"
"But these are puerile reasons." He was speaking peremptorily now
and with all the weight of a master mind. "And you are not the
woman to be satisfied with anything puerile. There is something
back of all this; something you have not imparted. What is that
something? Tell--tell--"
"Oliver was a mere boy in those days and a very passionate one. He
hated Etheridge--the obtrusive mentor who came between him and
yourself."
"Hated?"
"Yes."
"HATED?"
"Yes, there is proof."
"Of his hate?"
"Yes, judge."
He did not ask where. Possibly he knew. And because he did not
ask, she did not tell him, holding on to her secret in a vague
hope that so much at least might never see light.
"I knew the boy shrank sometimes from Algernon's company," the
judge admitted, after another glance at her face; "but that means
nothing in a boy full of his own affairs. What else have you
against him? Speak up! I can bear it all."
"He handled the stick that--that-"
"Oliver?"
"Yes."
"Never! Now you have gone mad, madam."
"I would be willing to end my days in an asylum if that would
disprove this fact."
"But, madam, what proof--what reason can you have for an assertion
so monstrous?"
"You remember the shadow I saw which was not that of John
Scoville? The person who made that shadow was whittling a stick;
that was a trick of Oliver's. I have heard that he even whittled
furniture."
"Good God!" The judge's panoply was pierced at last.
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