“Of course not!” snapped the judge. “Trench, why don’t you clear up this talk about that kid in yonder? Cheyney knows who the father is; make him tell. By the Lord Harry,” he added, thumping the table with his fist, “I wanted it out in court.” Caleb Trench turned slightly away, his face inscrutable. “Judge,” he said, “I wouldn’t stir a finger. I took in the kid just as I took in the dog. Let them talk.” The judge stared at him angrily, uncomprehendingly. “I reckon you’re a crank,” he said; “you’re worse than David Royall.” “How is the colonel to-day?” Caleb asked, to change the subject; he knew, for he had asked Dr. Cheyney over the telephone. “He’s better,” retorted the judge shortly; “you’re not, and you’ll be worse if you don’t watch out. There are snakes in the grass.” Caleb smiled. “Judge,” he said, “if I listened to any one in the world I would to you; I’m not ungrateful.” “Nonsense!” retorted the judge, and jammed his hat down harder than usual. At the door he stopped and waved his cane aggressively. “I’ve warned you,” he said harshly, “and if you were not an idiot, sir, you’d make Cheyney speak. It’s some dratted crank of his about his professional honor!” “How about a lawyer’s, Judge?” asked Caleb, amused. “Humph!” grunted the old man, and went out and slammed the door. Later that afternoon business took Caleb up to Cresset’s Corners to see Aaron Todd. He had been twice to Broad Acres to inquire for Colonel Royall without seeing Diana; he had refrained from asking for her. Dr. Cheyney had told him that she would not leave her father, and he knew that, as yet, he could scarcely express all he felt about the ordeal of her testimony. He had forborne to account for that time to spare her the publicity of the witness-stand, and his very silence only made her evidence more significant. To see her and thank her without saying all that was in his heart was no easy matter. He had driven back his love for her, and battled against it, denied it a right to exist, because he knew that she regarded him as an inferior. But now, by her own act, when she acknowledged him as her friend and defended him at the cost of a hundred uncharitable rumors, it seemed that he might have misunderstood her natural pride of birth and affluence for a repugnance to his poverty. When their eyes met in the court-room with that inevitable shock of mutual feeling that leaves a startled certainty behind it, he had felt almost sure that she loved him. But since then he had plunged back again into his old doubts, arguing that her testimony had been merely a matter of duty, and that his own feeling had deceived him into imagining that her heart was likewise touched. He had no right to suppose that her evidence was otherwise than involuntary, the exact rendering of the truth to save a man’s life. If he went further and believed that she loved him, he was overstepping the bounds of probability. Love is an involuntary passion,