Williams news., 1915-04-22
CHAPTER !.
The House of Mystery.

A high and narrow gate of carefully joined boards, standing ajar in a fence of the same construction! What is there in this to rouse whole neigh borhood and collect before it a group of eager, anxious, hesitating people!
 This is Judge Ostrander's place. and anyone who knows Shelby or the gos- sip of it's suburbs knows that this house of his has not opened it's doors to any outsider, man or woman, for over a dozen years; nor have his gates been seen iA all that time to gape at anyone's instance or to stand unclosed to public intrusion. The seclusion sought was absolute. The men and women who passed and repassed this corner many times a day were as 1gno- rant as the townspeople in general of what lay behind the gray, monotonous exterior of the weatherbeaten boards they so frequently brushed against. The house was there, of course-they all knew the house, or did once-but there were rumors of another fence, a second barrier, standing few feet in- side the first and similar to it in all respects, even to the gates which cor responded exactly with these outer and visible ones and probably were just as fully provided with bolts and bars
 And nowi in the freshness of this summer morning, without warning or any seeming reason for the change, the strict habit of years has been ;p&. 1f ;e, not only standing unlocked before their eyes, but woman-a stranger to the town as her very act shows i has been seen to enter there!-to en- 4 ter, but not come out; which means that she must still be inside, and pos ! sibly in the very presence of the judge. a
 Where is Bella? Why does he allow his errands-But it was Bella, or so l they have been told, who left this : gate ajar he, the awe and terrorso the town, the enormous. re doubtable, cloee-mouthed negro, trust { ed as man is seldom trusted. and faithful to his. trust, yes, up to this ' very hour, as all must acknowledge, fin spite of every temptation (and they had been many and alluring) to dis close the secret of this home of which { he was hot the least interesting fac tor. What has made him thus sud denly careless, he who has never been ! careless before? Money? A bribe from the woman who had entered there? ... Stt.
 5t What else was there to believe? There stood the gate with the pebble holding it away from the post; and here stood half the neighborhood, in fascination which had for it's motif T the knowledge that they, themselves, if they had courage enough, might go in, just as this woman had gone in, T and see-why, what she is seeing now-the unknown, unguessed reason for all these mysteries-the hidden treasure or the hidden sorrow which would explain why he, their first citi- zen, the respected, even revered judge of their highest court, should make use of such precautions and show such un- varying determination to bar out all corners from the place he called his home.
 It had not always been so. Within the memory of many there it had been an abode of cheer and good fellowship. Not 8 few of the men and women now hesitating before it's portals could boast of meals taken at the judges ample board, and of evenings spent in animated conversation in the great room where he kept his books and did his writing.
 But that was before his son left him in so unaccountable manner; be fore-yes, all were agreed on this point-before that other bitter ordeal of his middle. age, the trial and con- demnation of the man who had way laid and murdered his best friend.
 Though the effect of these combined sorrows had not seemed to be immedi- ate Gone month had seen both) :: though a half-year had elapsed before all sociability was lost in extreme self. absorption, and a full one before he took down the picket fence which had hitherto been considered sufficient protection to his simple grounds, and put up these boards which had so com. pletely isolated him from the rest of the world; it was evident enough to the friends'swho recalled his look and step as he walked the streets with Al gernon Etheridge on one side and his brilliant, ever-successful son on the other, that the change now observable in him was due to the violent sunder ing of these two ties. Grief slowly settled into confirmed melancholy, and melancholy into eccentricities.
 Judge Ostrander was a recluse o1 the most ,uncompromising type; but he was such for only half his time From ten in the morning till five in the after noon, he came and went like any other citizen, fulfilling his judicial duties with the same scrdpulous care as for merly and with more affability. In