has come," he said in his throat.

I jumped toward him. He did not stir.

"Judge!" I cried.

He did not answer. I waited, bending over him, not daring to guess what
had befallen him, holding my breath. Then, cautiously, I moved my
fingers before his eyes: they did not wink. I placed my hand over his
heart.... It was as still as a rundown clock. The room itself was still.
The wind had paused a moment as if for this.... The Judge was dead. And
yet because he still sat there, his gray head resting on the cushions,
and because he stared so fixedly before him, I could not grasp the fact
of death. I had never met it face to face before. I could not honor its
credentials.

For a moment I stood in front of the old man, with the single thought
that our extraordinary interview had been too much for him: it never
occurred to me to go for assistance any more than it occurred to me that
death, unlike sleep, was a permanent thing, from which the Judge would
never come back again. I simply stood there, awed by the presence of
death, yet crediting death with none of death's attributes.

And as I stood, my attention became more and more fixed upon the Judge's
stare. It did not seem to be a vacant gaze; on the contrary, it seemed
to contain something. It seemed not only fixed; it seemed fixed on some
object. It looked past me, behind me, and there, with all its terror and
all its intelligence, it rested, motionless. It seemed to refute the
notion that dead men cannot see; it seemed to affirm that dead men's
eyes are not dead. Into that terrible stare I looked, fascinated, awed,
hushed, motionless. Then, suddenly, I heard the dog.

[Illustration: LISTEN TO ME, ESTABROOK!]

The great Scotch hound had been snarling. He had growled, for I
remembered it as a fact brought out of the background of my
consciousness. And when I tore my eyes away from the Judge's stare, I
saw that the dog was staring, too,--was staring, was drawing back his
black lips, exposing his yellow teeth. Every hair on his back was erect,
his nostrils were distended as if he were relying upon his sense of
smell to determine the nature of what he saw. Could there be any doubt
that he, living, and his master, dead, still saw something--something
which, because it was behind me, I could not see?

At first I did not dare to look. I felt some dreadful presence behind
me--a presence upon which the lifeless man and the cringing, snarling
beast had set their eyes, a prese