secret misgivings.

He had met no one in his short walk down the lane, but for all
that, he paused before entering the path just mentioned, to glance
back and see if he were being watched or followed. When satisfied
that he was not, he looked up, from the solitary waste where he
stood, to the cheerless heavens and sighed; then forward into the
mass of impenetrable shadow that he must yet traverse and
shuddered as many another had shuddered ere beginning this walk.
For it was near the end of this path, in full sight of the bridge
he must cross, that his friend, Algernon Etheridge, had been set
upon and murdered so many years before; and the shadow of this
ancient crime still lingered over the spot, deepening its natural
gloom even for minds much less sympathetic and responsive to
spiritual influences than Judge Ostrander.

But this shudder, whether premonitory or just the involuntary
tribute of friend to friend, did not prevent his entering the path
or following its line of shadow as it rose and dipped in its
course down the gorge.

I have spoken of the cheerlessness of the heavens. It was one of
those nights when the sky, piled thick with hurrying clouds, hangs
above one like a pall. But the moon, hidden behind these rushing
masses, was at its full, and the judge soon found that he could
see his way better than he had anticipated--better than was
desirable, perhaps. He had been on the descent of the path for
some little time now, and could not be far from the more level
ground which marked the approach to Long Bridge. Determined not to
stop or to cast one faltering look to right or left, he hurried on