He could not see the old man upon first reaching the highway. Blinding dust-clouds hung more heavily than ever over the wild, furious confusion of the big road. The people, terror-mad, were fleeing, each one thinking only of his own peril. The drivers, panic-stricken, whirled the clashing wagons hither and thither, utterly bewildered. The horses, helpless and terrified, plunged amid the clanking of the entangled trace-chains. The dense clouds of smothering dust hung like a blinding pall. But the judge knew where the little Frenchman was lying and sprang straight toward him and found him in time,--barely in time to bend down, to lift him in his mighty arms and toss him like a feather far beyond danger. But there was no more time,--not an instant,--and then the judge himself went down as a church spire falls before a tempest,--down into the dust of the earth under the awful, crushing hoofs of the maddened horses, down under the cruel, cutting tires of those merciless wheels,--down to death, giving his life for the humblest of his fellow-creatures. XXVII THE LAST ARTFULNESS OF MISS JUDY To Lynn Gordon, as to most of the Oldfield people, it seemed as if this sleepless night--the saddest ever known to the village--never would end. And yet, when he arose at last, with the first faint glimmer of the day's gray, and looked out through the dew-wet dimness of the green boughs at the softly whitening east, a sudden feeling of peace fell upon his deeply troubled spirit. The sorrow and terror of the darkness fled away, like evil birds of the night, so peaceful did the world appear, so free from all pain and wrong and cruelty and death, now that the soft white dawn-light--cool, sweet, calm, pure as ever--was coming for the perpetual refreshment of the earth. Under this fresh whiteness from heaven all living creatures looked to be resting untroubled, completely in harmony with one another. Three little screech-owls sat as a single bunch of gray feathers, motionless among the shadows which still lingered in the nearest tree. Three little brownish heads merely turned slowly as he appeared at the window, and six big eyes regarded him calmly, as though all belonged to the one small bunch of dark gray feathers, still huddled sleepily together almost within reach of his hand. From the darker and more distant trees gradually swelled the twitter of many bird voices, rising into a rapturous chorus as the east became rifted with rose and seamed with silver. Every member of this divine choir was singing his softest and sweetest in celebration of the dawn's eternal renewal of creation. And then, as the rose brightened into royal red, and the silver melted into molten gold, at the nearer approach of sunrise, the oriole--already wearing the sun's golden livery--sent forth his ringing welcome to the king, a greeting so brilliant and so ancient as to make the trumpeter's mediaeval salute to the emperor seem but a poor dull thing of yesterday.