sence of her servants, was not made
like the others, with representatives of ten Eastern good families as
social bait for a hundred daughters, of Western quick millionaires.

I mention this because it was the beginning of times when Julianna was
being asked to other girls' houses and for nice harmless larks at fine
people's country-places, when vacations came. On one of these times when
she was away, a voice came whispering to us out of the past!

It was the Christmas season, bitter cold, and before I went to bed I
could hear the wind snapping the icicles off the edge of the library
balcony and sending them, like bits of broken goblets onto bricks and
crusted snow below. I could see the flash of them, too, as they went by
the light from the frosted windows in the kitchen basement, but nothing
else showed outside in the old walled garden, for it was as black as a
pocket.

Not later than ten I crawled up the stairs and stood for a minute in the
dining-room. I heard the scratch of the Judge's pen and knew he was hard
at work, and I remember, when I looked through the curtains, how I
thought of how old the Judge looked, with his hair already turning from
gray to white, and of how the youth of all of us hangs for a moment on
the edge and then slides away without any warning or place where a body
can put a finger and say, "It went at that moment." Perhaps I would have
stood there longer, but the Judge looked up and smiled, dry enough.

"You may think I am working," he said. "But I'm mostly engaged just now,
Margaret, exerting will power to overcome a foolish fancy."

"What is that, sir?" I asked.

"That somebody is watching me," he said. "I've turned around a dozen
times and left this seat twice already. It's an uncomfortable feeling,
but I've made up my mind not to look again."

"Not to look?" I cried.

"No. There's nothing there."

"Where?" I said.

"Below--in the garden or on the balcony," he answered; "somewhere
outside the window."

"Bless us, I'll look," I whispered, walking toward the back of the room.

It might have been my fancy or my own reflection, but whatever it was, I
thought I saw a dark and muffled thing move outside. It forced a scream
from me, and that one little cry was enough to bring the Judge up out of
his chair, knowing well enough without words that I had seen something.

"That's enough!" he said, his long legs striding toward the French
windows. "Stand back, Margaret. We'll look into th