road and up a flight of outside steps, to the second
story of a brick building opposite.

He was fitting his key into the lock when she came up. And though he
drew his eyebrows down into a frown as he looked at her, it seemed to be
rather in the effort to make out who she was, than from any feeling of
hostility. He asked her with a dry and rather affected judicial
courtesy, what he could do for her.

"You can do me a service," said Rose, "that I don't think you will mind.
Will you let me come in for about a minute and tell you what it is?"

His manner chilled a little, but his curt nod gave her permission to
precede him into his office.

The outer room was bleak enough, furnished with three or four hard
chairs, a table and an old black walnut desk with a typewriter on it.
His secretary or stenographer was evidently still at dinner, because the
room was empty.

The judge walked straight into an inner room and Rose followed him.

It was a big, rather fine-looking room, or so it looked to Rose after
the places she had been seeing lately; evidently, from a beam across the
middle of the ceiling, cut out of two. There was a fireplace with a fire
in it, a big oak table and a number of easy chairs. There were two or
three good rugs on the floor, and the walls were completely lined with
books; the familiar buckram and leather-bound, red-labeled law-books
that gave her memory a pang.

In these surroundings, the judge took on an added impressiveness, and he
was not an unimpressive-looking man. He was not large. Nose, mouth and
chin were small and rather fine, and he had the shape of head that is
described as a scholar's. One might not have remarked it in the hotel
dining-room, but in these surroundings, he looked altogether a judge.

But the effect of this on Rose was only to heighten her confidence. She
hadn't used the dinner hour to think out what she'd say to him. She'd
been thinking of Rodney again. Somehow, just the rebirth of a sense of
power in her, had brought the image of him back. She was throbbing with
that sense now, and her thoughts of Rodney had given her an exhilarating
idea. This man that she was about to confront was one whom Rodney had
often confronted. It was before this man, on the bench of the Supreme
Court, up at Springfield, that Rodney had made uncounted arguments. She
would try to do as well as he did.

The judge was staring at her in growing perplexity. Who in the world
could she be. What did s