In vain his plausible excuses for
showing his lady friend the curiosities of the place; her interest
in the details of criminology was well understood by Sergeant
Doolittle, though of course he had not sounded its full depths,
and could not know from any one but Judge Ostrander himself, her
grave reasons for steeping her mind again in the horrors of her
husband's long-since expiated crime. And Judge Ostrander was the
last man who would be likely to give him this information.
Therefore, when he saw the small, mocking eye of the lawyer begin
to roam over the shelves, and beheld his jaw drop as it sometimes
did when he sought to veil his purpose in an air of mild
preoccupation, he knew what the next request would be, as well as
if the low sounds which left Mr. Black's lips at intervals had
been words instead of inarticulate grunts. He was, therefore,
prepared when the question did come.
"Any memorial of the Etheridge case?"
"Nothing but a stick with blood-marks on it. That, I'm afraid,
wouldn't be a very agreeable sight for a lady's eye."
"She's proof," the lawyer whispered in the officer's ear. "Let's
see the stick."
The sergeant considered this a very interesting experience--quite
a jolly break in the dull monotony of the day. Hunting up the
stick, he laid it in the lawyer's hands, and then turned his eye
upon the lady.
She had gone pale, but it took her but an instant to regain her
equanimity and hold out her own hand for the weapon.
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