seated on the garden bench, outside the window, and ran to
kiss her. All the children loved Mrs. Hare. The justice was looking--not
pale; that would not be a term half strong enough: but yellow. The curls
of his best wig were limp, and all his pomposity appeared to have gone
out of him.

"I say, Carlyle, what on earth's this?" cried he, in a tone that, for
him, was wonderfully subdued and meek. "I was not on the bench this
afternoon, but Pinner has been telling me--of an application that was
made to them in private. It's not true, you know; it can't be; it's too
far-fetched a tale. What do you know about it?"

"Nothing," said Mr. Carlyle. "I do not know what you are talking of. I
have been privy to no application."

"It seems they want to make out now that Dick never murdered Hallijohn,"
proceeded the justice, in a half whisper, glancing round as if to be
sure that there were no eaves-droppers amidst the trees.

"Oh," said Mr. Carlyle.

"But that Levison did. _Levison_!"

Mr. Carlyle made no reply, save by a gesture; his face more impassive
than before. Not so another face beside him, a fair face; that turned
white again with emotion as she listened.

"But it can't be, you know. It can't, I say."

"So far as Richard's innocence goes, of that I have long been
convinced," spoke Mr. Carlyle.

"And that Levison's guilty?" returned the justice, opening his eyes in
puzzled wonderment.

"I have no opinion upon that point," was the cold rejoinder.

"It's impossible, I say. Dick can't be innocent. You may as well tell me
that the world's turned upside down."

"It is, sometimes, I think. That Richard was not the guilty man will be
proved yet, justice, in the broad face of day."

"If--if--that other did do it, I should think you'd take the warrant out
of the hands of the police and capture him yourself."

"I would not touch him with a pair of tongs," spoke Mr. Carlyle, his
lips curling again. "If the man goes to his punishment, he goes; but I
do not help him on his road thither."

"_Can_ Dick be innocent?" mused the justice, returning to the thought
which so troubled his mind. "Then why has he kept away? Why did he not
come back and say so?"

"That you might deliver him up, justice. You know you took an oath to do
it."

The justice looked green, and remarkably humble.

"Oh, but Carlyle," impulsively spoke he, the thought occurring to him,
"what an awful revenge this would have been for you on--somebody--had