She moved away. “I’m glad he was only joking,” she said. Then from the door: “I wonder when he and Alicia’ll marry. My, but they’ll make a fine-looking couple, her so dark and him so light! Of course, I don’t exactly favour these marriages where the groom and bride have been acquainted with each other for so long. They get to know each other too good. Give a woman something to find out, I say, so that she can live with her husband two or three years, anyhow. Now, I met Jim one week and was married the next, and it was four years before we was what you might call fighting.” “Oh, wait,” said the Judge. “There’s one thing more. In a case like this, where a statement has been writ out, it’s the rule, in law, for the statoress----” “The statoress?” “You’re the statoress in this case. Y’see, you writ the statement. It’s the rule for her to make a second statement, appended to the end of the first, sayin’ that the first ain’t so.” “All right, Judge.” “I’ll just write the second statement, an’ you can sign it.” He scribbled a few lines hastily. “Wish you’d wrote the first statement,” she said enviously, when she had come back and was standing at the desk once more. “Can’t you go fast!” “That’s because mine’s a fountain-pen,” he explained. “Here, sign right on this line.” “An’ say!” he added as she started away a second time, “lemme repeat what I advised once before--don’t never give security, especially collateral security, without you git a receipt, Mrs. Luce. The next feller, mebbe, won’t be jokin’.” “I won’t, Judge,” she promised. When she was across the railroad track on her homeward way he went back to his armchair, sat down, laid his arms upon his desk and his head upon his arms. Noon came and passed unnoticed. The down train snorted by, and he did not look up. Then the long afternoon went slowly. He stayed where he was, scarcely moving. Afternoon merged into twilight. Darkness crept into the courtroom. The banging of the unfixed section of the rickety sidewalk roused the Judge at last. And as the loose boards nearer at hand flapped and creaked under a light tread he sat up and got stiffly to his feet. The knob of the front door turned and a slender figure in white appeared in the doorway. Then, “Gid!” called an anxious voice--a girl’s voice. “Gid! Are you there?” “Yas,” answered the Judge. “I’m here. Is it--Alicia?” “Gid!” she cried tremulously; “poor, poor Gid!” He walked toward her slowly. “What you pore Giddin’ me for?” he asked. “Mrs. Luce told me--about what Homer’s done.” The Judge came short. “She did? Can’t that woman keep nothin’ to herself? W’y”--pleadingly and reaching out a hand--“let me explain before you--w’y, that boy, Alicia, he only----” “Oh, it wasn’t a joke!” she interrupted. “Mrs. Luce thinks it was. But I know. Oh, you dear old Gid, you’re trying to shield him. And he doesn’t deserve it.” “Now, Alicia, he didn’t----” “He did--and right at a time when it could hurt your chance to be district attorney.”