road or riding over his farm.  But this visit must be made without Isabel’s knowledge.  It must further be made to appear incidental to Mrs. Meredith herself—–­or to Rowan.  She arranged therefore with that tortuous and superfluous calculation of which hypocrisy is such a master—­and mistress—­that she would at breakfast, in Isabel’s presence, order the carriage, and announce her intention of going out to the farm of Ambrose Webb.  Ambrose Webb was a close neighbor of the Merediths.  He owned a small estate, most of which was good grass-land that was usually rented for pasture.  She had for years kept her cows there when dry.  This arrangement furnished her the opportunity for more trips to the farm than interest in her dairy warranted; it made her Mrs. Meredith’s most frequent incidental visitor.

Having thus determined upon her immediate course for the prompt unravelling of this mysterious matter, she dismissed it from her mind, passed into her bedroom and was soon asleep:  a smile played over the sweet old face.

The Judge walked slowly across the town in the moonlight.

It was his rule to get home to his rooms by ten o’clock; and people living on the several streets leading that way were used to hearing him come tapping along before that hour.  If they sat in their doorways and the night was dark, they gave him a pleasant greeting through the darkness; if there was a moon or if he could be seen under a lamp post, they added smiles.  No one loved him supremely, but every one liked him a little—­on the whole, a stable state for a man.  For his part he accosted every one that he could see in a bright cheery way and with a quick inquiring glance as though every heart had its trouble and needed just a little kindness.  He was reasonably sure that the old had their troubles already and that the children would have theirs some day; so that it was merely the difference between sympathizing with the present and sympathizing with the future.  As he careened along night after night, then, friendly little gusts of salutation blew the desolate drifting figure over the homeward course.

His rooms were near the heart of the town, In a shady street well filled with law offices:  these were of red brick with green shutters—­green when not white with dust.  The fire department was in the same block, though he himself did not need to be safeguarded from conflagrations:  the fires which had always troubled him could not have been reached with ladder and hose.  There were two or three livery stables also, the chairs of which he patronized liberally, but not the vehicles.  And there was a grocery, where he sometimes bought crystallized citron and Brazil nuts, a curious kind of condiment of his own devising:  a pound of citron to a pound of nuts, if all were sound.  He used to keep little brown paper bags of these locked in his drawer with legal papers and munched them sometimes while preparing murder cases.