The Judge's young client did not pause to collect himself on the worn
door-mat, as he had done when he first came here on errands like this.
They were an old story to him now, and so were scenes like the one with
Maggie, which he had just come through so creditably. He looked quite
unruffled by it, calm as people are when they have no troubles to
bear--or when they have borne all they can, and are about to find relief
in establishing the fact. He knocked and stepped inside.

CHAPTER NINE

A fire in the air-tight stove in the corner had taken the early morning
chill from the room and been permitted to burn out, now that the morning
sun came in warm through the dusty windows, but the room was still close
and cloudy with wood smoke. At a battered, roll-topped desk in the
sunniest window Mr. Theodore Burr was struggling with the eccentricities
of an ancient Remington, and looking superior to it and to all his
surroundings, but the Judge was nowhere to be seen.

Mr. Burr was a very large, very pink young man, with blond hair which
would have looked too good to be true on a woman, and near-set,
green-blue eyes which managed to look vacant and aggressive at the same
time. He was wearing a turquoise-blue tie which accentuated their
effectiveness, and he occupied himself ostentatiously with the Remington
for quite three minutes before he turned his most vacant and aggressive
look upon his client.

"Well, Donovan?" he said.

Mr. Burr's manner was as patronizing as Mr. Ward's with the
friendliness left out, but his client was not chilled by it.

"Theodore, where's the Judge?" he asked.

"Mr. Burr." The pink young man turned two shades pinker as he made the
correction. "The Judge is engaged."

"I don't believe it."

Mr. Burr laughed unpleasantly and held up his hand. From the other side
of a door labelled private--misleadingly, for the Judge's little
sanctum, where half the town had the privilege of crowding in and
tipping back chairs and smoking, was the nearest approach to a clubroom
that the town afforded, now that the Hiawatha Club was no more--muffled
voices were faintly audible.

"You can talk to me," said Mr. Burr.

"I can, and I can go away and come back when he's not engaged. He said
he'd see me."

"He's changed his mind. He don't want to see you. I know all about your
case."

"You've learned a lot in six months."

"Talk like that won't get you anything, Donovan, here or anywhere else,"
remarked