r of how Joe had refused on the stand yesterday to
tell anything, and how a young woman had stood up in the court-room and
backed him up and encouraged him in his stand. I was reading along
comfortable and all right, when I seemed to hear somebody call me by my
name.

"I tell you I seemed to hear it, for there wasn't a soul in that room
but myself, Judge. But that voice seemed to sound as close to my ear as
if it come out of a telephone. And it was a woman's voice, too, believe
me or not, Judge!"

"Yes?" said the judge, encouragingly, still studying Morgan's face,
curiously.

"Yes, sir. She repeated my name, 'Curtis Morgan,' just that way. And
then that voice seemed to say to me, 'Come to Shelbyville; start now,
start now!'

"Say, I got out of my chair, all in a cold sweat, for I thought it was a
call, and I was slated to pass in my checks right there. I looked under
everything, back of everything in that room, and opened the door and
took a dive down the hall, thinkin' maybe some swift guy was tryin' to
put one over. Nobody there. As empty, Judge, I tell you, as the pa'm of
my hand! But it's no stall about that voice. I heard it, as plain as I
ever heard my mother call me, or the teacher speak to me in school.

"I stood there holding onto the back of my chair, my legs as weak under
me as if I'd stayed in swimmin' too long. I didn't think anything about
going to Shelbyville, or anywhere else, but hell, I guess, for a minute
or two. I tell you, Judge, I thought it was a call!"

Morgan was sweating again in the recollection of that terrible
experience. He wiped his face, and looked around the room, listened as
the rain splashed against the window, and the wind bent the branches of
the great trees beside the wall.

"Well?" said Judge Maxwell, leaning forward in his turn, waiting for
Morgan's next word.

"I tell you, Judge, I kept hearing that thing in my ear that way, every
little while, till I threw some things in my grip and started for the
depot. There wasn't any train out last night that'd fetch me within
fifty miles of here. I went back to my room and went to bed. But it
didn't let up on me. Off and on, all night, just about the time I'd doze
off a little, I'd seem to hear that voice. I went to the depot this
morning, and caught the eight o'clock train out. I'd 'a' made it in here
at two this afternoon if it hadn't been for a washout between here and
the junction that put the trains on this branch out of ser