With a slight motion of the hand the Judge waved him off. Bodney continued: "For your heart there is a cure. There is none for mine. I was a fool, I was caught, I gambled, I couldn’t quit, that snake held me, charmed me, hypnotized me. I knocked him down and he bled black on the floor, and I left him lying there, but I could not break loose from him." The Judge waved him off. "Don’t tempt me to look upon your face again." Bodney did not move. "The old laugh that they have spoken so much about may return; old confidences and an old love will be restored, but there must be a wanderer that can never come back, a fool whom nature made weak. But I feel that if you would give me your hand—I am not deserving of it—but I feel that if I could once more touch that honorable hand, I could go forth an honest man. I would try." The Judge slowly raised his head. Tears were in his eyes. He held forth his hand. Bodney grasped it, and—was gone. *CHAPTER XXIV.* *SENT A MESSAGE.* William went to the office door and found it locked. This was so singular a happening that the old fellow stalked about the house, marveling over it and complaining against an innovation that shut a man out of an apartment that had served so long as a sort of public domain. It was like the closing of a park or a county road. Everyone laughed at him and he snorted. In the vocabulary of William’s contempt, the snort was the strongest expression. "It is all right to laugh," said he, "but I want to tell you that there has got to be a change here." He returned to the office door and knocked upon it, but his knuckles aroused no heed within. He could hear the Judge walking up and down. Bodney had been gone nearly half an hour. But the Judge had not noted the time. To him, life was but a conflicting, mental eternity, and he was in the whirling midst of it. For a long time he sat with his head on the table, one arm stretched out before him, the other hanging limp; then he staggered about the room, and then sat down with his head in his hands. To the eye turned inward all was black, till gradually a light appeared, seeming softly to shine upon a hideous shape, crouching in a dark corner. He gazed upon it, and it spoke, shrinking further back from the soft light. "I am your injustice," it said. He got up, raised a window, and stood looking out upon the sunlight in the street. But he shivered as if with cold, and his lips moved as if he were talking and swallowing his words down into deep silence. A gladness began to form in his heart. His son was innocent, but in that innocence there was a reproach. He had been unnatural as a father, and might he not many a time have been unjust as a judge? He acknowledged to himself that he must have decided in favor of error while on the bench. His retirement was a sort of unconscious justice. He realized that his mind had not been sound. He had felt a coming weakness.