t look at him but for a moment, but his majestic port, the
fineness of his linen, the very set of his high hat, his Christian
benignity and grace, remained with you ever after, a possession of
comfort and joy.

Jane knew him at a glance, though they had never met before. All of her
life she had heard Aristides called the Just, and been a trifle bored by
it. Undoubtedly this was he. She was not petulant or bored now.

If we want a key to her feeling, we can find it in the fact that there
was not a moment since she burned the will that she had not known that
she was right in doing it, and that there was not a moment in which she
had not remembered that in the judgment of the world she was a thief.

Here was the man sent by Laidley out of his grave to judge her, a man
who was embodied Virtue and Honor--in the world's eye.

There was evidently no doubt in Mr. Van Ness's mind, either, as to who
the slight erect woman might be who came slowly up the rocky path, one
hand on the dog's collar, the folds of her blue dress falling about her
like the drapery of an antique statue, the coils of yellow hair only
held in place by a black velvet band. If he had been watching her growth
for years, as he said, waiting for this supreme moment, he gave no sign
of emotion now that it had arrived, except that the radiance in his
protruding light eyes became more intense. I may as well say, once for
all, that Mr. Van Ness never was known to yield to weak emotion,
irritability or any of those vicious humors which beset other men. If he
had done so it would have grievously wounded the faith of his disciples.
He possibly had met these temptations in his cradle, as the infant
Hercules the serpents, strangled them and left them dead there, so
passing into a serene boyhood and victorious middle age.

Bruno at this moment caught sight of the stranger, and began to growl
ominously. Now, the dog was an amiable, courteous dog ordinarily, but
subject, like his mistress, to irrational antipathies, and, like her,
with a large reserve of untamed blood to support his prejudices. He
stopped, dropped his head between his fore legs, his eyeballs reddened,
he barked a short, sharp warning. Miss Swendon knew the signs: she had
seen them once before. She caught him by the collar, looking straight at
the exceptionally handsome man with the underbred blaze of yellow on his
shirt-front: "Down! down, sir!--You had better go back," to Mr. Van
Ness. "I beg of you to