ve his
innocence!"

He stayed in his rooms all that day. Rowan, in answer to his
summons, had said that he should come about the middle of the
afternoon; and it was near the middle of the afternoon now. As he
counted the minutes, Judge Morris was unable to shut out from his
mind the gloomier possibilities of the case.

"There is some truth behind all this," he said. "She broke her
engagement with him,--at least, she severed all relations with him;
and she would not do that without grave reason." He was compelled
to believe that she must have learned from Rowan himself the things
that had compelled her painful course. Why had Rowan never
confided these things to him? His mind, while remaining the mind
of a friend, almost the mind of a father toward a son, became also
the mind of a lawyer, a criminal lawyer, with the old, fixed, human
bloodhound passion for the scent of crime and the footsteps of
guilt.

It was with both attitudes that he himself answered Rowan's ring;
he opened the door half warmly and half coldly. In former years
when working up his great cases involving life and death, it had
been an occasional custom of his to receive his clients, if they
were socially his friends, not in his private office, but in his
rooms; it was part of his nature to show them at such crises his
unshaken trust in their characters. He received Rowan in his rooms
now. It was a clear day; the rooms had large windows; and the
light streaming in took from them all the comfort which they
acquired under gaslight: the carpets were faded, the rugs were worn
out and lay in the wrong places. It was seen to be a desolate
place for a desolated life.

"How are you, Rowan?" he said, speaking as though he had seen him
the day before, and taking no note of changes in his appearance.
Without further words he led the way into his sitting room and
seated himself in his leather chair.

"Will you smoke?"

They had often smoked as they sat thus when business was before
them, or if no business, questions to be intimately discussed about
life and character and good and bad. Rowan did not heed the
invitation, and the Judge lighted a cigar for himself. He was a
long time in lighting it, and burned two or three matches at the
end of it after it was lighted, keeping a cloud of smoke before his
eyes and keeping his eyes closed. When the smoke rose and he lay
back in his chair, he looked across at the young man with the eyes
of an old la