The Judge took him in his study and shut the door. “Nothing dangerous, I hope; not smallpox, for example.”
“Worse than that,” replied Dr. Reynald, shortly.
“Worse? What can it be?”
“A touch of moral leprosy—the boy is shamming.”
“Shamming!” exclaimed the Judge.
“Yes. I don’t know the reason; perhaps you can tell me.”
“He looks sick,” said the Judge, uneasily. “I don’t want to distrust your word, but is it possible that you are mistaken?”
“Not possible. We sometimes have such cases at the hospital. Then I made him confess himself that he was. Tell me something about this boy.”
The Judge immediately told him all that he knew, and he had only uttered a few sentences when he became convinced that Dr. Reynald was right.
“It’s the old, old story,” he said, when he had finished what he knew of Dallas’s antecedents. “I ought to know it better than most people. It is easier to do wrong than to do right.”