all
good and sufficient, but the real reason never suggested itself,
indeed it was of such a perfidious nature that the judge, open and
generous-minded, could not have grasped it.

By six o'clock he was undeniably drunk; at eight he was sounding
still deeper depths of inebriety with only the most confused memory of
impending events; at ten he collapsed and was borne up-stairs by Pegloe
and his black boy to a remote chamber in the kitchen wing. Here he was
undressed and put to bed, and the tavernkeeper, making a bundle of his
clothes, retired from the room, locking the door after him, and the
judge was doubly a prisoner.

Rousing at last from a heavy dreamless sleep the judge was aware of a
faint impalpable light in his room, the ashen light of a dull October
dawn. He was aware, too, of a feeling of profound depression. He knew
this was the aftermath of indulgence and that he might look forward
to forty-eight hours of utter misery of soul, and, groaning aloud, he
closed his eyes, Sleep was the thing if he could compass it. Instead,
his memory quickened. Something was to happen at sunup--he could not
recall what it was to be, though he distinctly remembered that Mahaffy
had spoken of this very matter--Mahaffy, the austere and implacable, the
disembodied conscience whose fealty to duty had somehow survived his own
spiritual ruin, so that he had become a sort of moral sign-post, ever
pointing the way yet never going it himself. The judge lay still and
thought deeply as the light intensified itself. What was it that Mahaffy
had said he was to do at sun-up? The very hour accented his suspicions.
Probably it was no more than some cheerless obligation to be met, or
Mahaffy would not have been so concerned about it. Eventually he decided
to refer everything to Mahaffy. He spoke his friend's name weakly and in
a shaking voice, but received no answer.

"Solomon!" he repeated, and shifting his position, looked in what should
have been the direction of the shake-down bed his friend occupied.
Neither the bed nor Mahaffy were there. The judge gasped he wondered if
this were not a premonition of certain hallucinations to which he was
not a stranger. Then all in a flash he remembered Fentress and the
meeting at Boggs', something of how the evening had been spent, and a
spasm of regret shook him.

"I had other things to think of. This must never happen again!" he told
himself remorsefully.

He was wide-awake now. Doubtless Pegloe