Any of the preoccupied citizens of B---- who might have encountered this black-dressed, pale young woman sauntering up their crowded street this morning, could scarcely have divined what was going on behind those still, gray eyes. She was not thinking of the goods displayed in the shop windows, though her eyes mechanically flitted over them, nor was she musing upon a lover, though Tom Clark often crossed her mind, nor was she considering the weather, which was puritanically raw and ruffling, nor of any other thing than how she might divest herself of a large part of that fortune which the Washington Trust Company had so meritoriously preserved for her! There was a very simple way out of her dilemma, of course, but it had never occurred to her; and if it had occurred to the trust officers, they had thought best not to suggest it to their scatter-brained client. So she knitted her brows and thought, without heeding where she was. When she came to a certain small square, she turned off the main street unconsciously and walked up a quiet block towards the court-house. It was the path she had trod eleven years before, only in the reverse direction when she had led her aunt from Judge Orcutt's courtroom to the home of the Washington Trust Company. Her mind took charge of her without calling upon her will, as it did so often, and presently she entered the great granite court-house with no clear purpose in her mind, other than a hidden desire, perhaps, to see the probate judge once more. Judge Orcutt was not in the room on the second floor which she remembered. Instead, there was a stranger holding court there, a dull-eyed, fat gentleman with drooping black mustache and a snappy voice, who did not attract Adelle. She thought she had made a mistake in the room and looked up and down the corridor for a room labeled with Judge Orcutt's name, but found none. Then she asked a court attendant, who told her that the judge had been retired for the last two years! Adelle was turning away, with a sense of disappointment, when it came into her mind like an inspiration--"He might still be living in the city!" She inquired, and the court attendant, who did not know, was polite enough to consult a directory and found that sure enough Judge Orcutt was living on Mountcourt Street, which happened to be not far away--in fact just over the hill from the court-house.