Can it be I?" exclaimed the judge. "Can it be me! No difficulty
about that. Never mind the handshaking just yet--after a while, maybe.
When it comes to the can-it-be part, how about you? How about the past
five years, and Jennie Baggs keeping a place for you every meal for all
this time, up to the present hour? I tell you, Florian, letting me
down in that case of Amidon versus Cattermole, without a scrap of
evidence, and getting me licked by a young practitioner who studied in
my office, was bad--was damnable; but an only sister, Florian! and not
one word in five years!"

"She's well, then, Jennie is?"

"She's as well, Florian, as a woman with the sorrow you've brought to
her, and the mother of two infants, can be. But why do you ask?--why
do you ask?--why is it necessary to go through the work of surplusage
of asking?"

"Children, eh?" said Florian. "Good for Jennie! And how's Baggs?"

"Oh, Baggs, yes--why, Baggs has come through it all with his health
about unimpaired, Baggs has! But no Baggs court of inquiry is going to
switch me off the examination I'm now conducting; and I tell you, Mr.
Amidon, you can't dodge me. What double life took you away from home,
and property, and everything?"

"Judge Blodgett," said Mr. Amidon, in that low voice which, with the
English language as the medium of communication, is known as the
danger-signal the world over, "the term 'double life' has a meaning
which is insulting. Don't use it again."

"Well, well, Florian," said the judge, evidently pleased, "sustaining
the motion to strike that out, the question remains. You aren't
obliged to answer, you know; but you know, too, what not answering it
means."

"Judge," said Amidon, after a long pause, "to say that I don't know
where I have been, or what I have been doing, since June
twenty-seventh, 1896, until yesterday morning when I came to my senses
in a moving sleeping-car, won't satisfy you; but it's the truth."

The judge looked off toward the ceiling in the manner of a jurist
considering some complex argument, but was silent.

"Now I have found a way," said Amidon, "of having all this explained.
Come with me, and let's find out. There may be complications; I may
need your help. You are the one man in all the world that I was just
wishing for."

"Complications, eh?" said the judge. "Well, well! Let us see!"

And now he dropped into the old manner so well known to his companion
as his office style. Piece