Come here, Essie. (She comes to him.) Who sent you?

ESSIE. Dick. He sent me word by a soldier. I was to come here at once
and do whatever Mrs. Anderson told me.

ANDERSON (enlightened). A soldier! Ah, I see it all now! They have
arrested Richard. (Judith makes a gesture of despair.)

ESSIE. No. I asked the soldier. Dick's safe. But the soldier said you
had been taken--

ANDERSON. I! (Bewildered, he turns to Judith for an explanation.)

JUDITH (coaxingly) All right, dear: I understand. (To Essie.) Thank
you, Essie, for coming; but I don't need you now. You may go home.

ESSIE (suspicious) Are you sure Dick has not been touched? Perhaps he
told the soldier to say it was the minister. (Anxiously.) Mrs.
Anderson: do you think it can have been that?

ANDERSON. Tell her the truth if it is so, Judith. She will learn it
from the first neighbor she meets in the street. (Judith turns away and
covers her eyes with her hands.)

ESSIE (wailing). But what will they do to him? Oh, what will they do to
him? Will they hang him? (Judith shudders convulsively, and throws
herself into the chair in which Richard sat at the tea table.)

ANDERSON (patting Essie's shoulder and trying to comfort her). I hope
not. I hope not. Perhaps if you're very quiet and patient, we may be
able to help him in some way.

ESSIE. Yes--help him--yes, yes, yes. I'll be good.

ANDERSON. I must go to him at once, Judith.

JUDITH (springing up). Oh no. You must go away--far away, to some place
of safety.

ANDERSON. Pooh!

JUDITH (passionately). Do you want to kill me? Do you think I can bear
to live for days and days with every knock at the door--every
footstep--giving me a spasm of terror? to lie awake for nights and
nights in an agony of dread, listening for them to come and arrest you?

ANDERSON. Do you think it would be better to know that I had run away
from my post at the first sign of danger?

JUDITH (bitterly). Oh, you won't go. I know it. You'll stay; and I
shall go mad.

ANDERSON. My dear, your duty--

JUDITH (fiercely). What do I care about my duty?

ANDERSON (shocked). Judith!

JUDITH. I am doing my duty. I am clinging to my duty. My duty is to get
you away, to save you, to leave him to his fate. (Essie utters a cry of
distress and sinks on the chair at the fire, sobbing silently.) My
instinct is the same as hers--to save him above all things, though it
would be so much better for him to die! so much greater! But I know you
wi