you had——" she hesitated.

"Would you have pasted it down against me?" he finished.

"I don't know. I'm glad I wasn't tempted. How have you kept yourself so aloof all these years, John—so far above the furious issues of our times?"

"Not above, not above, my dear," he objected; "I've been busy. The law is a legal profession, not an illegal one, like politics."

They looked at each other and laughed, then the Judge added:

"And it may be I was afraid of your famous scrapbooks!"

"You were never afraid of anything," she returned.

"Yes, I am. I'm afraid of something now," he answered, flipping the pages of some papers which lay upon his desk. "I'm an old man holding in my hands a fuse which I must light presently, and I dread the consequences."

"What are you talking about?" she exclaimed, leaning forward and staring at him in faint alarm as if she did indeed smell something burning.

"I cannot tell you yet. I'm waiting for the other party," he answered.

"The other party? Whom do you expect? What does all this mean, anyway? Why was I summoned here? Have we not had enough excitement for one day, with the funeral this morning, and with every man in this town holding his breath for fear of what will happen to him when the William J. Mosely Estate is wound up? I've heard nothing else for two days. Not a word about the poor woman, who might as well have been a shadow on the wall of her house for all she meant to anybody until she died," she said, fanning herself and looking at him irritably.

"She was a great woman," he said simply.

"Well, I'm just a tired woman. I spent the whole morning tacking white pinks on an anchor design for the funeral. Then I went to the cemetery with the procession. And all the time I heard nothing but speculation about what she had or had not done with her money. I was just composing myself for a little rest before going to the Civic League and Cemetery Association at four o'clock when your messenger appeared at the door. Now I want to know what it's all about."

"Are you very much interested in the Woman's Civic League and Cemetery Association, Susan?" asked the Judge, by way of avoiding an answer.

"Certainly not! It's a nuisance. But the women of this town must do something. They have caught the public-spirit infection, and they show it like little meddlesome girls, childishly. Have you seen the nasturtium beds they've planted around the railroad station? That's feminine civic enterprise! Last week they had a committee appointed to see the mayor about keeping the cuspidors clean in the courthouse! And the cemetery! It's the livest-looking place in Jordantown, more things living and growing there than anywhere else. Even more women. They are there every day, gardening above the dust of the dead!"

"Why do you belong to it?" he asked.

"In self-defence, of course! There is to be a report from a committee about things they want changed at the cemetery this afternoon, and I'm not on the committee because one object of it is to condemn the arbor-vitæ trees in my lot there. They want to cut them down. Now I will not have it! And I must be there at four o'clock to tell them so!" She began to fan herself vigorously.

"Listen to me, Susan; let the non-essential go. Don't be the occasion of a split in your ranks for the sake of a couple of shrubs. That's what destroys the strength of parties. If the whole Democratic party voted for any one man or issue, we should always have a democratic government. If the entire Republican party——"

"Listen to me, John Regis! Women are not parties. They are always factions, little, little factions, the one working against the other, because they have no really important issue at stake. Now, my arbor-vitæ trees——"

The door opened and a young girl stood upon the threshold hesitating, as if she was not sure she was in the right place.

She was very tall, one of those cool, gray-eyed, ivory-skinned brunettes who always remind the beholder of white lilies blooming in the dark. Her lips were full, faintly pinkly purple, and affirmative, not beseeching. She stood with one hand upon the knob behind her, bent a little forward, the skirt of her white dress blown by the wind through the door, her eyes showing almost black beneath the brim of her white hat.

"Selah! Is it for you we've been waiting?" This from Mrs. Walton.

"Come, Selah, you are almost late! That would have been a bad beginning," said the Judge, rising, taking her hand and leading her to a chair.

"You sent for me?" the girl said, as if there might still be some mistake about that.

"Yes, yes! Sit down!"

"Mercy on us! What does the man mean? Do you know what he means, Selah, sending for the oldest and ugliest and the youngest and fairest woman in Jordantown to meet him in his office at this outrageous hour of the afternoon?"

"How do you do, Mrs. Walton?" Selah greeted.

"I don't do at all, my dear; I'm tired of doing. I should be taking my nap!"

For a moment after Selah Adams disappeared into Judge Regis's office the hall outside was silent, a gloomy tunnel between gray walls with a square light from the window at the end above the staircase. Then a singular thing happened: the ground-glass door at which Susan had stared with so much contempt opened very softly as if Silence himself was behind it. The enormous head and face of a man appeared. His features were concealed in fat, his nose merely protruded, a red knob with nostrils in the end; his mouth was wide, sucked in above a great chin covered with short black stubble; his jowls hung down, the back of his neck rolled up, and the hair upon it stuck out like bristles.

He looked up and down the hall, listened. He opened the door wide, but very softly, and came through it tiptoeing, a huge figure, almost shapeless in its monstrous rotundity. He moved with astonishing swiftness to the staircase, looked down, then fixed his black eyes with a kind of animal ferocity upon the closed door of the Judge's office until he reached it, and laid one of his little red ears to the keyhole.

If we were permitted to observe any man or woman of our acquaintance when that person supposed himself or herself to be absolutely alone, we should be astonished and often horrified at the unconscious revelations we would receive. The woman with the Madonna face may unmask and show the lineaments of a common shrew in her chamber. And the virago may soften into the gentleness of a saint as she gives way to the penitence of her own thoughts. The dignified man with the air of virtue and authority might show himself as a nimble-motioned rascal, timid and furtive, if he believed only God saw him. Not one of us ever acts absolutely true to what we know we are except when the door between us and every other man is closed. It is barely possible that sometimes in the presence of a very young child we do play the rôle, but never before any other creature, however near, neither wife nor husband nor friend. It is the nature of the human to act before the footlights of the world even in the broad open day, and even if there is no one to witness the performance but a beggar who never saw him before and never will see him again. It is only when he is alone that the best man does not practise at least the deceit of conceit, or cast himself for some other part in the play of man.

Mike Prim was alone. He was known as a jolly, blarney-tongued, slovenly wit, who for a consideration managed the political affairs of Jordantown and the county in a manner which was agreeable to the "deities" already