She ran to him and laid her tender little hands on his broad shoulders, and gazed into his pale, calm face, all unconscious that her own was quivering and wet with tears--tears for the pain which she saw in his set face, for his sacrificed youth, for his lost happiness--tears most of all for gentle Alice Fielding, the girl whom he still loved, although she had rested so long in the grave of the broken-hearted. XXIII THE BEGINNING OF THE END Misfortune never comes singly to a community any more than to an individual. No life anywhere may ever stand or fall quite alone, so are the living all bound together. In a village where every door stands wide and all lives are in the open, and where no high, hard walls rise between the people,--as they do in a city,--the bond is closer than it can be elsewhere. So that the uneasiness which the judge communicated so unwillingly to Miss Judy on that quiet midsummer night was the beginning of the end of the peace of many of the good people of Oldfield, for a long time afterward. Sorely troubled, Miss Judy had lain awake hour after hour looking into the darkness, and trying to see the way to do that which she knew was right. She had seen her duty distinctly enough as soon as the judge's meaning was clear; the only uncertainty was as to the means of doing it. The money must be paid, the length of time during which it had been owing only making the payment more urgent. No loophole of the law could afford any means of escape to a sense of honor as fine and true as hers. Such a possibility did not cross her mind as she lay thinking in the silence of the night, which was broken only by the peaceful little puffing sound that came tranquilly from Miss Sophia's side of the big, high bed. Miss Judy again softly put out her thin little hand in the dark, and softly patted her sister's round, plump shoulder with protecting tenderness, as she always instinctively caressed her when trouble drew near. Come what would, this sister, so tenderly loved, should not know or suffer any privation that could be prevented. It would be hard to keep her from knowing if the payment of the note should require the entire amount of the next pension money, which was every cent they would have for months. Still, Miss Judy remembered how she had managed, several times ere this, in keeping other unpleasant things from her sister's knowledge, and she now lay revolving transparent schemes and innocent fictions, alternately smiling and sighing, half proud and half ashamed of her own deep duplicity.