here he'll not be _seen_,--a year or two, perhaps. There can't be
any bail."

The two white-faced women looked each into the other's face, sad-eyed.
Anne's breath came tremblingly. "It's the best we can do!" said she at
last; and Aurora, seeing how it was, nodded mutely.

"What do you want for it, Uncle?" demanded Anne contemptuously again.

"I want--silence!" said he harshly, at last beginning to assert himself.
"Silence! And I've got to be sure about it."

Suddenly he pulled open a drawer in the table before him. The women
started, fearing a weapon; but it was only a book he drew out--an old,
dusty book, the edges of its leaves once gilded--a copy of the Holy
Scriptures, very old and dusty.

Judge Henderson by accident now saw the fly leaf, for the first time in
years. It was the little Bible his own father had given him, half a
lifetime ago, when he was first starting out into the practice of the
law. On the yellowed leaf in paled ink could still be seen the
inscription his father had written there in Latin for his son:

"_Filio meo; Crede Deo._--To my son; Believe in God!"

"Will you swear on the Bible?" demanded Judge Henderson, "both of you,
that you'll never tell nor hint a word of this to any human being in the
world--not even to him--the boy?"

The hand which held the dusty little volume was trembling, but Judge
Henderson was not thinking of his own father, nor of the inscription in
the little book.

"Yes!" said Aurora Lane at once. But Anne Oglesby raised a hand for
pause.

"I'll not swear to keep back anything from him, my husband. I'm not sure
I could."

"Your husband----"

"I'm going to marry him, unless he sends me away."

"It can't be soon--it may be very long--it will be years----" Judge
Henderson was getting back a little color now, a little
self-assertiveness, a little more readiness to argue.

"I can wait," said Anne. "But I can't buy him cheap--Don wouldn't let
me. I know who his father is, and he ought to know it, too. That's his
right."

"Anne," said Aurora Lane, "I denied him that right. You got my secret by
accident. Can't you keep it, too? It's a heavy weight that Judge
Henderson has laid on more than one woman--a load to be borne by three
women, myself, Miss Julia, and you. But this is to save Don's life."

"You'll swear secrecy on the Book?" broke in Judge Henderson.

"Yes!" said Anne Oglesby at length. "If you'll swear to perjure yourself
against your oath of office as j