What has made him thus suddenly careless, he
who has never been careless before? Money? A bribe from the woman
who had entered there?
Impossible to believe, his virtue has always been so impeccable,
his devotion to his strange and dominating master so sturdy and so
seemingly unaffected by time and chance!
Yet, what else was there to believe? There stood the gate with the
pebble holding it away from the post; and here stood half the
neighbourhood, staring at that pebble and at the all but invisible
crack it made where an opening had never been seen before, in a
fascination which had for its motif, not so much the knowledge
that these forbidden precincts had been invaded by a stranger, as
that they were open to any intruding foot--that they, themselves,
if they had courage enough, might go in, just as this woman had
gone in, and see--why, what she is seeing now--the unknown,
unguessed reason for all these mysteries;--the hidden treasure or
the hidden sorrow which would explain why he, their first citizen,
the respected, even revered judge of their highest court, should
make use of such precautions and show such unvarying determination
to bar out all comers from the place he called his home.
It had not always been so. Within the memory of many there it had
been an abode of cheer and good fellowship. Not a few of the men
and women now hesitating before its portals could boast of meals
taken at the judge's ample board, and of evenings spent in
animated conversation in the great room where he kept his books
and did his writing.
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