fireplace and touched a match. Wood caught and crackled and a cheerful
orange flame flew noisily up the chimney, but the man sitting on the
divan did not notice. The butler waited a moment, watching, hesitating,
and then:

"Have you had lunch, sir?" he asked in a tentative, gentle voice.

The staring eyes moved with an effort and rested on the servant's face.
"Lunch?" he repeated, apparently trying to focus on the meaning of the
word. "Lunch? I don't know, Miller. But don't bring anything."

With a great anxiety in his face Miller regarded his master. "Would you
let me take your overcoat, Judge?--you'll be too warm," he said.

He spoke in a suppressed tone as if waiting for, fearing something, as
if longing to show sympathy, and the man stood and let himself be cared
for, and then sat down again in the same unrestful, fixed attitude,
gazing out again through the glittering panes into the stormy, tawny
west sky. Miller came back and stood quiet, patient; in a few minutes
the man seemed to become aware of him.

"I forgot, Miller. You'll want to know," he said in a tone which went to
show an old bond between the two. "You'll be sorry to hear, Miller," he
said--and the dull eyes moved difficultly to the anxious ones, and his
voice was uninflected--"you'll be sorry to know that the coroner's jury
decided that Master Jack was a murderer."

The word came more horribly because of an air of detachment from the
man's mind. It was like a soulless, evil mechanism, running unguided.
Miller caught at a chair.