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 nebulÆ 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 noble. 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 God 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 nebulÆ.

"Miss Julia!" The judge stopped, suddenly embarrassed. 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.

He led her into the room he had just left. Racked as he was himself, he knew it would be too cruel an unkindness to tell Miss Julia now of what had befallen Aurora Lane the night before.

"The reason I came to you first," said Miss Julia—"before I went to Aurora—was about the boy—about Don. You see, he confessed—the half-wit did—before he was killed. The sheriff and others and his own father heard him say that he had killed Tarbush, don't you see? He'd gone wild, don't you see—he was a maniac. It was a madman killed Tarbush. Why, Don didn't do it—I told you he couldn't have done it! Didn't I?

"So now it's all cleared—and I'm so glad!" she concluded, breathless.

"What's all this you are telling me, Miss Julia? Why, this is basic evidence—it does end the case! But you say there were witnesses to this confession?" A vast relief came into Judge Henderson's ashen face.

"Yes, yes, the sheriff and Eph Adamson and Nels Jorgens—they all heard him. And the poor boy—his body's in the justice's office now. They've sent a messenger after his mother—poor thing—oh, poor woman that she is!"

"Where is Adamson now—where's the sheriff?"

"As I said, the sheriff is here in the building somewhere. Old Eph Adamson won't speak to anyone. He seems half out of his own mind now. But he doesn't blame the sheriff. They say he's sorry for Aurora. Why?

"So you see," said Miss Julia, leaping over a vast sea of intervening facts, "everything's all right now." And she sighed a great soft sigh of complete content. "Of course Don didn't do it. I knew that all along."

"Where's Anne—my ward?" asked Judge Henderson suddenly. "I want to speak to her a moment."

"I don't know," said Miss Julia. But she smiled, and all her choicest dimples came out in fine array. "I shouldn't wonder if she was in jail! Now I've got to go over to Aurora's. All this news, you know——"

But Miss Julia did not hasten away. To the contrary, she seemed not unwilling to linger yet a time—unconsciously. The truth was that all her heart was happy, with the one supreme happiness possible for her in all her life. For a second time she was here, standing face to face with her hero. So she sighed and smiled and dimpled and talked over this thing and that—until at length she turned and caught sight of the two pictures, the one on the wall, the other on the desk—which both men had left there, forgotten.

"Why, what's this?" said she. "I gave Mr. Brooks this one this morning," she said. "He might at least have returned it to me. He said he wanted to borrow it for a little while. Was he here?"

"He just went away," said Judge Henderson uneasily. "He was here just now."

Miss Julia was taking up the little photograph and looking from it to the lithograph with soft eyes.

"Isn't it fine?" said she. "Fine!" But she did not say which one of the two faces she saw before her was most in her mind.... And then in the little room with its dusty windows and its tumbled books and map-hung walls, Miss Julia leaped to the great fundamental conclusion of her own life.

She saw out far into the time of star dust and the soft vague light and the whirling nebulÆ. She saw all the great truths—saw the one great truth for any woman—saw her hero standing here—the dream father of her own dream child.... But Miss Julia never grasped the real, the inferior, the human truth at all. On the contrary, she made a vast and very beautiful mistake. She had assigned a dream father to her dream son, but no more. That Judge William Henderson was the father indeed of DieudonnÉ Lane she no more suspected than she suspected herself to be his actual mother. So, therefore, it had been only a path of dreams that Horace Brooks had followed when he saw her look from the boy's to the father's face. It was only a path of dreams now that again her eyes followed, as she looked from the portrait of the youth to the man who stood before her. Ah! Miss Julia. Poor, little, happy Miss Julia!

"So now, Judge," said she at last, "you can clear him, after all. It will be so fine for you to do that—so dramatic—so fitting, won't it?"

If Judge Henderson could have spoken, perhaps he would have done so; but she misunderstood his choking silence. She was miles away from the actual truth; and never was to know it in all her life.

"Don hadn't any father," said she. "His father's dead long ago, or Aurora would have told me. He's in his grave—and she'll not open it even for me, who have loved her so much. But if he had had a father..." Her voice ceased wistfully.

Judge Henderson coughed, his hands at his throat. She did not see his face.

"... If only he could have had a father like—this!"

Her own little hand fell gently—ever so gently—on the lithographed face of the great man, her hero, her champion—who always was to be such for her. It was the boldest act of all her quiet life. Her hand was very gentle, but as it fell, perhaps it dealt the heaviest blow to the vanity, the egotism, the innate selfishness of the man ever he had known, even in this swift series of blows he was now receiving. For once remorse, regret, understanding smote him sore. He saw how little he had earned what life had given him. He saw—himself!

"But then," she added hastily, and flushed to the roots of her hair—"I beg your pardon. That could not have been, of course. Don's father—the way he was born—why, Don's father couldn't have been a man like you! We all know that."

Miss Julia hobbled on away now to find her friend, Aurora Lane. She did not know the story of the night before. Miss Julia was very, very happy. She had her boy and his father after all—and both were above reproach! And she never told, not in all her life—and she never knew, not in all her life. And as she hobbled now up the walk beyond the little gate—somewhat repentant that her own eagerness had kept her away thus long from Aurora, she felt no remorse in her heart that she had not told Aurora Lane the real secret of her own life. "Because," remarked Miss Julia, to herself, like any woman, "there is one secret she has never told me—she has never told me who was Don's father!"

Poor little Miss Julia! Ah, very happy, very happy, little Miss Julia! Because she was a woman.