CHAPTER XIII

THE JUDGE

Those persons who live always in doors, confined by work or infirmity to
a chair by the window, take a deep interest in the people who pass, just
as they make for themselves a horizon of the neighboring walls, roofs,
and windows.

Nailed to their place, they live in the life of the streets; and the busy
men and women who pass within their range of vision, sometimes every day
at the same hour, do not suspect that they serve as the mainspring of
other lives, that interested eyes watch for their coming and miss them if
they happen to go to their destination by another road.

The Delobelles, left to themselves all day, indulged in this sort of
silent observation. Their window was narrow, and the mother, whose eyes
were beginning to weaken as the result of hard usage, sat near the light
against the drawn muslin curtain; her daughter's large armchair was a
little farther away. She announced the approach of their daily passers-
by. It was a diversion, a subject of conversation; and the long hours of
toil seemed shorter, marked off by the regular appearance of people who
were as busy as they. There were two little sisters, a gentleman in a
gray overcoat, a child who was taken to school and taken home again, and
an old government clerk with a wooden leg, whose step on the sidewalk had
a sinister sound.

They hardly ever saw him; he passed after dark, but they heard him, and