“I haven’t heard of any child, but Mrs. Yardley has seven.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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