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

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

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

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