me voice had told him that
only a moment was left for thought. At last he threw his long arms
outward.

"Yes," said he. "I tell you that it is better for you and for her to
know nothing."

"That is sufficient," I said. "I ask no more."

He shut his eyes as one would receive the relief of an opiate after
long agony of the body and for some moments he remained so, his hands,
from which the packet of papers had fallen, relaxed upon his knees. The
starched white shirt he wore crackled absurdly with each long inhalation
of breath.

In those moments a tumult of thoughts went tumbling through my brain,
and as the seconds passed, I almost felt that it was the wind that
howled outside which was blowing these thoughts over each other, as it
would blow dry autumn leaves.

At last the dog rose, stretched himself, and, as if restless, sought
here and there a new place to lie, and the sound of his claws upon the
polished floor recalled the Judge from his almost unconscious reverie.
He half opened his eyes and once or twice moved his thin lips. At last
he spoke and into those commonplace words he put all the meaning which
hours of ranting would have made less plain.

"I am grateful," he said.

When I looked up at him after lowering my head in acknowledgment of his
thanks, I saw again that wonderful smile of benevolence, which, given to
me once before in his office, I believe could only have been bestowed by
one who had had a lifelong practice in love of humanity. Indeed, he only
directed it at me for a moment, and then turned his face a little aside
toward the back of the room, as if he wished to send that expression
through the walls and spread over the whole world its beaming radiance.

You may, then, well imagine my surprise when, without a word or a motion
of any other part of his body, I saw that smile fade from his face. It
disappeared as if a blast of the night wind, entering the room, had
dried it, crumbled it, and blown it away. In its place I now saw the
terrible, eye-widened, and fixed stare which we recognize as the facial
sign of some abject, unreasoning terror, or of death, after the clutch
of some fatal agony.

"Judge Colfax!" I exclaimed.

I waited. I thought I saw his head move a little as if he had heard me,
but with that motion there came a click, the sound of teeth coming
together.

"You are ill," I said, half rising from my chair.

His lips moved, but the stare in his eyes remained the same.

"It