"Judith?" Mrs. Randall took her husband's news quietly, with something that was almost relief in her face, the relief that comes when a gathering storm breaks at last, and you learn what it is you have been afraid of, though you must go on being afraid. "What is it? Is she ill, Harry?"

"Come and talk to Norah."

"No, we'll go straight home."

"But she's not there, Minna. That's all Norah'll say to me, but she's got some idea where she is, and says she'll tell you. Judith isn't there."

"It must be nearly morning."

"It's two."

"It was after nine when we started."

"Minna, didn't you hear what I said?"

Mrs. Randall's face had not changed as she heard; it looked unchangeable, like some fixed but charming mask that she wore. The lips still smiled though they had stiffened slightly, and she watched the two women's attempts to blindfold the Colonel—unaided now, but hilariously applauded by the circle around her—with the same mild, interested eyes, wide-set and Madonna calm.

"I tell you, Judith's not there. What does Norah know? Why don't you do something? Where is she?... My God, look at them. What are they doing now? Look at Everard."

Mrs. Burr had drawn the knot suddenly tight in the white scarf she was manipulating, and slipped out of the Colonel's arms and out of reach. He followed, and then swung round and stumbled awkwardly after Edith Kent, who had brushed past him, leaving a light, challenging kiss on his forehead, and was further guiding him with her pretty, empty laugh. The game of blind-man's buff was under way.

Crowding the garden enclosure, swaying this way and that and threatening to overflow it, a pushing, struggling mass of people kept rather laboriously out of one another's way and the Colonel's, not so much amused by the effort as they were pretending to be; people with heavy and stupid faces who had never looked more irrevocably removed from childhood than now that they were playing a children's game.

In the heart of the crowd, now plunging ahead of it, now lost in it, the first gentleman of Green River disported himself. His white head was easy to follow through the crowd, and the thing that made you follow it was evident even now—much of his old dignity, and the charm that was peculiarly his; you saw it in an occasional stubborn shake of his beautifully shaped head, in the grace of the hand that caught at some flying skirt and missed it. He was the first gentleman of Green River still, but he was something else.

His white hair straggled across his forehead moist and dishevelled, and his face showed flushed and perspiring against the white of the scarf. The trailing ends of the scarf flapped grotesquely about his head, and the high, splendidly modelled forehead was obscured and the keen eyes were hidden. The beauty of the face was lost, and the mouth showed thin lipped and sensual. The Colonel was really a stumbling, red-faced old man.

"Look at him. That's what she's seen. This was Judith's party. That's what we've hung on in this town for till it's too late to break loose. We never can get away now. We can't——"

"Keep still, Harry. Do you want to be heard? Did any one hear you at the telephone? Keep still and come home."

"You're right. You're wonderful. You don't lose your nerve."

"I can't afford to, and neither can you. Come—— Oh, Harry, look. I saw him following you. What does he want? What's the matter? What is he going to do?"

Mrs. Randall had adjusted her cloak deliberately, and turned to pilot her husband out of the garden, slipping a firm little hand through his arm. Now she clung to him and stood still, silent after her little fire of excited questions. The entrance to the garden was blocked. An uninvited and unexpected guest was standing there.

His entrance had been unheralded, and his welcome was slow to come. The crowd had closed in round the Colonel, with Edith Kent caught suddenly in his arms, and giving a creditable imitation of attempting to escape. Interested silence and bursts of laughter indicated the progress of it clearly, though the two were entirely out of sight. Nobody saw the newcomer except the Randalls.

He stood in the entrance to the rose arbour, clutching at the trellis with one unsteady hand, and managing to keep fairly erect, a slightly built, swaying figure, black-haired and hatless. He kept one hand behind him, awkwardly, as a shy boy guards a favourite plaything. He was staring into the crowd in the garden as if he could see through into the heart of it, but had not the intellect just then to understand what he saw there.

It was the man Mrs. Randall had seen lurking in the shadow of the trees, but he was no mysterious stranger, though here in the light of the lanterns she hardly recognized him as she looked at his pale, excited face; it showed an excitement quite unaccounted for by the perfectly obvious fact that he was drunk, and entirely unconnected with that fact. Here and there on the outskirts of the crowd some one turned and saw him, too, and stared at him. They all knew him. He was Neil Donovan's cousin, the discredited young lawyer, Charlie Brady.

He did not speak or move. He only stood still and looked at them with vague, puzzled eyes, and lips that twitched as if he wanted to speak, but standing so, he had the centre of the stage. He could not command it, he had pushed his way into it doggedly, uncertain what to do first, but he was there. One by one his audience had become conscious of it, and were confronting him startled and uncertain, too. Young Chester Gaynor elbowed his way to the front, but stopped there, grinning at the invader, restrained perhaps by a lady's voice, which was to be heard admonishing him excitedly.

"Don't you get hurt, dear."

"How did he get here? Why can't somebody get him out?" other excited ladies inquired.

"Get Judge Saxon," directed Mr. J. Cleveland Kent's calm and authoritative voice.

"Get Sebastian. Where is the fellow? Is he afraid?" demanded the Honourable Joe from the extreme rear. Some one laughed hysterically. It was Mrs. Burr. The laugh was quickly hushed, but the new guest had heard it, though no other sound seemed to have impressed him. He laughed, too, a dry, broken ghost of a laugh, as cracked and strange as his voice, which he now found abruptly.

"Lillie," he called. "Hello, Lillie dear,"

Mrs. Burr was not heard to reply to this affectionate greeting, but he hardly paused for a reply. His light, high, curiously detached sounding voice talked on with a kind of uncanny fluency.

"Lillie," he urged cordially, "I heard you. I know you're there. Come out and let's have a look at you. I don't see anything of you lately. You're too grand for me. I don't care. I'm in love with a prettier girl. But you used to treat me all right, Lillie dear, and I treated you right, too. I never told. A gentleman don't tell. And you were straight with me. You never double-crossed me, like you and the dago Sebastian do to Everard. Everard! That's who I want to talk to. Where is he?"

At the mention of the name his wavering gaze had steadied and concentrated suddenly on the centre of the group in the garden, and now, while he looked, the crowd parted. Pushing his way through, the Colonel faced his uninvited guest.

The great man was not at his best. His most ardent admirer could hardly have claimed it. He had pulled the muffling scarf down from his eyes, but was still tearing at the knot impatiently. Mrs. Kent had come fluttering ineffectively after him, catching at his arm. He struck her hands away, and pushed her back, addressing her with a lack of ceremony which outsiders were not often permitted to hear him employ toward a member of his favoured circle.

"Keep out of this, Edith, and you keep quiet, Lil. You girls make me sick," he snapped. "Half the trouble in this town comes because you can't learn to hold your tongues. You'd better learn. You're going to pay for it if you don't, and don't you lose sight of that. Well, Brady, what does this mean? What can I do for you?"

The ring of authority was in his voice again, as if he had called it back by sheer will power. He had stepped forward alone, and stood looking up at his guest, still framed in the sheltering trellis, and his blurred eyes cleared and grew keen as he looked, regarding him indifferently, like some refractory but mildly amusing animal. His guest's defiant eyes avoided his, and the ineffective, swaying figure seemed to shrink and droop and grow smaller, but it was a dignified figure still and a dangerous one. There was the snarling menace of impotent but inevitable rebellion about it, of men who fight on with their backs against the wall; a menace that was not new born to-night, but the gradual growth of years, just the number of years that the Colonel had spent in Green River.

"I'm sorry, sir," stammered his guest.

"Then apologize and get out."

"I can't."

"I think you'll find you can, Brady."

"I can't. I've got to ask you a few questions."

They seemed to be slow in framing themselves. There was a little pause, the kind of pause that for no apparent reason deprives you for the moment of any desire to move or speak. The unassuming figure of the young man under the trellis stood still, swaying only slightly from side to side. A deprecating smile appeared on his lips, as if his errand were distasteful to him and he wished to apologize for it. Gradually the smile faded and the eyes grew steady again and unnaturally bright. He held himself stiffly erect where he stood for a moment, took a few lurching steps forward, paused, and then plunged suddenly across the garden toward Colonel Everard.

It would have been hard to tell which came first, the little, stumbling run forward, the Colonel's instinctive move to check it, the stampede of the devotees of the time-honoured game of blind-man's buff, acting now with a promptness and spontaneity which they had not displayed in that game, Lillian Burr's hysterical scream, the snarling words from the Colonel that silenced it, or the quick flash of metal. It had all happened at once. But now, in an amphitheatre of scared faces, as far behind as the limits of the garden enclosure would allow, Mr. Brady and his host stood facing each other alone, and the Colonel, now entirely himself, with the high colour fading out of his cheeks, was looking with cool and unwavering eyes straight into the barrel of Mr. Brady's revolver.

It was a clumsy, old-fashioned little weapon. Brady's thin hand grasped it firmly, as if some stronger hand than his own were steadying his. He laughed an ineffective laugh, like a boastful boy's, but there was a threat in it, too.

"What have you got to say for yourself? I'll give you a chance to say it," he stated magnanimously, "but you shan't say a word against her. She was always a good girl. She is a good girl. What have you done with her? Where is she?"

"You don't make yourself altogether clear, Brady," said the Colonel smoothly.

"Where's Maggie?"

"Maggie?" The Colonel's eyes swept the circle of his guests deliberately, as if to assure himself that no lady of that name was among them.

"Maggie. You know the name well enough." The sound of it seemed to give the lady's champion new courage; it flamed in his eyes, hot, and quick to burn itself out, but while it lasted, even a gentleman who had learned to face drawn revolvers as indifferently as the Colonel might do well to be afraid of him. "Maggie's missing. I'm going to find her. That's all I want of you. I won't ask you who's worked on her and made a fool of her. I won't ask you how far she's been going. But I want her back before the whole town knows. I want to find her and find her quick. She's a good girl and a decent girl. She's going to keep her good name. She's coming home."

"Commendable," said the Colonel, not quite smoothly enough. His guest was past listening to him.

"Maggie. That's all I want. You're getting off easy. Luck's with you. I've stood a lot from you, the same as the town has. It will stand a lot more, and I will. Get Maggie back. Get her back and give her to me and leave her alone, and I'll eat out of your hand and starve when you don't feed me, the same as the rest"—he came two wavering steps nearer, and dropped his voice to a dry quaver meant to be confidential, a grotesque and sinister parody of a confidence—"the rest, that don't know what I know."

"What do you mean?"

"I won't tell. Don't be afraid. A gentleman don't tell, and there's nobody that can but me. Young Neil don't know. The luck's with you, sir, just the same as it always was."

"I've had enough of this. Get home, Brady," cried the Colonel, in a voice that was suddenly wavering and high, like an old man's, but his guest only smiled and nodded wisely, beginning to sway as he stood, but still gripping the clumsy revolver tight.

"Just the same as it was when old Neil Donovan died."

"Get home," shrilled the Colonel again, but his guest pursued the tenor of his thoughts untroubled, still with the look of an amiably disposed fellow-conspirator on his weak face, a maddening look, even if his words conveyed no sting of their own.

"Neil Donovan," he crooned, "my father's own half-brother, and a good uncle to me, and a gentleman, too. He sold rum over a counter, but he was a gentleman, for he didn't talk too much. A gentleman don't tell."

But the catalogue of his uncle's perfections, whether in place here or not, was to proceed no further. The audience pressed closer, as eager to look on at a fight as it was to keep out of one. There was a new and surprising development in this one. The two men had closed with each other, and it was not the half-crazed boy who had made the attack, but the Colonel himself.

It was a sudden and awkward attack, and there was something stranger about it still. The Colonel was angry. He had tried to knock the weapon out of the boy's hand, failed, and tried instinctively, still, to get possession of it, but he was not making an adequate and necessary attempt to disarm him, he was no longer adequate or calm. He was angry, suddenly angry with the poor specimen of humanity that was making its futile attempt at protest and rebellion, as if it were an equal and an enemy. His face was distorted and his eyes were dull and unseeing. His breath came in panting gasps, and he made inarticulate little sounds in his throat. He struck furious and badly directed blows.

It was a curious thing to see, in the heart of the great man's admiring circle, at the climax of his most successful party of the year. It did not last long. The two struggling figures broke away from each other, and the boy staggered backward and stood with the revolver still in his hand. He was a little sobered by the struggle, and a little weakened by it, pale and dangerous, with a fanatic light in his eyes. Some one who had an eye for danger signals, if the Colonel had not, had made his unobtrusive way forward, and joined him now. He was not the most formidable looking of allies, but he stood beside them as if he had a right to be there, and the Colonel turned to him as if he recognized it.

"Hugh, you heard what he said?" he appealed; "you heard?"

"Judge, you keep out of this," Brady called, "keep out, sir."

Judge Saxon, keeping a casual hand on his most prominent client's arm, stood regarding Mr. Brady with mild and friendly blue eyes. He had quite his usual air of being detached from his surroundings, but benevolently interested in them.

"Charlie," he said, as if he were recognizing Mr. Brady for the first time at this critical moment, and deriving pleasure from it. "Why, Charlie," his voice became gently reproachful, but remained friendly, too. "Everard, this boy don't mean a word he says," he went on, with conviction, "he's excited and you're excited, too. This is a pretty poor time for you to get excited, Everard."

"You're right, Hugh," muttered the Judge's most prominent client thickly; "you're right. Get him away. Get him home."

"He's a good boy," pronounced the Judge.

It was not the obvious description of Mr. Brady just at that moment. There was only friendly amusement in the Judge's drawling voice and shrewd eyes, but back of it, unmistakably there, was something that made every careless word worth listening to. Mr. Brady was resisting it. His face worked pitifully.

"Judge, I told you to keep out. I don't want to hurt you."

"Thanks, Charlie."

"Every word I say is God's truth, Judge."

The Judge did not contradict this sweeping statement. He was studying Mr. Brady's weapon with some interest. "Your uncle's," he commented, pleased. "Why, I didn't know you still owned that thing, Charlie."

"I want Maggie. I want——"

"I'll tell you what you want," offered the Judge, amicably, "you want to hand that thing to me, and go home."

Mr. Brady received this suggestion in silence, a silence which left his audience uncertain how deeply he resented it. Indeed, they were painfully uncertain, and showed it. Bits of advice reached the Judge's ears, contradictory, though much of it sound, but he took no notice of it. He only smiled his patient and wistful smile and waited, like a man who knew what would happen next.

"Hand it to me," he repeated gently.

"I won't, Judge." Mr. Brady's weapon wavered, and then steadied itself. His thin body trembled. The fanatic light in his eyes blazed bright. The excitement which had gripped him, too keen to last long, reached its climax now in one last burst of hysterical speech.

"He's a liar and a thief," he asserted, uncontradicted. He was not to be contradicted. There was a dignity of its own about the hysterical indictment, grotesque as it was, an unforgettable suggestion of truth. "He's a thief and a murderer, too. I don't have to tell what I know. Everybody knows. You all know, all of you, and you don't dare to tell. He's murdering the town."

The high, screaming voice broke off abruptly. Mr. Brady, still with the echo of his big words in his ears and apparently dazed by it, stood looking blankly into the Judge's steady and friendly eyes.

"I can't—I won't——" he stammered.

"Hand it to me," said the Judge, as if no interruption had occurred. For a moment the boy before him looked too dull and dazed to obey or to hear. Then, as suddenly as if some unseen hand had struck it out of his, the revolver dropped to the ground, and he collapsed, sobbing heartbrokenly, into the Judge's arms.

He was a heroic figure no longer. The alien forces that made him one had deserted him abruptly, and he looked unworthy of their support already, only an inconsiderable creature of jangled nerves and hysterical speech, which would be discredited if you looked at him, even if it still echoed in your ears. The Judge, holding him and quieting him, looked allied with him, humble and discredited, too. The relieved audience hung back for a moment, taking in the full force of the picture, before it broke ranks to crowd round the Colonel and offer him belated support. The Colonel said a few inaudible words to Judge Saxon, and then turned from him and his protÉgÉ with the air of washing his hands of the whole affair. He looked surprisingly unruffled by it, even stimulated by it. The interruption to his party was over.

It ended as it had begun, the most successful party of the year. Mr. Brady's invasion was not the first unscheduled event which had enlivened a party at the Birches. There was more open and general speculation about the fact that the Randalls left immediately after, did not linger over their good-nights, and were obviously not permitted by their host to do so.

Mrs. Randall, leaning back in her corner with her hand tight in Harry's, and her long-lashed eyes, that were like Judith's, tightly shut, showed the full strain of the evening in her pale face. She was a woman who did not look tired easily, but she was also a woman who could not afford to look tired.

There was no appeal or charm about her pale face now, only a naked look of hardness and strain. Her husband, staring straight ahead of him with troubled eyes, and his weak, boyish mouth set in a hard, worried line, spoke rapidly and disconnectedly not of Judith, or the Colonel's ominous coldness to him, but of Mr. Brady.

"Maggie's a bad lot," he was explaining for approximately the fifth time as they whirled into the drive and under their own dark windows. "She always was. Everard isn't making away with the belle of Paddy Lane. Not yet. He's not that far down. But that dope about old Neil Donovan——"

"Oh, Harry, hush," his wife said, "here we are. What do you care about Brady?"

"Nothing," he whispered, his arm tightening round her as he lifted her down. "I don't care about anything in the world but Judith."

"Neither do I. Not really," she said in a hurried, shaken voice that was not like her own, "you believe that, don't you, Harry?"

He did not answer. Gathering up her skirts, she followed him silently to the front of the house, single file along the narrow boardwalk, not yet taken up for the summer, creaking loudly under their feet.

"Look," she whispered, catching at his arm. The front of the house was dark except for two lights, a flickering lamp that was being carried nearer to them through the hall, and a soft, shaded light that showed at a bedroom window. The window was Judith's. He fumbled for his key, but the door opened before them. Norah, her forbidding face more militant than ever in the flickering light of the kerosene hand-lamp she held, her white pompadour belligerently erect, and her brown eyes maliciously alight, peered at them across the door chain, and then gingerly admitted them.

"It's a sweet time of night to be coming home to the only child you've got," she commented, "why do you take the trouble to come home at all?"

It was a characteristic greeting from her. If it had not been, Mrs. Randall would not have resented it now. She clutched at the old woman's unresponsive shoulder.

"Where is she?" she demanded breathlessly.

"Judith is it you mean?"

"Oh, yes."

"How should I know how she spends her evenings? At some of the girls' to-night. Rena Drew's maybe. I don't know. It's a new thing for you to care. She was late in, and it's no wonder I was worried. She's like my own to me. But she needs her sleep now. You'd better go softly upstairs."

"Do you mean she's here?"

"What is it to you?" Norah, one bony hand clutching the newel post as if it were a negotiable weapon of defense, and her brown eyes flashing as if she were capable of using any weapon for Judith, barred the way up the stairs.

"I tell you, she needs her sleep, poor lamb—poor lamb," she said, "and you're not to go near her to-night. You're to promise me that. But she's here fast enough. My lamb is safe at home in her own bed."