is."

He tore the glass doors open, the bitter cold wind flickered the lamp,
and by some sensible instinct I pulled the cord of the oil burner. I
knew that as he stood on the balcony, looking, he could see nothing with
a light behind him. Furthermore, I did not move, because I knew that he
was listening, too. Both of us heard the scrape of something on the icy
garden walk, the moment the lights went out. Immediately after it the
Judge called to me.

"Look!" he said. "Isn't something moving there along the shrubs?"

"Yes," I whispered. "It's near the ground. It crawls."

"What do you want?" called the Judge to the moving thing. Then, although
he had no revolver at hand, he said, "Answer, or I'll shoot."

The only reply to this was the sound of breathing and one little cough
that sounded human. The Judge reached behind him with one long arm,
feeling around the little table by the window for some object. At last
his fingers closed on it and I knew he had the little bronze elephant
that now stands on the mantel, where Mrs. Estabrook turns it so it will
not show that it has lost its tail.

"We are a pair of old fools," said the Judge, as if he was not sure. "It
probably is a cat."

With these words he poised the bronze that was solid and must have
weighed two pounds, and hurled it into the garden. There was a sound of
striking flesh that a body can tell from all others. I heard it! And
then, quicker than I tell it, the sharp clear air was filled with a cry
which died away, as if it had flown up to the milky, starry sky and left
us listening to strange, inhuman groans coming up from the garden.

"My God!" cried the Judge. "I did not mean to hit it! It wasn't a cat!
It is something else."

"The kitchen!" I cried, and without stopping to close the doors against
the nipping cold, I led the way down the back stairs.

"No time for caution," he said. "Unbolt this door. See, it is writhing
there on the snow! It is a child!"

I believed at first that he was right. As we ran forward it seemed to be
a naked, half-starved child of six or seven years, wallowing in the snow
in some terrible agony. My heart jumped against my ribs as I saw it. I
stopped in my tracks and let the Judge go on alone.

In a second his voice rose in a tone that braced me like a glass of
brandy.

"See!" he cried. "Thank Heaven! It is only a poor, cringing dog--a
shaggy hound. Here, you poor beast. Did I hurt you? Come, Laddie, come,
boy!"

"Laddi