nd scorn which he
had felt for him were passing away. A kinder feeling was coming into
his heart. It seemed as though old bitternesses were being removed,
and he began to long with a great longing to do something. The young
girl whom he had met as a boy, and who was Paul's mother, was for the
moment forgotten. That stormy interview did not possess his mind at
all, only in so far as she had revealed to him the relationship between
him and the prisoner. Then, suddenly, it seemed to him as though the
barriers around his heart were broken down. He loved, as he never
realised that he could love, the prisoner who lay waiting for the next
day's trial. He wanted to go to him with words of comfort. He wanted
to kneel before him and beseech his forgiveness. He wanted to tell him
that all the strength of his being were given to him. It seemed to him
as though he had become a new man, capable of new feelings, realising
new emotions. His knowledge had swallowed up everything else. He no
longer regarded the prisoner as a case, or even as one with whom he had
had associations in the past. He was everything to him--his son, his
only son!

But he could not go to him. Even the warders would not allow him.
They knew their duty too well for that. He was the judge and Paul was
the prisoner. But, oh! how his heart went out to him! How he longed
to go to him!

"I wonder what he would say to me if I went to him, supposing I defied
all law and all usage?" he asked himself. "Supposing I found my way
into his cell, what would he say on seeing me? What would he do?"

And then into Judge Bolitho's heart came a great, haunting fear. He
knew that his son must hate him, even as Jean hated him. Paul had
heard her side of the story. He knew only of his mother's wrongs, her
years of loneliness, the unworthy betrayal! The punishment seemed
almost too hard for him to bear. Whatever Paul had suffered, whatever
his mother had suffered, Judge Bolitho was sure that neither of them
suffered as he did at that moment.

Slowly his mind asserted itself more and more. His vigorous intellect,
strengthened by long years of training, caused him to grasp the whole
situation more and more clearly. He began to take a practical view of
everything, and to form plans as to what must be done in the future.
And even as he did so the grimness of the tragedy faced him.
Throughout the day he knew that he had, to a large extent, prejudged
Paul's case