So, in a sweet little thread of a voice, sang Cicely; her tones, though clear, were so faint that they seemed to come from far away. She was sitting in an easy-chair, with pillows behind her, her hands laid on the arms of the chair, her feet on a footstool. Her eyes wandered over the opposite wall, and presently she began again, beating time with her hand on the arm of the chair: "Down along the rocky shore Some make their home; They live on crispy pancakes Of yellow tide foam; Some in the reeds Of the black mountain lake, With frogs for their watch-dogs, All night awake--awake." She laughed. The judge left the room. He walked on tiptoe; but he might have worn hobnailed shoes, and made all the noise possible--Cicely would not have noticed it. "I can't stand it!" he said to Paul, outside. "How it must feel--to be as stiff and old as that!" was the thought that passed through the younger man's mind. For the judge's features were no longer able to express the sorrows that lay beneath; even while speaking his despair his face remained immovable, like a mask. "But it's merciful, after all," Paul had answered, aloud. "Merciful?" "Yes. Come to my room and I'll tell you why." Straw was laid down before Paul's cottage. Within, all was absolutely quiet; even little Jack had been sent away. He had been sent to Hollis, who was taking care of him so elaborately, with so many ingenious devices for his entertainment, that Porley was wildly idle; there was nothing for her to do. Standing beside the white-pine table in Paul's bare bedroom, the two men held their conference. Paul's explanation lasted three minutes. "Ferdie was entangled with her long before he ever saw Cicely," he concluded, "and he always liked her; that was her hold upon him--he liked her, and she knew it; he didn't drop her even after he was married." From the rigid old face there came a hot imprecation. "Let him alone--will you?--now he's dead," suggested Paul, curtly. "I don't suppose that you yourself have been so immaculate all your life that you can afford to set up as a pattern?" "But my wife, sir--Nothing ever touched her." "You mean that you arranged things so that she shouldn't know. All decent men do that, I suppose, and Ferdie didn't in the least intend that Cicely should know, either. He told her to stay here; if she had persisted in going down there against his wish, and against his arrangements also, fancy what she would have put her head into! I couldn't let her do that, of course. But though I told her enough to give her some clew, she hadn't the least suspicion of the whole truth, and now she need never know." "She won't have time, she's dying," answered the grandfather.