would not have supposed that Miss Judy was known by any one beyond
the compassing hills, so completely had her life seemed bound about by
the wooded borders of the village. He had never known until now how
far-reaching the influence of gentleness may be; he had never realized
until this moment that goodness always wins more friends than greatness.

He said something of this to the doctor's wife, when she came softly
after an hour had passed and silently sat down beside him on the bench
under the window. She did not reply at once, but she took his hand and
pressed it with the sympathy which common trouble begets in every
feeling heart. She did not know how keenly he was craving sympathy, how
sorely he himself was needing it, how bruised and broken he was by the
spiritual crisis--the greatest of his life--through which he was passing
so hardly. It was only that her tender heart was tenderer than ever,
because she had come direct from the tavern.

Thus the two sat for a few moments in silence, listening to the soft
sounds which came at long intervals from the shadowed quiet within Miss
Judy's room. At length the doctor's wife began to talk in the hushed
tone which the feeling use near the dying--who appear to hear nothing
but the Call; and near the dead--who appear to hear nothing--nothing for
evermore. She said that Miss Judy had not been told of the judge's
death; and that she mercifully knew nothing of the horror which had gone
before the tragedy. There was no need now that she ever should know, so
the doctor's wife said, with filling eyes. It would be time enough when
the two met on the Other Side. And then--with that resistless reaching
toward the unknowable, which always moves us when we feel the Mystery
near, so near that it appears as if we have but to put out our hand to
seize the invisible black wings which forever elude mortal grasp--she
asked him if he believed that Miss Judy would know even then. She,
herself, she said, could not see how a soul as gentle as the soft one
then fluttering to escape its frail earthly prison, or how a soul as
just as the one which had already found sacrificial release from a life
of suffering, could be happy in heaven if it still knew the pain and the
wrong and the cruelty of this world. But, however that might be, all
would surely be well hereafter with these two. The doctor's wife, rising
to go back to the tavern, where other sad duties were yet waiting to be
done, declared this with conviction. These two had not had their just
share of happiness here; in fairness it must be awaiting them elsewhere,
she concluded, lapsing into the simple audacity of everyday faith.

Lynn walked with her a little way along the big road, and when she had
gone some distance and he still stood looking after her, he heard again
the sound of wheels and saw a vehicle approaching through the clouds of
dust. He thought at first that the colonel had "remembered" and was
returning; but as the dust-clouds shifted he recognized his
grandmother's coach with a start of surprise, and a feeling very like
alarm came over him as he saw that she herself, erect, massive,
white-robed, sat within the coach. He waited, standing still till the
coach drew nearer, and then went outside and turned down the folding
steps--from which the little black boy sprang--and assisted her to
descend. But he did not speak, nor did she. Silently he offered his arm
and she took it as silently as it had been offered, and they went
together toward the passage door. It touched him to see with what
difficulty she walked. It moved him thus to realize suddenly how old she
was. It seemed to him that age was a very pitiful thing. Yet it also
impressed him to see what a fine, stately personage she still was; to
read in the respectful eyes which followed her that she was still the
great lady of the country, as she always had been.

The abrupt withdrawal of her hand from his arm when they reached the
door told him that she did not wish him to enter the house with her, and
he as abruptly drew back, feeling the blood rush to his face as Sidney
came out of Miss Judy's room to receive his grandmother. Returning to
his seat on the bench under the window, he tried not to strain his ears
toward what was passing within the room, and he heard only the
indistinct murmur of voices. But he could not help wondering miserably
why his grandmother had come. He knew her too well to think that she had
been induced to come by pure fondness for Miss Judy, such as had brought
all these other people, who were so patiently waiting with heavy hearts
and wet eyes. The sudden thought of Doris--a formless fear for her--made
him leap to his feet. And then he put away the vague alarm as unworthy
of the rough justice, the haughty generosity, of his grandmother's
character. He sat down humbly, ashamed of his passing suspicion, to wait
with such patience and composure as he might muster till she should come
from Miss Judy's room. But the intensity of his suspense became almost
unendurable before it was ended. When his grandmother finally appeared
in the passage door, he sprang up with a nervous start and hurried to
help her to the coach. Again they were both silent until she was
comfortably settled on the easy cushions, silent even until the bag had
been rehung closer to her hand, and the little black boy was again
seated on the refolded step. Then she told him, speaking slowly and
gruffly as though she found the few words hard and bitter to utter, that
Miss Judy had asked her to send him to the bedside. When this had been
said, and he had made no reply, old lady Gordon sat still and silent for
a moment, looking grimly straight ahead, as if there were something else
which she wished to say. But if so it was never said; she suddenly and
roughly ordered Enoch Cotton to drive her home, and went away--poor old
lady Gordon--without a single backward glance.

The young man then turned swiftly and went softly into Miss Judy's room,
as the reverential enter a holy place. Doris, bending over the bed, did
not see him come. Miss Sophia was dozing, worn out with watching and
grief and--most of all--with trying to understand. Sidney sat motionless
in the farthest corner of the quiet, shadowy old room, where the shadows
were deepest. The only sound was the hushed murmur of the voices of the
many others who loved Miss Judy and who watched and waited without; some
in the parlor, which had been opened wide at last, others in the
passage, and more in the yard.

The little figure on the big bed lay motionless and with closed eyes.
Such a little creature, so white, so beautiful, so wonderfully
young--almost like a child, with the soft rings of silver hair wreathing
the border of the snowy cap, and the little arms which always had been
so strong for burdens, and the little, little hands, which always had
been so busy for everybody but herself, resting now--as still and cold
as snowflakes--on the deep blue of the old quilt. Looking down with dim
sight and swelling heart, Lynn thought of the Divine Bambino lying
asleep on its azure shield; he could think of nothing else so unearthly
in its loveliness.

The blue eyes opened as if Miss Judy had felt his presence, and the
flicker of a smile went over the sweet, quiet face. The young man,
leaning down, thought that she murmured something in apology, that she
tried to say something about a gentlewoman's bedchamber. But the words
were so faintly uttered, and the pauses between were so long, that he
could not be sure.

"Dear Miss Judy, is there anything--anything in the whole world--that I
can do?" he said, with all his heart.

"It is about the selling of the house. We can't depend on John Stanley
to sell it--to pay himself," panted Miss Judy with long, anguished waits
between the words, almost between the breaths.

There was a still longer pause after this, a still longer wait for a
slow wandering breeze to bring the needed breath.

"Dear John," Miss Judy murmured, when she could speak again, "he must
not know--till the note is paid. He doesn't quite realize what is due
our father. You must overlook it, sister Sophia. He means only to be
kind--so, so kind."

"Just so, sister Judy," replied poor Miss Sophia, through the habit of a
long lifetime, not knowing what she said.

"Dear John. Dear John," Miss Judy said again, hardly louder than her
fluttering breath.

There was a slight movement of her hand, and although the nerveless,
cold little fingers fell powerless on the old blue quilt, the girl who
hung over her knew what the movement meant. Doris understood that Miss
Judy wished to have the judge's letter read to her again; but before it
could be drawn from beneath the pillow the blue eyes were closed, and
Miss Judy seemed softly to fall asleep. In the deep silence which
followed the shadowed room was filled with the hushed hum of the voices
of the people waiting outside.

It seemed to the watchers a long time before Miss Judy's blue eyes
opened gently, yet suddenly and with a clearer look. It was a look quite
like her old sweet self. There was in it even a fleeting expression
almost like her old innocent artfulness.

"I hope you won't mind--the--trouble," she said, going on after a long
pause, after waiting for her reluctant breath to return; after waiting
for her true heart to beat once more. "I--should like--you--to--to
consult Doris--often."

The blue eyes wandered from the young man's face to the golden head
bowed at the bedside. At least the young man thought so, but his own
eyes were very dim, his own heart was beating very, very fast, and he
could not see very clearly.

"I will do all that you wish, as nearly as I can," he said tremulously.
"But--dear Miss Judy, have you considered? This is your sister's
home--all that she has in the world."

Miss Judy's little hand tried to creep toward her sister's, but its
strength failing Doris tenderly took it in hers and laid it on Miss
Sophia's. Yet even then, when it had grown cold--with the coldness that
never passes, and had become weak with the weakness that can never gain
strength--it made a slight protecting movement.

"Sister Sophia--isn't--willing--to keep what is--not--our own. And
Doris--"

There now followed so long a pause that Doris, who had been quiet and
calm in her self-control up to this moment, thought it too late for her
grief to disturb Miss Judy--believed it to be time to say quickly what
she wished to say, if Miss Judy ever were to hear--and, dropping all
guard, she burst into a passion of protest and weeping.

"Oh, you do believe that I can do what I have promised, dear, dear Miss
Judy. You surely believe that I can do what I have promised!" she cried.
"It would break my heart to think that you doubted. I don't know how I
can do it, but I will--I will--I will--somehow. I will take care of Miss
Sophia--always--I will work so hard. There must be work--somewhere, for
me to do. Whatever I can make shall be hers. Anyway, our home is hers. I
will try to be as good to her--as you have been to me."

"I do believe--my child," the faint and distant but sweet and loving
voice said quite distinctly, and then, after one of the long, fluttering
pauses, "but--you must let--Lynn--advise you."

"Oh, if Doris only would--if you only could persuade her," Lynn cried.

He fell on his knees beside the slender bowed figure, and laid his
trembling hand on the golden head which rested now, shaken by sobbing,
on the pillow close to the silver head that lay so quiet. He made no
further vain effort to restrain a man's rare, reluctant tears, nor to
steady his broken voice.

"If you will ask Doris--maybe she can forgive me--for what I never meant
to do--for what I did not know I was doing--till too late. Won't you
ask?" he implored. "Dear, dear Miss Judy, she can refuse nothing--not
even that--to you. And I love her so--with all my heart and soul and
mind and strength. Won't you ask her to let me help her in caring for
Miss Sophia--then all would be well; then there need be no more trouble.
Can't you speak, dear Miss Judy? Just one word. Try--_try_ to ask her to
let me help her--even though she may never consent to be my wife."

But this late-found, powerful plea seemed for a space to come too late,
to fall all unheeded away from death's deaf ears. A wonderful radiance,
such as rarely dawns in the face of the living, was now slowly dawning
in the sweet, still whiteness of Miss Judy's face. The young man could
not look upon it; he could not bear to hear Doris's helpless,
heart-broken sobbing; he could only keep to his knees and lay his
humbled head lower on the old quilt and nearer hers.

And then after a long time, after all hope of hearing the gentle voice
again seemed wholly lost, it came back like a whisper in a dream, and
Lynn and Doris heard Miss Judy say:--

"I do--ask--it--Doris--dear one. But--unless--you are--married--it
wouldn't--be----"

She could say no more, but she had said enough. With this crowning
triumph of her last artless plot the smile on the little white face
brightened forever into unearthly sweetness. With these last words Miss
Judy's gentle spirit breathed itself out of the world.