harp pain of fear.

Judge Little lived less than a mile away. Before nine o'clock he was
there, his black coat down to his knees, for he was a short man and
bowed of the legs, his long ends of hair combed over his bald crown.

The judge was at that state of shrinkage when the veins can be counted
in the hands of a thin man of his kind. His smoothly shaved face was
purple from congestion, the bald place on his small head was red. He was
a man who walked about as if wrapped in meditation, and on him rested a
notarial air. His arms were almost as long as his legs, his hands were
extremely large, lending the impression that they had belonged
originally to another and larger man, and that Judge Little must have
become possessed of them by some process of delinquency against a
debtor. As he walked along his way those immense hands hovered near the
skirts of his long coat, the fingers bent, as if to lay hold of that
impressive garment and part it. This, together with the judge's
meditative appearance, lent him the aspect of always being on the point
of sitting down.

"Well, well," said he, sliding his spectacles down his nose to get the
reading focus, advancing the sealed envelope, drawing it away again, "so
Isom left a will? Not surprising, not surprising. Isom was a careful
man, a man of business. I suppose we might as well proceed to open the
document?"

The judge was sitting with his thin legs crossed. They hung as close and
limp as empty trousers. Around the room he roved his eyes, red, watery,
plagued by dust and wind. Greening was there, and his wife. The
daughter-in-law had gone home to get ready for the funeral. The other
two neighbor women reposed easily on the kitchen chairs, arms tightly
folded, backs against the wall.

"You, Mrs. Chase, being the only living person who is likely to have an
interest in the will as legatee, are fully aware of the circumstances
under which it was found, and so forth and so forth?"

Ollie nodded. There was something in her throat, dry and impeding. She
felt that she could not speak.

Judge Little took the envelope by the end, holding it up to the light.
He took out his jack-knife and cut the cord.

It was a thin paper that he drew forth, and with little writing on it.
Soon Judge Little had made himself master of its contents, with an
_Um-m-m_, as he started, and with an _A-h-h_! when he concluded, and a
sucking-in of his thin cheeks.

He looked around again, a new brightnes