Morgan was sweating again in the recollection of that terrible experience. He wiped his face, and looked around the room, listened as the rain splashed against the window, and 349 the wind bent the branches of the great trees beside the wall.
“Well?” said Judge Maxwell, leaning forward in his turn, waiting for Morgan’s next word.
“I tell you, Judge, I kept hearing that thing in my ear that way, every little while, till I threw some things in my grip and started for the depot. There wasn’t any train out last night that’d fetch me within fifty miles of here. I went back to my room and went to bed. But it didn’t let up on me. Off and on, all night, just about the time I’d doze off a little, I’d seem to hear that voice. I went to the depot this morning, and caught the eight o’clock train out. I’d ’a’ made it in here at two this afternoon if it hadn’t been for a washout between here and the junction that put the trains on this branch out of service.
“I took a rig and I started to drive over. I got caught in the rain and lost the road. I’ve been miles out of my way, and used up three horses, but I was bound to come. And I’m here to take my medicine.”
“I see,” said the judge. “Well, Morgan, I think it was the voice of conscience that you heard, but you’re no more to blame than any of us, I suppose, because you failed to recognize it. Few of us pay enough attention to it to let it bother us that way.”
“Believe me or not, it wasn’t any pipe-dream!” said Morgan, so earnestly that the flippancy of his slangy speech did not seem out of place. “It was a woman’s voice, but it wasn’t the voice of any woman in this world!”
“It’s a strange experience,” said the judge.
“You can call it that!” shuddered Morgan, expressive of the inadequacy of the words. “Anyhow, I don’t want to hear it again, and I’m here to take my medicine, and go to the pen if I’ve got to, Judge.”
Judge Maxwell put out his hand, impatiently.
“Don’t try to make yourself out a martyr, Morgan,” said 350 he. “You knew–and you know–very well that you hadn’t done anything for which you could be punished, at least not by a prison sentence.”