occurred.  The stick which Oliver may have caught up in an absent frame of mind becomes burdensome; he has broken his knife against a knot in the handle and he is provoked.  Flinging the bludgeon down, he hurries up the embankment and so on into town.  John Scoville, lurking in the bushes, sees his stick fall and regains it at or near the time Algernon Etheridge steps into sight at the end of the bridge beyond Dark Hollow.  Etheridge carries a watch greatly desired by the man who finds himself thus armed.  The place is quiet; the impulse to possess himself of this watch is sudden and irresistible, and the stick falls on Etheridge’s head.  Is there anything impossible or even improbable about all this?  Scoville had a heart open to crime, Oliver not.  This I knew when I sat upon the bench at his trial; and now you shall know it too.  Come!  I have something to show you.”

He turned towards the door and mechanically she followed.  Her thoughts were all in a whirl.  She did not know what to make of him or of herself.  The rooted dread of weeks was stirring in its soil.  This suggestion of the transference of the stick from hand to hand was not impossible.  Only Scoville had sworn to her, and that, too, upon their child’s head, that he had not struck this blow.  And she had believed him after finding the cap; and she believed him now.  Yes, against her will, she believed him now.  Why? and again, why?

They had crossed the hall and he was taking the turn to his room.

“Enter,” said he, lifting the curtain.

Involuntarily she recoiled.  Not from him, but from the revelation she felt to be awaiting her in this place of unguessed mystery.  Looking back into the space behind her, she caught a fleeting glimpse of Reuther hovering on a distant threshold.  Leaving the judge, without even a murmured word of apology, she ran to the child, embraced her, and promised to join her soon; and then, satisfied with the comfort thus gained, she returned quickly to where the judge still awaited her, with his hand on the curtain.

“Forgive me,” said she; and meeting with no reply, stood trembling while he unlocked the door and ushered her in.

A new leaf in the history of this old crime was about to be turned.

Once within the room, he became his courteous self once more.  “Be seated,” he begged, indicating a chair in the half gloom.  As she took it, the room sprang into sudden light.  He had pulled the string which regulated the curtains over the glazed panes in the ceiling.  Then as quickly all was gloom again; he had let the string escape from his hand.

“Half light is better,” he muttered in vague apology.

It was a weird beginning to an interview whose object was as yet incomprehensible to her.  One minute a blinding glimpse of the room whose details were so varied that many of them still remained unknown to her,—­the next, everything swept again into shadow through which the tall form of the genius of the place loomed with melancholy suggestion!