ure
that had begun to be something better than the stalkiness of a child.
Mrs. Colfax died with a little flickering smile one day, and the Judge
put his arms around her and then fell on his knees. She looked thin and
worn, but very happy.

"Sleep," he whispered to her.

And then he opened the door and called Julianna.

"You must not be afraid, dear," he said to her. "Death is here, but
Death is not terrible. See! She has smiled. We can tell that she knew
that we would see her again in a little while, can't we?"

"Why, yes," said Julianna. "For she never thought first of herself, but
of us."

Then the Judge put out his arms and held the girl close to him, so that
I knew a fresh love for her had come into his heart. Perhaps on account
of it he had more fear than ever. One day he brought home a book in a
green cover; I read the words on the back--"Some Aspects of Heredity."
Nor was that book the last of its kind he bought or sat reading till
late at night, with his pipe held in the crook of his long fingers and
his forehead drawn down into a scowl. I could tell he was wondering
about the mystery of that which goes creeping down from mother or father
to son and daughter, and on and on, like a starving mongrel dog that
slinks along after a person, dropping in the grass when a person speaks
cross to it, running away when a person turns and chases it, and then,
when it has been forgotten, a person looks around and there it is again,
skulking close behind. "And then," as Madame Welstoke used to say,
folding her hands, "if you call it 'Heredity,' it knows its name and
wags its tail!"

One would have said that the Judge always expected that some creature
like that would crawl up behind the girl. I used to imagine, when
Julianna came into the room, that he looked over her shoulder or behind
her, as if he expected to see it there with its grinning face. And,
moreover, I've seen him look at the soft, fine skin of her round
forearms, or the little curls of hair at the back of her neck, or the
lids of her eyes, when they were moist in summer, or the half moons on
the nails of her fingers, as if he might be able to see there some sign
of her birth or the first bruises made by this thing called "Heredity,"
that would say, if it could talk, "Come. Don't you feel the thrill of
my touch? You belong not to yourself, my dear, but to me."

I knew. And as the girl came into womanhood, and he saw, perhaps, that I
was watching her, too,