Sheriff Cowles opened the door when Anne Oglesby rang the bell. He stood for a moment looking out into the twilight.
"Who is it?" he asked. Then he recognized the girl whom he had brought down town from the railway station in his car that morning. Anne Oglesby was not a person easily to be forgotten.
"You know who I am, Mr. Cowles," said she—"I am Miss Oglesby, Judge Henderson's ward. I'm—I am respectable."
"Yes," said Cowles, "I know that, but why are you here?"
"Because I'd not be respectable if I were not here," she said quietly. "You probably know."
"Does the Judge know you have come?"
"No, he wouldn't have let me come if he had known. I want to see him—that young man, you know." Her own color was high by this time.
The sheriff hesitated. "Well," said he, "I don't want to do anything that isn't right, anything that isn't fair. I reckon I know how you feel."
"We're engaged to be married," said Anne Oglesby simply, and looked him directly in the face. "That gives me some rights, doesn't it?"
"In one way, maybe, but no legal rights," replied the sheriff, who was much perplexed, but who could not escape the compelling fact of Anne Oglesby's presence, the compelling charm of Anne Oglesby herself. "He's not really committed as yet, of course, only bound over by the coroner's jury; but the grand jury meets tomorrow, and they'll indict him sure. You know that. I can't take any chances of his getting away. I have to be sure."