"
The word came sharply, and it sounded decisive; but the ones which
followed from Mr. Andrews were no less so.
"That is not enough. We want evidence, actual evidence that you
are not playing the part your son ascribes to you."
The judge's eyes glared, then suddenly and incomprehensively
softened till the quick fear that his mind as well as his memory
had gone astray, vanished in a feeling none of them could have
characterised, but which gave to them all an expression of awe.
"I have such evidence," announced the judge. "Come."
Turning, he stepped into the hall. Oliver, with bended head and a
discouraged mien, quickly followed. Alanson Black and the others,
casting startled and inquiring looks at each other, brought up the
rear. Deborah Scoville was nowhere to be seen.
At the door of his own room, the judge paused, and with his hand
on the curtain, remarked with unexpected composure: "You have all
wondered, and others with you why for the last ten years I have
kept the gates of my house shut against every comer. I am going to
show you."
And with no further word or look, scarcely even giving attention
to Oliver's anguished presence, he led them into the study and
from there on to that inner door known and talked of through the
town as the door of mystery. This he slowly opened with the key he
took from his pocket; then, pausing with the knob in his hand, he
said:
"In the years which are past, but two persons beside myself have
crossed this threshold, and these only under my eye.
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