ght! Publicity! Oh, you Judas!--Ah,
Judas! Judas! You, his father! _Your own son!_"

Then sobs, deep, convulsive.

Came sudden rustling of garments in the adjoining room. The intervening
door was flung wide. Anne Oglesby, her face pale, tense, came out into
the room where stood these two.

"What is this?" she demanded of Judge Henderson. "This is Mrs. Lane?
_Don's your son?_"

She turned to Aurora inquiringly.

"I have heard--I could not help hearing. His father! Don told me his
father was dead. What's all this? Tell me!"

For a moment they stood apart, three individuals only. Then, slowly,
with subtle affiliation of sex, the women drew together, allied against
the man.

It was Anne who again was first to speak. Her voice was high, clear,
cold as ice, with a patrician note which came from somewhere out of the
past.

"Let me have all this quite plain," said she. "Mrs. Lane said 'flesh and
blood!' Mrs. Lane said '_your own son!_' I heard her. What does it
mean?"

"This is what it means!" said Aurora Lane, suddenly drawing Anne to her
closely, after her one swift glance. "My boy's in jail. This--this
man--Judge Henderson--is his father. He says he's hired to murder
him--and he's our child."

"I didn't know!" broke out Judge Henderson, now facing both his hearers.
"I never knew! You said he was dead--you told me so. It's all half a
lifetime ago. I've had nothing to do with you, nor you with me, since we
broke off more than twenty years ago. That was as you wished. God! I was
only a man. You _said_ the child died."

"Yes," said Aurora Lane, turning to Anne; "that's true--I did. I told
that one lie to protect the boy. I sent him away when he was a baby to
protect him. I said he was dead--to protect him--to keep him from ever
knowing. But you know--you saw him--you _felt_ it--you must have known,
yesterday." She confronted the trembling man once more.

"Yesterday?" said Anne Oglesby.

"Yes. There was another trial then--and Judge Henderson prosecuted then
also!" She turned again to him for his answer.

"I dropped the case."

"You dropped it because you were paid to drop it! You traded another man
out of his own life's ambition--a better man than you are--that's what
you did when you dropped the case. There's nothing more to trade--we've
nothing more to pay--but how can you prosecute him--now--when his very
life's at stake--when he's charged with murder? The punishment's death!
You'd send him to the gallows