Recoiling before a cynicism that pierced with unerring skill the one joint in his armour he knew to be vulnerable, the judge took a minute in which to control his rage and then addressing the half-averted figure in the window said: 

“Mrs. Scoville, will you assure this man that you have no expectations of marrying your daughter to Oliver Ostrander?”

With a slow movement more suggestive of despair than any she had been seen to make since the hour of her indecision had first struck, she shifted in her seat and finally faced them, with the assertion: 

“Reuther Scoville will never marry Oliver Ostrander.  Whatever my wishes or willingness in the matter, she herself is so determined.  Not because she does not believe in his integrity, for she does; but because she will not unite herself to one whose prospects in life are more to her than her own happiness.”

The fellow stared, then laughed: 

“She’s a goodun,” he sneered.  “And you believe that bosh?”

Mr. Black could no longer contain himself.

“I believe you to be the biggest rascal in town,” he shouted.  “Get out, or I won’t answer for myself.  Ladies are not to be treated in this manner.”

Did he remember his own rough handling of the sex on the witness stand?

“I didn’t ask to see the ladies,” protested Flannagan, turning with a slinking gait towards the door.

If they only had let him go!  If the judge in his new self-confidence had not been so anxious to deepen the effect and make any future repetition of the situation impossible!

“You understand the lady,” he interposed, with the quiet dignity which was so imposing on the bench.  “She has no sympathy with your ideas and no faith in your conclusions.  She believes absolutely in my son’s innocence.”

“Do you, ma’am?” The man had turned and was surveying her with the dogged impudence of his class.  “I’d like to hear you say it, if you don’t mind, ma’am.  Perhaps, then, I’ll believe it.”

“I—­” she began, trembling so, that she failed to reach her feet, although she made one spasmodic effort to do so.  “I believe—­Oh, I feel ill!  It’s been too much—­I—­” her head fell forward and she turned herself quite away from them all.

“You see she ain’t so eager, jedge, as you thought,” laughed the bill-poster, with a clumsy bow he evidently meant to be sarcastic.

“Oh, what have I done!” moaned Deborah, starting up as though she would fling herself after the retreating figure, now half way down the hall.

She saw in the look of the judge as he forcibly stopped her, and heard in the lawyer’s whisper as he bounded past them both to see the fellow out:  “Useless; nothing will bridle him now”; and finding no support for her despairing spirit either on earth or, as she thought, in heaven, she collapsed where she sat and fell unnoticed to the floor, where she lay prone at the feet of the equally unconscious figure of the judge, fixed in another attack of his peculiar complaint.