“Miss Weeks, I am a mother.  I have a young and lovely daughter.  Can I look in her innocent eyes and believe her father to have so forgotten his responsibilities as to overshadow her life with crime?  No, I will not believe it.  Circumstances were in favour of his conviction, but he never lifted the stick which struck down Algernon Etheridge.”

Miss Weeks, who had sat quite still during the utterance of these remarks, fidgetted about at their close, with what appeared to the speaker, a sudden and quite welcome relief.

“Oh!” she murmured; and said no more.  It was not a topic she found easy of discussion.

“Let us go back to the cap,” suggested Deborah, with another of her fascinating smiles.  “Are you going to show me one such as I have described?”

“Let me see.  A man’s cap with an extra broad peak!  Mrs. Scoville, I fear that you have caught me.  There are caps hanging up in various closets, but I don’t remember any with a peak beyond the ordinary.”

“Yet they are worn?  You have seen such?”

A red spot sprang out on the faded cheek of the woman as she answered impulsively: 

“Oh, yes.  Young Mr. Oliver Ostrander used to wear one.  I wish I had asked him for it,” she pursued, naively.  “I should not have had to acknowledge defeat at your very first inquiry.”

“Oh! you needn’t care about that,” laughed Deborah, in rather a hard tone for her.  She had made her point, but was rather more frightened than pleased at her success.  “There must be a thousand articles you naturally would lack.  I could name—­”

“Don’t, don’t!” the little woman put in breathlessly.  “I have many odd things but of course not everything.  For instance—­” But here she caught sight of the other’s abstracted eye, and dropped the subject.  The sadness which now spread over the very interesting countenance of her visitor, offered her an excuse for the introduction of a far more momentous topic; one she had burned to introduce but had not known how.

“Mrs. Scoville, I hear that Judge Ostrander has got your daughter a piano.  That is really a wonderful thing for him to do.  Not that he is so close with his money, but that he has always been so set against all gaiety and companionship.  I suppose you did not know the shock it would be to him when you asked Bela to let you into the gates.”

“No!  I didn’t know.  But it is all right now.  The judge seems to welcome the change.  Miss Weeks, did you know Algernon Etheridge well enough to tell me if he was as good and irreproachable a man as they all say?”

“He was a good man, but he had a dreadfully obstinate streak in his disposition and very set ideas.  I have heard that he and the judge used to argue over a point for hours.  And he was most always wrong.  For instance, he was wrong about Oliver.”

“Oliver?”

“Judge Ostrander’s son, you know.  Mr. Etheridge wanted him to study for a professorship; but the boy was determined to go into journalism, and you see what a success he has made of it.  As a professor he would probably have been a failure.”