Stealthily, like a thief, Ford crept up the steps and over the turf of the terrace.  The rising of the wind at that minute drowned all sound of his movements, so that he was tempted right on to the veranda, where a coarse matting deadened his tread.  He dared not hold himself upright on this dangerous ground, but, crouching low, he was blotted from sight, while he himself could see what passed within.  He would only, he said, look once more into kindly human faces and steal away as he came.

He could perceive now that the lady who had spoken was an invalid reclining in a long chair, lightly covered with a rug.  A fragile, dainty little creature, her laces, trinkets, and rings revealed her as one clinging to the elegancies of another phase of life, though Fate had sent her to live, and perhaps to die, here on the edge of the wilderness.  He made the same observation with regard to the man who sat with his back to the window.  He was in informal evening dress—­a circumstance that, in this land of more or less primitive simplicity, spoke of a sense of exile.  He was slight and middle-aged, and though his face was hidden, Ford received the impression of having seen him already, but from another point of view.  His habit of using a magnifying-glass as, with some difficulty, he read a newspaper in the light of a green-shaded lamp, seemed to Ford especially familiar, though more pressing thoughts kept him from trying to remember where and when he had seen some one do the same thing within the recent past.

As he crouched by the window watching them, it came into his mind that they were just the sort of people of whom he had least need to be afraid.  The sordid tragedy up in the mountains had probably interested them little, and in any case they could not as yet have heard of his escape.  If he broke in on them and demanded food, they would give it to him as to some common desperado, and be glad to let him go.  If there was any one to inspire terror, it was he, with his height, and youth, and wildness of aspect.  He was thinking out the most natural method of playing some small comedy of violence, when suddenly the man threw down the paper with a sigh.  On the instant the lady spoke, as though she had been awaiting her cue.

“I don’t see why you should feel so about it,” she said, making an effort to control a cough.  “You must have foreseen something of this sort when you took up the law.”

The answer reached Ford’s ears only as a murmur, but he guessed its import from the response.

“True,” she returned, when he had spoken, “to foresee possibilities is one thing, and to meet them is another; but the anticipation does something to nerve one for the necessity when it comes.”

Again there was a murmur in which Ford could distinguish nothing, but again her reply told him what it meant.

“The right and the wrong, as I understand it,” she went on, “is something with which you have nothing to do.  Your part is to administer the law, not to judge of how it works.”