“I was saying,” said the foreman hastily, “that it was useless to argue the case any longer.” And withdrew slightly in advance of the rest of the jury, as became his official position. But Judge Trott never again ascended the bench.

It was quite a month after his resignation, and the Gentleman was sitting in the twilight “under the shadow of his own vine and fig tree,” —a figure of speech locally interpreted as a “giant redwood” and a mossy creeper,—before the door of that cabin in which he was first introduced to the reader, when he was faintly conscious of the outlines of a female form and the tones of a female voice.

The Gentleman hesitated, and placed over his right eye a large gold eyeglass, which had been lately accepted by the Camp as his most recent fashionable folly. The form was unfamiliar, but the voice the Gentleman instantly recognized as belonging to the plaintiff in his late momentous judicial experience. It is proper to say here that it was the voice of Mademoiselle Clotilde Montmorency; it is only just to add that, speaking no French, and being of unmistakable Anglo-Saxon origin, her name was evidently derived from the game over which she had presided, which was, in the baleful estimation of the Camp, of foreign extraction.

“I wanted to know,” said Miss Clotilde, sitting down on a bench beside the Gentleman—“that is, me and Jake Woods thought we’d like to know —how much you consider yourself out of pocket by this yer resignation of yours?”

Scarcely hearing the speech, and more concerned with the apparition itself, Judge Trott stammered vaguely, “I have the pleasure of addressing Miss—”

“If you mean by that that you think you don’t know me, never saw me before, and don’t want to see me ag’in, why, I reckon that’s the polite way o’ putting it,” said Miss Montmorency, with enforced calmness, scraping some dead leaves together with the tip of her parasol as if she were covering up her emotions. “But I’m Miss Montmorency. I was saying that Jake and me thought that—seein’ as you stood by us when them hounds on the jury give in their hellish lying verdict—Jake and me thought it wasn’t the square thing for you to lose your situation just for me. ‘Find out from the Judge,’ sez he, ‘jist what he reckons he’s lost by this yer resignation—putting it at his own figgers.’ That’s what Jake said. Jake’s a square man —I kin say that of him, anyhow.”

“I don’t think I understand you,” said Judge Trott simply.

“That’s it! That’s just it!” continued Miss Clotilde, with only halfsuppressed bitterness. “That’s what I told Jake. I sez, ‘The Judge won’t understand you nor me. He’s that proud he won’t have anything to say to us. Didn’t he meet me square on the street last Tuesday and never let on that he saw me—never even nodded when I nodded to him?’ ”

“My dear madam,” said Judge Trott hurriedly, “I assure you you are mistaken. I did not see you. Pray believe me. The fact is—I am afraid to confess it even to myself—but I find that, day by day, my eyesight is growing weaker and weaker.” He stopped and sighed.

Miss Montmorency, glancing upward at his face, saw it was pale and agitated. With a woman’s swift intution, she believed this weakness explained the otherwise gratuitous effrontery of his incongruous eyes, and it was to her a sufficient apology. It is only the inexplicable in a man’s ugliness that a woman never pardons.

“Then ye really don’t recognize me?” said Miss Clotilde, a little softened, and yet a little uneasy.

“I—am—afraid—not,” said Trott, with an apologetic smile.

Miss Clotilde paused. “Do you mean to say you couldn’t see me when I was in court during the trial?”