ed the door behind her.

From the pillows there looked up at him a face that was paler than when
he had last seen it, a face still drawn from pangs of agony recently
endured, but a face transfigured and radiant. The Madonna look was in it
now. Outside, the dusk of an August evening was thickening; and inside,
the curtains were half drawn and the electrics not yet turned on, but
even so, in that half light, the judge could mark the change here
revealed to him. He could sense, too, that the change was more spiritual
than physical, and he could feel his animosity for this woman softening
into something distantly akin to sympathy. At her left side, harbored in
the crook of her elbow, lay a cuddling bundle; a tiny head, all red and
bare, as though offering to Judge Priest's own bald, pinkish pate the
sincere flattery of imitation, was exposed; and the tip of a very small
ear, curled and crinkled like a sea shell. You take the combination of a
young mother cradling her first-born within the hollow of her arm and
you have the combination which has tautened the heartstrings of man
since the first man child came from the womb. The old man made a silent
obeisance of reverence; then waited for her to speak and expose the
purpose behind this totally unexpected summons.

"Judge Priest," she said, "I have been lying here all day hoping you
would come before night. I have been wishing for you to come ever since
I came out from under the ether. Thank you for coming."

"Ma'am, I started fur here ez soon ez I got your word," he said. "In
whut way kin I be of service to you? I'm at your command."

She slid her free hand beneath the pillow on which her head rested and
brought forth a crinkled sheet of paper and held it out to him.

"Didn't you write this?" she asked.

He took it and looked at it, and a great astonishment and a great
chagrin screwed his eyes and slackened his lower jaw.

"Yes, ma'am," he admitted, "I wrote it. But it wuzn't meant fur you to
see. It wuzn't meant fur anybody a-tall to see--ever. And I'm wonderin',
ma'am, and waitin' fur you to tell me how come it to reach you."

"I'll tell you," she answered. "But first, before we get to that, would
you mind telling me how you came to write it, and when, and all? I think
I can guess. I think I have already pieced the thing together for
myself. Women can't reason much, you know; but they have intuition." She
smiled a little at this conceit. "And I want to know if my ded