last of the afternoon light still lingered,
reflected from the polished windows of the bank building, and faintly
illuminating the half-deserted square, but the sun was just going down
behind the court-house roof, a big, crimson ball of vanishing light.
Judith, appearing below in the doorway, stood regarding it deliberately
for a minute, ignoring the chauffeur's discreet manifestations of
impatience, and then made herself comfortable deliberately in the
Colonel's car.

She sat there proudly erect, a dainty, aloof little lady. She seemed to
have recovered her high estate upon entering it, and become a princess
beyond Neil's reach once more. Watching her gravely from the Judge's
window, he could not see the angry tears in her eyes or the reckless
light in them.

Little preliminary pants and puffs came from the car, discreetly
impatient, as if they voiced all the feelings that the correct Parks
repressed. He relieved them with one blatant flourish of sound from the
horn, and swung the car grandly across the square, round the corner, and
out of sight. Judith was gone, and she had not once looked up at the boy
in the window.

She had not even seen another cavalier, who dashed out of a shop and
tried to intercept and speak to her, but was just too late; Mr. Willard
Nash, thrilled by his first sight of her, ready to return to his old
allegiance at a word, and advertising the fact in every line of his
forlorn fat figure as he stood alone on the sidewalk gazing wistfully
after the vanished car.

The boy at the window did not waste his time in this way. Judith was
gone, and with her the spell that had held him mute and helpless, and he
was a man of affairs once more. He was not a very cheerful man of
affairs to-night. He was not singing or whistling to himself, as he
usually did, but he moved competently enough about the room, entering
the Judge's private office with its smell of stale tobacco smoke and
group of chairs, so confidentially close that they looked capable of
carrying on the conference their late occupants had begun without help
from them. He rearranged this room, giving just the straightening
touches to the jumble of papers on the desk that the Judge permitted,
and no more, and putting the outer office in order, too.

By his own desk he paused, fingering Mr. Thayer's thumbed pages
absently. He had no attention to spare for them just then, or for the
graver questions that had absorbed him just before Judith came