Not later than ten I crawled up the stairs and stood for a minute in the dining-room. I heard the scratch of the Judge's pen and knew he was hard at work, and I remember, when I looked through the curtains, how I thought of how old the Judge looked, with his hair already turning from gray to white, and of how the youth of all of us hangs for a moment on the edge and then slides away without any warning or place where a body can put a finger and say, "It went at that moment." Perhaps I would have stood there longer, but the Judge looked up and smiled, dry enough. "You may think I am working," he said. "But I'm mostly engaged just now, Margaret, exerting will power to overcome a foolish fancy." "What is that, sir?" I asked. "That somebody is watching me," he said. "I've turned around a dozen times and left this seat twice already. It's an uncomfortable feeling, but I've made up my mind not to look again." "Not to look?" I cried. "No. There's nothing there." "Where?" I said. "Below--in the garden or on the balcony," he answered; "somewhere outside the window." "Bless us, I'll look," I whispered, walking toward the back of the room. It might have been my fancy or my own reflection, but whatever it was, I thought I saw a dark and muffled thing move outside. It forced a scream from me, and that one little cry was enough to bring the Judge up out of his chair, knowing well enough without words that I had seen something. "That's enough!" he said, his long legs striding toward the French windows. "Stand back, Margaret. We'll look into this." He tore the glass doors open, the bitter cold wind flickered the lamp, and by some sensible instinct I pulled the cord of the oil burner. I knew that as he stood on the balcony, looking, he could see nothing with a light behind him. Furthermore, I did not move, because I knew that he was listening, too. Both of us heard the scrape of something on the icy garden walk, the moment the lights went out. Immediately after it the Judge called to me. "Look!" he said. "Isn't something moving there along the shrubs?" "Yes," I whispered. "It's near the ground. It crawls." "What do you want?" called the Judge to the moving thing. Then, although he had no revolver at hand, he said, "Answer, or I'll shoot." The only reply to this was the sound of breathing and one little cough that sounded human. The Judge reached behind him with one long arm, feeling around the little table by the window for some object. At last his fingers closed on it and I knew he had the little bronze elephant that now stands on the mantel, where Mrs. Estabrook turns it so it will not show that it has lost its tail. "We are a pair of old fools," said the Judge, as if he was not sure. "It probably is a cat."