nce which had wiped the smile from the
Judge's face and tightened every nerve and sinew in the dog's lean body.
I could hear the wind, and, in its lapses, the rumble of the city, I
could smell the warm aroma of the Judge's pipe, I could feel my senses
grow keener as I gathered my courage to look over my shoulder.

When at last, after that dragging moment's reluctance, I did so, I
believed that I had looked for no purpose. The room behind me was empty.
My nervous eyes searched the rectangular space, swept over the chairs,
the tea-table covered with its display of rare china, the blue-and-gold
Japanese floor vase, the brasses on the cases of books, the dark walls,
the pictures, the gloomy corners filled with the mist of shadows, the
rugs, the cornice, the draperies.

Then suddenly I saw!

Outside the long French windows, framed in the uncertain outlines of the
old ornate balcony rail and the tossing leaves and branches of the vine,
there appeared, as if it had come floating out of the liquid blackness
of the night, detached from all else, a face.

No sooner had my glance fallen upon this peering countenance than I
thought I saw a startled opening of its lips; it withdrew and was gone.
I had merely caught a glance at it, yet of this I am sure--the face was
white with the pallor of things that grow in a cellar, it was weak with
the terrible drooping, hopeless weakness of endless self-indulgence; it
was a brutal face, and yet wore the expression of timid, anxious,
pathetic inquiry. It was a face that had come to ask a question. And
though, because only the pale skin had reflected the light from within,
I had not seen what might have appeared above or below, and though I may
have been wrong, I received the impression that it was the countenance
of an old woman.

Of course the moment I discovered this apparition, upon which the wild
stare of the Judge in life and in death had rested, I ran forward. I
thought as I did so that I heard the scrape of clothing on the iron
balcony rail and the thud of a heavy object dropping on the grass below.
Flinging open the glass doors, through which a torrent of wind poured
into the room, and leaning out under the twisted branches of the vine, I
tried in vain to penetrate the wall of blackness before me, and force my
sight through it and down into the old garden, from which there arose
only the rushing sound of the dry wind in the shrubbery. All the
universe seemed made of black and hissi