It's grand; but this
part here isn't the whole of it. There's a door somewhere which
nobody never opens unless it's the jedge there. I'd like to see
what's behind that 'ere door. If it's somethin' to make a good
story out of, I might be got to keep quiet about this other thing.
I don't know, but I MIGHT."
The swagger with which he said this, the confidence in himself
which he showed and the reliance he so openly put in the something
he knew but could not be induced to tell, acted so strongly upon
Mr. Black's nerves, that he leaped towards him again, evidently
with the intention of dragging him from the house.
But the judge was not ready for this. The judge had gained a new
lease of life in the last half-hour and he felt no fear of this
sullen bill-poster for all his sly innuendoes. He, therefore,
hindered the lawyer from his purpose, by a quick gesture of so
much dignity and resolve that even the lout himself was impressed
and dropped some of his sullen bravado.
"I have something to say to this fellow," he announced, looking
anywhere but at the drooping figure in the window which ought,
above all things in the world, to have engaged his attention.
"Perhaps he does not know his folly. Perhaps he thinks because I
was thrown aback to-day by those public charges against my son and
a string of insults for which no father could be prepared, that I
am seriously disturbed over the position into which such
unthinking men as himself have pushed Mr.
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