udge and as attorney--as you've said you
would--I'll swear. Is that the trade?"

"It's the only hope he has, the only hope that you have, and the only
hope that I have. Absolute silence! Absolute secrecy! I'm going to save
him--but I'm going to save my own self, too." A slight color was in
Henderson's gray face.

"Oh, you trader!" said Anne Oglesby, all her scorn for him now patent,
fully voiced. "You sepulcher of a man! You failure! Oh, yes, yes, I'll
swear! And I'll keep my oaths and my promises all my life, so help me
God! Lift up the Book! You, too, Aurora."

"I swore it twenty years ago," said Aurora Lane. "I will again. You
Judas! You coward! Lift up the Book! Lift it up, so that I may see! Is
that the book they call the Bible--that tells of love and mercy, and
truth, and justice, and forgiveness of sins? Lift it up, so that I may
see!"

They faced him, their right hands raised, and he held up the Book, his
thumb under the cover, exposing the inscription which he had not seen
for years and did not now see.

"As you believe in God!" began Judge William Henderson.

CHAPTER XIV

AURORA AND ANNE

When Judge Henderson passed down the office stair, and out across the
street toward the narrow little brick walk of the courthouse--which even
on that day of the week now held a certain crowd--so disturbed, so
preoccupied, was he that he gave no greeting to one or two belated
loiterers about the store fronts.

"I reckon that young feller'll get his dose now," said old Aaron
Craybill, demi-chorus to this tragedy, following with his bleared eyes
the tall and well-groomed figure, frock-coated, top-hatted, which now
was passing toward the temple of justice. "I wouldn't like to have no
man like the Jedge after me if I'd done what that boy done. He's a-going
to get _hung_, that's what's going to happen to him. Everybody knows
Slattery ain't big enough for this case. With a 'Nited States Senator
a-prosecutin' it, though, and ten reporters from the cities--well, I
guess Spring Valley'll be heard from some!"

"I wonder when the funer'l's goin' to be," said his neighbor, Silas
Kneebone. "Of course Rawlins is goin' to preach the sermon. He's good on
funer'ls. Seems like he's e'en--a'most as comfortin' at a funer'l as
ary minister you could get in this town--and there's quite some
ministers here, too."

They hurried on away now presently even as Judge Henderson disappeared
in the courthouse door. A strain of music