Suddenly he pulled open a drawer in the table before him. The women started, fearing a weapon; but it was only a book he drew out--an old, dusty book, the edges of its leaves once gilded--a copy of the Holy Scriptures, very old and dusty. Judge Henderson by accident now saw the fly leaf, for the first time in years. It was the little Bible his own father had given him, half a lifetime ago, when he was first starting out into the practice of the law. On the yellowed leaf in paled ink could still be seen the inscription his father had written there in Latin for his son: "_Filio meo; Crede Deo._--To my son; Believe in God!" "Will you swear on the Bible?" demanded Judge Henderson, "both of you, that you'll never tell nor hint a word of this to any human being in the world--not even to him--the boy?" The hand which held the dusty little volume was trembling, but Judge Henderson was not thinking of his own father, nor of the inscription in the little book. "Yes!" said Aurora Lane at once. But Anne Oglesby raised a hand for pause. "I'll not swear to keep back anything from him, my husband. I'm not sure I could." "Your husband----" "I'm going to marry him, unless he sends me away." "It can't be soon--it may be very long--it will be years----" Judge Henderson was getting back a little color now, a little self-assertiveness, a little more readiness to argue. "I can wait," said Anne. "But I can't buy him cheap--Don wouldn't let me. I know who his father is, and he ought to know it, too. That's his right." "Anne," said Aurora Lane, "I denied him that right. You got my secret by accident. Can't you keep it, too? It's a heavy weight that Judge Henderson has laid on more than one woman--a load to be borne by three women, myself, Miss Julia, and you. But this is to save Don's life." "You'll swear secrecy on the Book?" broke in Judge Henderson. "Yes!" said Anne Oglesby at length. "If you'll swear to perjure yourself against your oath of office as judge and as attorney--as you've said you would--I'll swear. Is that the trade?" "It's the only hope he has, the only hope that you have, and the only hope that I have. Absolute silence! Absolute secrecy! I'm going to save him--but I'm going to save my own self, too." A slight color was in Henderson's gray face. "Oh, you trader!" said Anne Oglesby, all her scorn for him now patent, fully voiced. "You sepulcher of a man! You failure! Oh, yes, yes, I'll swear! And I'll keep my oaths and my promises all my life, so help me God! Lift up the Book! You, too, Aurora." "I swore it twenty years ago," said Aurora Lane. "I will again. You Judas! You coward! Lift up the Book! Lift it up, so that I may see! Is that the book they call the Bible--that tells of love and mercy, and truth, and justice, and forgiveness of sins? Lift it up, so that I may see!"