"Quick!" she cried, kneeling beside the couch. "He has fainted. Call mother." He went, his aged features twitching with fright. "I will send Doctor Southall," said Harry quickly. He touched her hand, and with a single backward look at her, hurried out. She heard his step speeding down the gravel drive. Echo laid a tremulous hand upon her father's, and at the touch the tense fingers relaxed and a crumpled brown paper dropped from them. She snatched it up--was that what had made him faint? She spread it out: it was a photographic print, unmounted, of the last page of a letter, in his own handwriting. Across the top was printed, in the purple, noncommittal lettering of a typewriter, "For possible release May 3rd." Then as she gazed, over the agitation of her face grew a shocked bewilderment that rushed headlong to realisation. She started to her feet, and a vivid scarlet flooded her pale face from chin to brow, then slowly ebbed, leaving behind it a frozen anguish. The print fell from her hand. At the same moment the Judge stirred and opened his eyes. He saw her standing before him; knowledge slipped back. "Echo--" She turned swiftly. He had struggled to a sitting posture--his gaze fastened on the crumpled paper on the rug. A little spasm crossed his face. "Reach me that," he said. She picked it up and laid it in his hand, and he put it into his pocket with shaking fingers. He passed his hand across his forehead. "Where's Sevier?" he asked dully. "He went to send the doctor. We were on the porch and heard you cry out." "Ah, yes, I--remember. I tried to call you. I lost track of things for a minute or two, I reckon, But it's nothing. I've had little spells like this before. I don't need Southall--send Nelson to tell him not to come. I'm all right." Unheeding her protests, he rose and went to his chair, as Mrs. Allen, with unaccustomed agitation on her face, swept into the room. CHAPTER XIV THE HANDWRITING ON THE WALL Late that night the Judge sat alone at his desk in the library. There was a faint pungent odour in the room and at his elbow sat an ash-tray on which was a little huddle of brown ashes--all that remained of the photograph whose arrival that afternoon had so disconcerted him. He sat like a stone image, staring out into the moon-lighted garden, but really seeing nothing beyond the range of the poisonous ashes at his side, save a green-and-yellow blur that might have been blent of leaves and moonshine. He was looking at the Handwriting on the Wall.