"I think she's a good woman," said Hod Brooks simply, after a time.

"So do I!" broke out Judge Henderson at length, with a sudden gasp. "So do I! She's a good woman. I knew it last night. I've known it all along, in a way. It all came over me last night--I saw it all plain for the first time in all these years. Hod! You're right. I don't deserve mercy.

I don't ask it--I'd be ashamed to."

"Religion," said Hod Brooks, quite irrelevantly, "is not altogether confined to churches, you know. A man's conviction may hit him anywhere--even in the office of the county treasurer of Jackson County.

But if I was a preacher, Judge Henderson, I'd be mighty glad to hear you say what you have said."

In his face there showed some sort of strange emotion of his own, a sort of yearning for the understanding of his own nature by this other man; and some sort of rude man's sympathy for the broken man who stood before him.

"You both were young," said he softly and irrelevantly. "I'm not your judge."

"Hod," said Judge Henderson--"I'm done! I wouldn't go to the Senate tomorrow if they'd let me. For twenty years she's taken her fate. She's never told my name. She's never blamed me. She's paid all her debts. In the next twenty years--can I live as well as that?"

"Yes, she's paid her debts. We've all got to do that some time--there doesn't seem to be any good way of getting clear of an honest debt, does there? It costs considerable, sometimes." Hod Brooks' voice held no wavering, but it was not unkind.

"But now, Judge," he resumed, "we get around to my profession, which is that of the practice of the law. There's a true bill against the boy.

State's Attorney Slattery don't amount to much--I know about a lot of things. You're the real intended prosecutor here. Now, I don't want any pa.s.sing over of this case to another term of court--I'm not going to let that boy lie in jail."

"That was what I meant to do--I wasn't going to try for a conviction--I was going to try for delay."

"Come into court with me and openly ask the quashing of this indictment," said Hod Brooks. "And we can beat that delay game a thousand ways of the deck! But now, now--you _did_ have the heart of a father, then? So, so--well, well! Say, Judge, we're not opponents--we're partners in this case."

"Hod----" began the other; but Hod Brooks was the master mind. "I believe we can show, some time, somehow," said he, "that the boy didn't do it. I know the boy's _mother_. Of course, his father wasn't so much!"

He broke out into his great laugh, but in the corners of his eyes there was visible a dampness.

Judge Henderson hesitated for just a moment. "Believe at least this much, Hod," said he. "I didn't know as much at first as I do now.

She--she told me all--I saw it all--last night. I want to tell the truth--near as I know. When I saw the boy in Blackman's court--it didn't seem possible, and yet it did. But who gave you the notion? What made _you_ suspect it? You didn't suspect it then, in the justice court, did you?"

"Only vaguely," said Hod Brooks; "not so very much. I'll tell you who did--a woman."

"Aurora?"

"No--Miss Julia. Miss Julia sat there looking from the face of Don Lane to your own face. There was something in her face--I can't tell what.

Why, h.e.l.l! I don't suppose a man ever does know what's going on in a woman's heart, least of all a crude man like me, that never had any fine feelings in all his life. But there was something there in Miss Julia's face--I can't tell what. In some way, in her mind, she was connecting those two faces that she saw before her. If I hadn't seen her face, I wouldn't ever have suspected you of being the father of that boy!

"But something stuck in my mind. Now, this morning, getting ready to prepare my case, defending this boy, I went over to Miss Julia's library. I still remembered what I had seen. I found this picture there--she had that other picture there, hanging on her wall, too. She had them both! One was on the wall and the other on her desk. Now, she had certainly established some connection in her own mind between those two pictures, or else she wouldn't have had them there both right before her."

"Then you, too, know," interrupted Henderson, "the story of those two women--how they brought him up from babyhood--and kept the secret? Why did Miss Julia do that?"

"Because she was a woman."

"But why didn't she tell?"

"Because she was a woman."

"But why--what makes you suppose she ever would care in the first place for this boy when he was a baby?"

"Again, because she was a woman, Judge!"

"She came and told me all about her friendship for Aurora. But she admitted she didn't know who the father of the boy was. Then why should she connect me with this?"

"The same reason, Judge--because she was a woman!

"And when you come to that," he added as he turned toward the door, "that covers our whole talk today. That's why I got you to come here.

That's why I'm interested in this case. That's why I've made you try this case yourself, here, now, Judge, before the court of your own conscience. A crime worse than murder has been done here in this town to Aurora Lane--because she was a woman! She's borne the brunt of it--paid all her debts--carried all her awful, unspeakable, unbelievable load--because she was a woman!

"And," he concluded, "if you ask me why I was specially interested in the boy's case and yours and hers--I'll tell you. I gave up--to you--all my hope of success and honor and preferment just so as to help her all I could; to stand between her and the world all I could; to help her and her boy all I could. It was because she was a woman--the very best I ever knew."

CHAPTER XXII

MISS JULIA

It was now ten o'clock of this eventful morning in quiet old Spring Valley. A hush seemed to have fallen on all the town. The streets were well-nigh deserted so far as one might see from the public square. Only one figure seemed animated by a definite purpose.

Miss Julia Delafield came rapidly as she might across the street from the foot of the stair that led up to Judge Henderson's office. She had hobbled up the stair and hobbled down again, and now was crossing the street that led to the courthouse. She came through the little turnstile and tap-tapped her way up the wide brick walk. Her face, turned up eagerly, was flushed, full of great emotions.

Miss Julia was clad in her best finery. She had on a bright new hat--which she had had over from Aurora's shop but recently. She had worn it at the great event of Don Lane's homecoming--worn it to make tribute to her "son." She wore it now in search of that son's father--and she had not the slightest idea in the world who that father in fact might be. Miss Julia's divination was only such stuff as dreams are made on. The father of Don, the unborn father of her unborn beloved--was not yet caught out of chaos, not yet resolved out of time--he was but a creature of her dreams.

So Miss Julia walked haltingly through star dust. It whirled all about her as she crossed the dirty street. Around her spun all the nebulae of life yet to be. Somewhere on beyond and back of this was a soft, gray, vague light, the light of creation itself, of the dawn, of the birth of time. Perhaps some would have said it was the light shining down through the courthouse hall from the farther open door. Who would deny poor little Miss Julia her splendid dreams?

For Miss Julia was very, very happy. She had found how the world was made and why it was made. And mighty few wise men ever have learned so much as that.

She searched for the father of her first-born--a man tall and splendid and beautiful--a man strong and just and n.o.ble. Such only might be the father of her boy.... And she met him at the door of the county treasurer's office, his silk hat slightly rumpled on one side.

"Oh!" she cried, and started back.

She had only been thinking. But here he was. This was proof to Miss Julia's mind that G.o.d actually does engage in our daily lives. For here he was!

Now she could bring father and son together; and that would correlate this world of question and doubt with that world of the star dust and the whirling nebulae.

"Miss Julia!" The judge stopped, suddenly embarra.s.sed. He flushed, which was all the better, for he had been ashen pale.

"Oh, I'm so glad!" she exclaimed. "I was looking for you, all over. I was at your office, but did not find you. Of course you have heard?"

"Heard? No, what was it?"

"Why, the death of Johnnie Adamson--it was the sheriff, just now--Dan Cowles shot him, right in front of Aurora Lane's house. He must have been trying to break in or something. His father was there."

"Why, great heavens!--what are you telling me? The sheriff shot him?

Where is Cowles? I must see him."

"He's here in the courthouse now, they say. But it's all over now. Where have you been? I was going over to Aurora's house early this morning, but Mr. Brooks came in. I must go over at once----"

"Come this way, Miss Julia," he interrupted.