with such dread was this done, that she could barely hold back her weak woman’s scream in the intensity of her suspense.  She knew just where his glances fell without following them with her own.  She saw them pass the door where so many faces yet peered in (he saw them not), and creep along the wall beyond, inch by inch, breathlessly and with dread, till finally, with fatal precision, they reached the point where the screen had stood, and not finding it, flew in open terror to the door it was set there to conceal—­when that something else, huddled in oozing blood, on the floor beneath, drew them unto itself with the irresistibleness of grim reality, and he forgot all else in the horror of a sight for which his fears, however great, had failed to prepare him.

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

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

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

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

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

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