“Why?” inquired the judge.

“Hicks says Miss Malroy’s been acting mighty queer ever since Charley Norton was shot—­distracted like!  He says he noticed it, and that Tom Ware noticed it.”

“How does he explain the boy’s disappearance?”

“He reckons she throwed herself in, and the boy tried to drag her out, like he naturally would, and got drawed in.”

“Humph!  I’ll trouble Mr. Hicks to step here,” said the judge quietly.

“There’s Mr. Carrington and a couple of strangers outside who’ve been asking about Miss Malroy and the boy, seems like the strangers knowed her and him back yonder in No’th Carolina,” said the sheriff as he turned away.

“I’ll see them.”  The sheriff went from the room and the judge dismissed the servants.

“Well, what do you think, Price?” asked Mahaffy anxiously when they were alone.

“Rubbish!  Take my word for it, Solomon, this blow is leveled at me.  I have been too forward in my attempts to suppress the carnival of crime that is raging through west Tennessee.  You’ll observe that Miss Malroy disappeared at a moment when the public is disposed to think she has retained me as her legal adviser, probably she will be set at liberty when she agrees to drop the matter of Norton’s murder.  As for the boy, they’ll use him to compel my silence and inaction.”  The judge took a long breath.  “Yet there remains one point where the boy is concerned that completely baffles me.  If we knew just a little more of his antecedents it might cause me to make a startling and radical move.”

Mahaffy was clearly not impressed by the vague generalities in which the judge was dealing.

“There you go, Price, as usual, trying to convince yourself that you are the center of everything!” he said, in a tone of much exasperation.  “Let’s get down to business!  What does this man Hicks mean by hinting at suicide?  You saw Miss Malroy yesterday?”

“You have put your finger on a point of some significance,” said the judge.  “She bore evidence of the shock and loss she had sustained; aside from that she was quite as she has always been.”

“Well, what do you want to see Hicks for?  What do you expect to learn from him?”

“I don’t like his insistence on the idea that Miss Malroy is mentally unbalanced.  It’s a question of some delicacy—­the law, sir, fully recognizes that.  It seems to me he is overanxious to account for her disappearance in a manner that can compromise no one.”

Here they were interrupted by the opening of the door, and big Steve admitted Carrington and the two men of whom the sheriff had spoken.

“A shocking condition of affairs, Mr. Carrington!” said the judge by way of greeting.

“Yes,” said Carrington shortly.

“You left these parts some time ago, I believe?” continued the judge.

“The day before Norton was shot.  I had started home for Kentucky.  I heard of his death when I reached Randolph on the second bluff,” explained Carrington, from whose cheeks the weather-beaten bloom had faded.  He rested his hand on the edge of the desk and turned to the men who had followed him into the room.  “This is the gentleman you wish to see,” he said. and stepped to one of the windows; it overlooked the terraces where he had said good-by to Betty scarcely a week before.