which I lacked the key. Yet not on every
brow either. There was one which remained undisturbed, and showed only a
grand patience.

As the hands of the big clock neared the point of eight a furtive smile
appeared on more than one face; and when the hour rang out a sigh of
satisfaction swept through the room, to which the little old lawyer
responded with a worldly-wise grunt as he moved from his place and
proceeded to the door.

This he had scarcely shut when a chorus of voices rose from without.
Three or four lingerers had pushed their way as far as the gate, only
to see the door of the house shut in their faces.

"Too late!" growled old man Luke from between the locks of his long
beard.

"Too late!" shrieked the woman who had come so near being late herself.

"Too late!" smoothly acquiesced the lawyer, locking and bolting the door
with a deft and assured hand.

But the four or five persons who thus found themselves barred out did
not accept without a struggle the decision of the more fortunate ones
assembled within. More than one hand began pounding on the door, and we
could hear cries of: "The train was behind time!" "Your clock is fast!"
"You are cheating us; you want it all for yourselves!" "We will have the
law on you!" and other bitter adjurations unintelligible to me from my
ignorance of the circumstances which called them forth.

But the wary old lawyer simply shook his head and answered nothing;
whereat a murmur of gratification rose from within, and a howl of almost
frenzied dismay from without, which latter presently received point from
a startling vision which now appeared at the casement where the lights
burned. A man's face looked in, and behind it, that of a woman, so wild
and maddened by some sort of heart-break that I found my sympathies
aroused in spite of the glare of evil passions which made both of these
countenances something less than human.

But the lawyer met the stare of these four eyes with a quiet chuckle,
which found its echo in the ill-advised mirth of those about him; and
moving over to the window where they still peered in, he drew together
the two heavy shutters which hitherto had stood back against the wall,
and, fastening them with a bar, shut out the sight of this despair, if
he could not shut out the protests which ever and anon were shouted
through the keyhole.

Meanwhile, one form had sat through this whole incident without a
gesture; and on the quiet brow, from which I