rned anew to Orr. Foes while the
battle was raging, the two men now were like the commandants of
opposing forces who, the conflict ended, meet and embrace.

Peacock rubbed his eyes. "What this confession means, Orr, you as well
as I appreciate." Instinctively his voice had sunk into that undertone
which Death, when it comes, exacts. "Yes," he continued, "Annandale is
not merely acquitted, he is cleared. For that, believe me, I am glad.
As for Loftus, he got from that dead father only what he deserved."

To this Orr, about whom the marvel of it all still also clung,
assented. "Justice," he replied, "is rarely human, but sometimes it is
divine."

He would have said more perhaps, but Annandale was approaching.
Obviously the latter was as yet wholly unaware of this new climax to
his case. He was looking doubtfully around.

"I can't find my hat," he announced. Then at once, detecting the
unusual in the attitude of those that stood about, his eyes followed
theirs to the box from which court officers, long trained to the
lugubrious, swiftly and silently were removing the corpse.

A keeper appeared. In his hand was the hat. Annandale took it, his
eyes still following the body that was being removed.

"There," said Orr abruptly, "there is the man that killed Loftus. But
come," he added. "Sylvia is waiting. Good-bye, Peacock. We have both
had a lesson in presumptive proof."

Astonishment lifted Annandale visibly like a flash. "What!" he
exclaimed. "What! What's all this?"

Then Orr, a hand on his arm, led him away, and as they passed from the
General Sessions, told him what had occurred.

CHAPTER X

THE VERDICT

In the days of the Doges there was a Gold Book in which the First
Families of Venice shone. In New York there is also a Gold Book,
unprinted but otherwise familiar. The names that appear there have
earned the cataloguing not from medieval prowess, but from money's
more modish might.

At the Metropolitan Opera House, two years and a fraction after the
trial, the Gold Bookers were on view--men who could have married the
Adriatic, dowered her too, whose signatures were potenter than kings.
There also were women fairer than the young empresses of old Rome,
maidens in thousand-dollar frocks, matrons coroneted and tiaraed. On
the grand tier they sat, a family-party air about them, nodding to
each other, exhaling orris, talking animatedly about nothing at all.
Into their boxes young men strolled, lolled a