Three women were at work in this busiest of scenes, and, deciding at a glance which was the able mistress of the house, he approached the large, pleasant and commanding figure piling plates at the farther end of the room and courteously remarked: 

“Mrs. Yardley, I believe?”

The answer came quickly, and not without a curious smile of constraint: 

“Oh, no.  Mrs. Yardley is in the entry behind.”

Bowing his thanks, he stepped in the direction named, just as the three women’s heads came simultaneously together.  There was reason for their whispers.  His figure, his head, his face, were all unusual, and at that moment highly expressive, and coming as he did out of the darkness, his presence had an uncanny effect upon their simple minds.  They had been laughing before; they ceased to laugh now.  Why?

Meanwhile, Judge Ostrander was looking about him for Mrs. Yardley.  The quiet figure of a squat little body blocked up a certain doorway.

“I am looking for Mrs. Yardley,” he ventured.

The little figure turned; he was conscious of two very piercing eyes being raised to his, and heard in shaking accents, which yet were not the accents of weakness, the surprised ejaculation: 

“Judge Ostrander!”

Next minute they were together in a small room, with the door shut behind them.  The energy and decision of this mite of a woman were surprising.

“I was going—­to you—­in the morning—­” she panted in her excitement.  “To apologise,” she respectfully finished.

“Then,” said he, “it was your child who visited my house to-day?”

She nodded.  Her large head was somewhat disproportioned to her short and stocky body.  But her glance and manner were not unpleasing.  There was a moment of silence which she hastened to break.

“Peggy is very young; it was not her fault.  She is so young she doesn’t even know where she went.  She was found loitering around the bridge—­a dangerous place for a child, but we’ve been very busy all day—­and she was found there and taken along by—­by the other person.  I hope that you will excuse it, sir.”

Was she giving the judge an opportunity to recover from his embarrassment, or was she simply making good her own cause?  Whichever impulse animated her, the result was favourable to both.  Judge Ostrander lost something of his strained look, and it was no longer difficult for her to meet his eye.

Nevertheless, what he had to say came with a decided abruptness.

“Who is the woman, Mrs. Yardley?  That’s what I have come to learn, and not to complain of your child.”

The answer struck him very strangely, though he saw nothing to lead him to distrust her candour.

“I don’t know, Judge Ostrander.  She calls herself Averill, but that doesn’t make me sure of her.  You wonder that I should keep a lodger about whom I have any doubts, but there are times when Mr. Yardley uses his own judgment, and this is one of the times.  The woman pays well and promptly,” she added in a lower tone.