voice, rough with the surprise of unaccustomed feeling. "If he had
let us carry him, he might have been alive this minute; but he
would run and struggle to keep us back. He says he killed his
master. If so, his death is a retribution. Don't you say so,
fellows? The judge was a good man---"

"Hush! hush! the judge is all right," admonished one of the party;
"he'll be waking up soon"; and then, as every eye flew in fresh
wonder towards the chair and its impassive occupant, the low
whisper was heard,--no one ever could tell from whose lips it
fell: "If we are ever to know this wonderful secret, now is the
time, before he wakes and turns us out of the house."

No one in authority was present; no one representing the law, not
even a doctor; only haphazard persons from the street and a few
neighbours who had not been on social terms with the judge for
years and never expected to be so again. His secret!--always a
source of wonder to every inhabitant of Shelby, but lifted now
into a matter of vital importance by the events of the day and the
tragic death of the negro! Were they to miss its solution, when
only a door lay between it and them--a door which they might not
even have to unlock? If the judge should rouse,--if from a source
of superstitious terror he became an active one, how pat their
excuse might be. They were but seeking a proper place--a couch--a
bed--on which to lay the dead man. They had been witness to his
hurt; they had been witness to his death, and were they to leave
him lying in his blood, to shock the eyes of his master when he
came out of his long swoon? No tongue spoke these words, but the
cunning visible in many an eye and the slight start made by more
than one eager foot in the direction of the forbidden door gave