ake your overcoat, Judge?--you'll be too warm," he said.

He spoke in a suppressed tone as if waiting for, fearing something, as
if longing to show sympathy, and the man stood and let himself be cared
for, and then sat down again in the same unrestful, fixed attitude,
gazing out again through the glittering panes into the stormy, tawny
west sky. Miller came back and stood quiet, patient; in a few minutes
the man seemed to become aware of him.

"I forgot, Miller. You'll want to know," he said in a tone which went to
show an old bond between the two. "You'll be sorry to hear, Miller," he
said--and the dull eyes moved difficultly to the anxious ones, and his
voice was uninflected--"you'll be sorry to know that the coroner's jury
decided that Master Jack was a murderer."

The word came more horribly because of an air of detachment from the
man's mind. It was like a soulless, evil mechanism, running unguided.
Miller caught at a chair.

"I don't believe it, sir," he gasped. "No lawyer shall make me. I've
known him since he was ten, Judge, and they're mistaken. It's not any
mere lawyers can make me believe that awful thing, sir, of our Master
Jack." The servant was shaking from head to foot with intense rejection,
and the man put up his hand as if to ward off his emotion.

"I wish I could agree with you," he said quietly, and then added, "Thank
you, Miller." And the old butler, walking as if struck with a sickness,
was gone.

The man sat on the edge of the divan staring out of the window, minute
after minute; the November wind tossed the clean, black lines of the
branches backward and forward against the copper sky, as if a giant hand
moved a fan of sea-weed before a fire. The man sat still and stared. The
sky dulled; the delicate, wild branches melted together; the diamond
lines in the window blurred; yet, unmoved, unseeing, the eyes stared
through them.

The burr of an electric bell sounded; some one came in at the front door
and came to the door of the library, but the fixed figure did not stir.
The newcomer stood silent a minute, two minutes; a young man in clerical
dress, boyish, with gray, serious eyes. At length he spoke.

"May I come in? It's Dick."

The man's head turned slowly and his look rested inquiringly on his
nephew. It was a minute before he said, as if recognizing him, "Dick.
Yes." And set himself as before to the persistent gazing through the
window.

"I lost you at the court-house," the younger