like him do not hold their peace under a provocation so great as
the intrusion of a mob of strangers into a spot where he never
anticipated seeing anybody, nor had seen anybody but his man Bela
for years. Soon they would hear his voice. It was not in nature
for him to be as quiet as this in face of such audacity.

Yet who could count upon the actions of an Ostrander, or reckon
with the imperious whims of a man mysterious beyond all
precedent?--He may be there but silent, or--

A single glance would settle all.

The woman drew the curtain.

Sunshine! A stream of it, dazzling them almost to blindness and
sending them, one and all, pellmell back upon each other! However
dismal the approach, here all was in brilliant light with every
evidence before them of busy life.

The room was not only filled, but crammed, with furniture. This
was the first thing they noticed; then, as their blinking eyes
became accustomed to the glare and to the unexpected confusion of
tables and chairs and screens and standing receptacles for books
and pamphlets and boxes labelled and padlocked, they beheld
something else; something, which once seen, held the eye from
further wandering and made the apprehensions from which they had
suffered sink into insignificance before a real and only too
present terror.

The judge was there! but in what a condition.