When on that dreadful day Anna had left home and was going down the path with her old Johanna to Luttach, she looked up by chance where the oaks grew thin and saw on the upper pathway a man approaching the Lonely House. She thought she recognized the Judge, but she could not be certain, for she had seen the figure only for a moment and had taken no trouble to recognize it, since she attached no importance to what she saw. The Judge had often gone to her father and had usually taken the upper pathway, wherefore she did not think of it again. Only upon hearing the terrible news of the murder of her father was the strange suspicion suddenly aroused within her that the Judge was the murderer, and this suspicion had been gradually confirmed. To hardly one other human being except to his friend the Judge, would her father have opened the locked front door. While he was alone he would have admitted no other. The Judge had known that her father had large sums of money in the house and was quite familiar with the place where they would be found.
"But had I a right upon such slight grounds to found a suspicion of a respectable man? I asked myself," Anna proceeded. "I answered no, but in spite of this 'no' I could not combat my thoughts, and it was most terrible for me that I myself was partly to blame for my father's death if my suspicion were correct. The day before the Judge had come to visit my father, and had not found him at home. My father had left word, however, that he would soon return, and I thought I ought to tell this to the visitor because it might have provoked my father to know that I had turned away his friend. The Judge then begged my permission to wait, and when I gave it reluctantly, he sat down by me in my room and began a conversation. During this conversation I told him that my father had gone to Luttach to get papers of value from the post. He would not send old Johanna because the sum in question was too large to be entrusted to so old a woman. The Judge knew also from me that my father had much money in the house, and that I was going on the following day to visit my Aunt Laucic in Luttach, when Johanna would accompany me, so that after eleven o'clock he might see my father alone. All this I told him, and it all recurred to my mind. I had myself told the murderer when his victim would be alone and when he could commit the deed."
In her distress Anna went on to say that she did not venture to mention her suspicion to the Captain--he was a friend of the Judge's--and only to her betrothed, from whom she kept no secrets, did she tell what was in her mind. He begged her, however, not to confide in any other human being. Franz declared that the Judge was not capable of such villainy. He tried to prove to her that her suspicions were groundless. "Does not he often climb about the rocks?" he asked. "Even had he been in the neighbourhood of the Lonely House, that ought to be no ground of suspicion against him, for I myself was met by the Herr Professor in the forest, as I was prowling about in hopes of meeting you." When her lover said this, Anna was seized with a dreadful anxiety lest he might really be suspected, and Franz, too, could understand that he was in peril. He knew how he was disliked, and how any opportunity would be seized to do him harm.
Franz had insisted, however, that the Judge was incapable of the murder, and he had forbidden Anna to say one word further upon the subject. "Because he is my enemy," he told her; "because he is always circulating damaging reports of me behind my back, we must take care not to be unjust towards him." He had spoken thus until yesterday, but when he returned from the expedition to the cave and told Anna of his adventure there, he had suddenly changed his opinion with regard to what she had always thought. "It is beyond doubt," he said, "that the Judge cut the rope. What reason could he have for such an act! He wished to plunge the Professor into the abyss. I am now convinced that the Professor saw him also in the neighbourhood of the Lonely House. You were not deceived when you recognized him on the upper pathway. He fears that the Professor may betray him, and wishes to put so dangerous a witness out of the way. There could be no other reason for his infamous attempt upon the life of the kind old man, whose friend he pretends to be. He planned a murder, and now I can believe also that he is the murderer of your father. Let him take care; I shall speak to the Professor. I will tell him of your suspicion; he will tell me whether he saw the Judge that day." But Franz soon after was arrested and Anna felt it her duty to do what he had wished to do.
"That is why I am come to you, Herr Professor," she concluded; "you must counsel me. You must help me to discover the real criminal and to set an innocent man at liberty."
While Anna had been speaking, the doctor, who had also seated himself beside my bed, had been continually getting up and sitting down again, possessed by a feverish restlessness, although listening in silence to every word spoken by the young girl. Now that Anna had finished, he exclaimed:
"Do you want to drive two old men crazy with your deuce of a story? Child, have you had such thoughts in your head and heart for weeks and never said a word of them? Think of what might have been done in those weeks! Think of how suspicion might have been turned in other directions! You are sure, Herr Professor, that you did not see the Judge on the rocky pathway?"
"I am sure of it."
"But may he not have been there without your seeing him, or are you sure that he was not there?"
"I believe that he was there."