"You're the only man in town who thinks that, then, or has since that night. He—Everard—was done for the minute you stepped on the stage, the Judge says. Only they managed it decently, the Judge and the few that kept their heads. They announced that Colonel Everard was indisposed and couldn't speak, and the Judge took him home. He really was ill next day. There's something wrong with his horrid heart. And that gave him a good excuse not to run for mayor, he gave that up himself. And in a few days the Judge and Luther Ward went to him and told him what else he had to do, and he did it. He had to resign from everything, everything he was in charge of or was trustee of, or had anything to do with, and get out of town. If he'd do that, they wouldn't make any scandal or bother him afterward, but let him start new. And they gave him six months to do all that decently and save his face. Why did he have to do it decently? Why couldn't they tar and feather him? I wish they had. I wish——"
"Wish something else, Judith. Something about us."
"What do you mean by us?"
"You and me."
"Isn't it splendid the Judge is going to be president of the bank?" said Judith hastily.
"Splendid," said a future president of the Green River Bank, who was occupying the step beside her.
"And isn't it nice that poor Mrs. Burr is going to marry Mr. Sebastian, even if she does have to move away from Green River? I like people to be happy, don't you?"
"No. No, I don't. Not other people. I don't care whether they are happy or not, and I don't want to talk about them, only about you and me."
"If you don't like the way I talk, I'll keep still," Judith said, in a severe but small voice, but a small hand groping for his softened the threat, and a soft, sudden laugh as his arm slipped round her atoned for it entirely. Then there was silence on the steps, a long, whispering, wonderful silence. Long before Judith spoke again all the work of the lonely months was undone. And the low whispers that the two exchanged conveyed no further information about Colonel Everard.
But there was no more to tell. The master of Green River was master no longer and the end of all the intricate planning and scheming that had made and kept him master was a story that Judith could tell in a few careless sentences and forget. If she had seen and guessed some things that she could not forget, in the strange little circle that had found a place for her, she would never see them again. That order was gone from the town forever, with the man who had created it, and beside her on the steps was the boy who could make her forget it, and see beyond the long, hard years between. And, as she almost could guess, in these magic minutes when she could dream and dream true, that boy was the future master of Green River.