ram, the judge opened the door and stepped out into the
night.

On the pavement the wind met him rudely, and the rain drove its cold
arrows against his kind old face. Wonderful are the ways of Providence,
thought Judge Maxwell, bending his head to bring his broad hat-brim to
shield his face, and complete are the accounts of justice when it is
given that men may see them down to the final word.

The wind laid hold of the judge's coat, and tugged at it like a vicious
dog; it raged in the gaunt trees, and split in long sighs upon the
gable-ends and eaves. There was nobody abroad. For Shelbyville the hour
was late; Judge Maxwell had the street to himself as he held on his
way.

Past the court-house he fought the wind, and a square beyond that. There
he turned down a small street, where the force of the blast was broken,
looking narrowly about him to right and left at the fronts of houses as
he passed.

Simeon Harrison, Ollie Chase's father, lately had given over his
unprofitable struggle with the soil. He had taken a house near the
Methodist church and gone into the business of teaming. He hauled the
merchants' goods up from the railroad station, and moved such
inhabitants of Shelbyville as once in a while made a change from one
abode to another.

Sim had come to Shelbyville with a plan for setting up a general livery
business, in which ambition he had been encouraged by Ollie's marriage
to Isom Chase, to whom he looked, remotely, for financial backing. But
that had turned out a lean and unprofitable dream.

Since Isom's death Ollie had returned to live with her parents, and
Sim's prospects had brightened. He had put a big sign in front of his
house, upon which he had listed the many services which he stood ready
to perform for mankind, in consideration of payment therefor. They
ranged from moving trunks to cleaning cisterns, and, by grace of all of
them, Sim was doing very well.

When Sim Harrison heard of his daughter's public confession of shameful
conduct with her book-agent boarder, he was a highly scornful man. He
scorned her for her weakness in yielding to what he termed the
"dally-faddle" of the book-agent, and he doubly scorned her for
repudiating her former testimony. The moral side of the matter was
obscure to him; it made no appeal.

His sense of personal pride and family honor was not touched by his
daughter's confession of shame, any more than his soul was moved to
tenderness and warmth for her hone