"I mean the Welles-Scott decision!" Craig said in a low, deadly voice. "That"--his clenched hand smote the light desk at his elbow with a savage blow--"must be _ours_!" For an instant there was blank silence. The Judge stood aghast, his very speech frozen with indignation. To him his judicial calling had an element that was almost sacred. This man--to whom he had given the hand of friendship, who had the _entrée_ into the exclusive circles of southern gentility--this man assumed to lay coarse fingers upon his vestment of office, to question his integrity as a Judge! He dared to believe him, Beverly Allen, cheaply venal--a puppet, whose legal rulings were at the beck and call of corporate influence! The room seemed suddenly stifling hot. He turned to the window, flung the curtains wide and drew a gulping breath of the fresh air. He had not seen Craig's sudden start. For at the smashing blow of his fist on the fragile Italian desk, a curious thing had happened. Its catch loosened by the jar, a tiny carven panel had fallen with a little click, and a thin sheaf of yellowed letters had dropped and spread fan-wise beside his hand. The backs of the envelopes were uppermost, and across the top one was written in a dim, twirly hand and faded ink, the initials _B.A._ A thought darted like cold lightning through Craig's brain. "B.A."--Beverly Allen! Whose were those old letters? The initials were in a woman's hand. What if they held a clue to the old story Treadwell, his attorney, had spoken of? A quick instinct inspired him. His hand closed over them quickly--went to his breast--as the Judge turned from the window. The latter had regained self-control. He stood erect and tall, his leonine head thrown back, his eyes shining, and in his face a look the other had never seen in it before. "You have presumed," he said, "to say to me what I would not have believed any representative of your corporation would dare to say. And you have taken advantage of my hospitality to say it in my own house. I choose now to believe this message an individual one, springing from a personal and base initiative rather than from the responsible Directorate which I once served. 'Once,' I say. For I serve it no longer. I am now a member of the Judiciary of this commonwealth. Because the corporation furthered my candidacy, you assume that it 'made' me. Perhaps it did. But it never owned my conscience or my integrity! Nor does it now, thank God!" As he spoke he had stepped to the wall and pushed a bell. "Nelson," he said, to the entering butler, "show this gentleman to the door." Craig had risen to his feet. He looked at the other an instant with livid face. Then he went rapidly to the hall and snatched up his hat and stick. The outer door closed heavily behind him.