She paused on the threshold of this last doorway; apparently she had fallen upon the final moments of some small conference. A tall, spare old man was delaying the resumption of his correspondence to call a last word after a younger one, who had just set his hat upon the back of his head and was now moving towards the exit. "Try a summons--yes," said the elder; "that would have been the best thing to start with, wouldn't it?" "I don't quite see it that way,' replied the other, in the tone of heated defence. "he took the goods, and must have had them on the premises." "You didn't find them, though. I don't quite see the use of your having gone with a writ of replevin after goods that I were bought to be sold again as soon as might be." "Such old stuff isn't worked off in any such haste as that. It's as I tell you--word was got around to her that the writ had been issued. The place was all turned upside down; the things had been hidden away." "Who could have told her?" "Who?" cried the other, with a scornful impatience. "Somebody connected with the court. Who else could? Who else knew? Well, I'll try the other thing; there is plenty yet to be learned about justice-court justice, no doubt." He passed out with snapping eyes and a curl on his lips, and the older man again bent himself over his desk. It was a cramped little room with a breadth or two of worn oilcloth on the floor. Two or three shelves, set across the dingy window, supported a range of glass jars filled with nutmegs and orris-root. On the tilted flagging, outside, the tops of a row of blue gasoline barrels held each a half-pint of the past night's shower, and across the muddy street bunches of battered bananas hung from the rusty framework of several shabby old awnings. "Poor David! twenty years and more of _this_!" Mrs. Bates stood within the doorway. It was easy enough to figure her as already forgotten--easier still when the old man's half-guilty start at length acknowledged her presence. She stepped forward with an undaunted cordiality. "Well, David, here I am at last, you see. The mountain wouldn't come to Mohammed, so"--She tapped her foot smartly on the oilcloth. "Here stands Sue Lathrop, with a long memory and a disposition to meet the mountain half-way, or three-quarters, or seven-eighths, or to trudge the whole distance--even to the last yard. One, two, three!" she counted, as she stepped up to his desk and flung out her hand. The old man rose with something like alacrity. He banished his slight frown of preoccupation and hastened to replace it by an expression of--so to speak--apologetic cordiality. "Mrs. Bates," he murmured. "It's very kind of you to come here--very. My daughter--" he hesitated. He finished the sentence by drawing up a chair and clearing its seat of the ruck of morning papers.