And thus passed the first two hours of the three hours that the judge always spent with Miss Judy on the first evening of his coming to Oldfield. There was something which he felt that he must say before he went away, but he shrunk from saying it, fearing to disturb Miss Judy; and so put it off as long as he could, waiting indeed till the last. He was not sure that it was a matter of real importance; he was rather of the opinion that it was not of any actual consequence, and yet he could not help mentioning it in justice to Miss Judy. In glancing over the docket for the term, as he usually glanced immediately upon reaching the village, he was surprised to find that a suit had been brought against the estate of Major Bramwell for the payment of a note given by him to Colonel Fielding. Looking farther, he saw that the note had been transferred to Alvarado years before, and that the suit was brought in the Spaniard's name. This was the shadow now coming over the judge's visit to Miss Judy--this, and the blacker shadow cast by the past whenever John Stanley was compelled to remember the existence of the Spaniard, and the passion, cruelty, and deceit which had so ruthlessly shut the light out of three hapless lives. He never thought of him if he could help it; he never had been known to speak of him nor heard to call his name. When Alvarado--mad with hate and jealousy that death itself had not been able to soften or to cool--had continued to thrust himself into the court upon first one wild pretext and then another wilder pretext, during term after term, the judge had steadily looked away, had steadily held himself from all anger as well as all violence, avoiding the clash which the madman sought. The coolness and skill of the jurist had enabled him to do this without great difficulty up to the present time, and he had no fear of not being able to do the same in the present case. He was not even any longer afraid of himself. Still, it was necessary that he should explain the matter to Miss Judy, since she must almost certainly hear of it and might naturally be hurt at his silence. His first impulse had been to send the amount of the note with interest to the holder of it by some third person, and so to dispose of the suit without Miss Judy's knowledge. But a second thought made plain to him that the money was not what the Spaniard wanted, and that such a step, even if possible, would be utterly useless. It would also be worse than useless to appeal to Colonel Fielding or to try to learn how and when the note had come into Alvarado's possession. The old man had always been a child in heart; he was now a child in mind. And then--the unhappiness of John Stanley's youth had so warped his maturer judgment of the causes of his misery--he had never been able to hold Alice Fielding's father quite without blame for her sacrifice. No, he could not go to Colonel Fielding, not even now, in his age and feebleness, not even for Miss Judy's sake.