Alas!  Heaven has no answer for such questions.

When he had reached the middle of the bridge, he stopped short to look back at Dark Hollow and utter in a smothered groan, which would not be repressed, a name which by all the rights of the spot should have been Algernon’s, but was not.

The utterance of this name seemed to startle him, for, with a shuddering look around, he hastily traversed the rest of the bridge, and took the turn about the hill to where Factory Road branched off towards the town.  Here he stopped again and for the first time revealed the true nature of his destination.  For when he moved on again it was to take the road along the bluff, and not the one leading directly into town.

This meant a speedy passing by the lightning-struck house.  He knew this of course, and evidently shrunk from the ordeal, for once up the hill and on the level stretch above, he resolutely forbore to cast a glance at its dilapidated fence and decayed gate posts.  Had he not done this—­had his eyes followed the long line of the path leading from these toppling posts to the face of the ruin, he would have been witness to a strange sight.  For gleaming through the demolished heart of it,—­between the chimney on the one side and the broken line of the gable on the other—­could be seen the half circle of the moon suddenly released from the clouds which had hitherto enshrouded it.  A weird sight, to be seen only when all conditions favoured.  It was to be seen here to-night; but the judge’s eye was bent another way, and he passed on, unnoting.

The ground was high along this bluff; almost fifty feet above the level of the city upon, which he had just turned his back.  Of stony formation and much exposed to the elements, it had been considered an undesirable site by builders, and not a house was to be seen between the broken shell of the one he had just left, and the long, low, brilliantly illuminated structure ahead, for which he was evidently making.  The sight of these lights and of the trees by which the house was surrounded, suggested festival and caused a qualm of indecision to momentarily disturb him in his purpose.  But this purpose was too strong, and the circumstances too urgent for him to be deterred by anything less potent than a stroke of lightning.  He rather increased his pace than slackened it and was rewarded by seeing lamp after lamp go out as he approached.

The pant of a dozen motors, the shouting of various farewells and then the sudden rushing forth of a long line of automobiles, proclaimed that the fete of the day was about over and that peace and order would soon prevail again in Claymore Inn.

Without waiting for the final one to pass, the judge slid around to the rear and peered in at the kitchen door.  If Mrs. Yardley were the woman he supposed her to be from the sergeant’s description, she would be just then in the thick of the dish-washing.  And it was Mrs. Yardley he wished to see.