The judge bent forward and spoke to Jacob Kalb. William's character was, after all, not the court's affair. If he had been absent so long in Alaska, where the chances were one to fifty against his life, he was entirely negligible so far as the guardianship of these children was concerned. But the sudden vigor and vindictiveness of Jacob's charge angered the judge. He did not like the man's looks, and he did like Miss Miflin and the quaint little Pennsylvania German girls. He had seen Miss Miflin blush when she mentioned the absent brother. "Do you mean that this older brother stole?" he asked plainly. "He took school-board money, and didn't pay it back." Miss Miflin leaned forward. "He was treasurer of the school-board," she said. "All his accounts were straight, but his uncle, who succeeded him, claimed that forty dollars in cash was missing. His father paid it, and he has never had a chance to explain. He does not even know that his father and mother are dead. If he could--I am sure he would be here. And his uncle told people that he had stolen." Her cheeks blazed, her hands clasped and unclasped. Sarah watched her dumbly. "And you think he is still alive?" asked the judge kindly. "I don't know," she said, with quivering lips. "Do you think," began the judge again, after a long pause. Then he got no further. Little Sarah had risen from her chair. Her shawl had slipped from her shoulders, she looked with burning eyes across the room. The judge thought that she was going to fall, but she walked steadily across the open space between him and the wide-eyed clerks, toward the door. "Sarah!" called Miss Miflin gently. But Sarah did not stop. It was the judge who saw the stranger first, and who guessed the truth. Like a bird to its nest, she went, and a strong arm gathered her straight against the stranger's heart. Sarah did not speak, she only hid her eyes against the stranger's side. The judge meant to look back at Miss Miflin, and then he meant to dismiss the court at once and banish all these impertinent young clerks, and then he wanted to talk to William. But his gaze stopped with Daniel Swartz. Daniel's embarrassment at having been caught trying to bribe the twins had changed to a more poignant emotion. He looked frightened. The stranger's eyes were upon him, also. "I am William Wenner," said the young man. "I have just come home. I did not know that my father and mother were dead, or that my little sister was in--in--such trouble. I wish that Jacob Kalb would say again what he said." Jacob Kalb lifted a determined face. "I said that when you went away you didn't pay back all the school-board money, and your pop had to pay it, and you weren't fit to be guardian of Sarah and Albert and the zwillings,--that is what I said." He did not heed the frantic nudging of his master. He saw the Wenner house, which he had so long coveted, slipping from his grasp.