ught the look on the girl's face as she watched the first man
in whom she had taken that special interest, and when I saw him--begging
your pardon--staring at her as if she were not real, I knew, with a sick
feeling in my heart and throat, that the day would come when he would
take her away from us.

It was like a panic to me. I could not stand it and I called the Judge.
I wanted to speak with him. I nodded and beckoned to him and tried to
show him what was going on, for though a mother has the eyes of a hawk,
a father is often blind. And I thought that night he was going out
without my having a chance to say a word. I went down to the kitchen and
then to the dark laundry, out of sight of the cook. I threw my apron
over my head and cried like an old fool from fright. It was in the midst
of it that I heard the gate-latch.

"The woman again!" I said to myself. "The strange woman! She feels
there's something wrong, too. She's come back!"

I could hear my own heart thumping as I stared out into the dark, wiping
my eyes to get the fog out of them. Minutes went by before I saw that it
was the Judge. He had come back to hear what I had to say, and I think
when I told him that he was as upset as I had been. Well I remember how
his voice trembled as he told me how he had written the paper telling
the whole secret, except for my knowing about it, to Julianna, in case
he should die, and how, then and there, I made up my mind that if God
would let me I would keep the girl from ever reading it. And to this day
she does not know that I loved her that much. What made me fail to do
this is something you are aware of already, just as you know all the
story of the marriage and a time of happiness before this new and
dreadful, dreadful thing, whatever it is, came to us.

Well enough for you, Mr. Estabrook, to notice the change in your wife.
It is well enough for you to wonder what has come to her and why she has
driven you out of your own house. But do not forget that I held her as a
baby in my arms and saw her grow into a woman, as free from guilt or
blame as any that ever lived. It may all be a mystery to you, sir. I
tell you it is all a hundred times more a mystery to me who know no more
of it than you, though in these terrible days I have been alone with
her, locked into a deserted house, with every other servant sent away
and the quiet of the grave over everything.

"Is it some of Monty Cranch's wild blood?" I have asked, and wit