n
the round and healthy forearms that leaned there, and between her
graceful hands, whose intrinsic beauty was not marred by any ring.

"One might well envy the Judge," said I.

She looked up at me quickly.

"Will you close those long windows for me?" she asked, after a moment,
pointing toward the back of the room. "At the front of the house we are
level with the street; at the rear, however, the old walled garden is
almost another story below us. It is damp, I think, even after a spring
day as tender and sunny as this has been."

I hastened to do her bidding.

"There is a tangle of old-fashioned flowers in our little city
inclosure," she called after me. "The Judge likes it that way--as mother
used to like it. There is a balcony with an old wistaria vine just
outside the window."

"And the moon," said I under my breath.

The pranks that fate plays--or whatever one chooses to call the strange
domination of our chance happenings--are wonderful and at times seem
malicious. I am certain that it brought me onto the iron-railed balcony
just beyond the French windows at the beat of that second.

The old garden, though small and flanked by the ugly backs of city
houses, seemed to hold within its brick inclosure a world full of white
liquid moonlight. Shrubs, however, which had grown in disorder under the
walls, threw dark and steady shadows across the patches of lesser
vegetation. The tops of early blossoms and nodding grasses showed beyond
these spaces of blackness. Suddenly, as I looked down, I heard a click
like that of a gate-latch, and a second later I saw, projecting from one
of the fantastic patterns of shade, a round disk of shining surface.

There are moments when the sight is puzzled to determine the character
of such an object. I could not make out the nature of this bobbing,
moving circle that followed along the irregular line of wall shrubbery.
Then, when it was nearer, I saw in a flash that it was the top of a silk
hat. I could see, too, the stooping shoulders of the man who wore it, I
could see that he was proceeding cautiously as if he feared to attract
attention, and at last, when he paused beneath the balcony, I could see
a face with an anxious expression that turned upward toward me. I drew
back behind the thick-leaved vine; for the man was Judge Colfax.

Of all persons he was the last to act as if he sought concealment in
what he did, the last to be guilty or wear the appearance of guilt. Had
he