The judge pocketed his pistol, walked down the street, and with never a glance toward the tavern reentered his house.
The next morning it was discovered that sometime during the night the judge had tacked his anonymous communication on the court-house door; just below it was another sheet of paper covered with bold script:
“TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN: Judge Slocum Price assumes that the above was intended for him since he found it under his office door on the morning of the twenty-fifth inst.
“Judge Price begs leave to state it as his unqualified conviction that the writer is a coward and a cur, and offers a reward of five thousand dollars for any information that will lead to his identification.
“Judge Price has stated that he would conduct an intelligently directed investigation of the Norton murder mystery without remuneration. He has the honor to assure his friends that he is still willing to do so; however, he takes this opportunity to warn the public that each day's delay is a matter of the utmost gravity.
“Furthermore, judge Price avails himself on this occasion to say that he has no wish to avoid personal conclusions with the murderers and cutthroats who are terrorizing this community; on the contrary, he will continue earnestly to seek such personal conclusions.”
CHAPTER XXIV. THE CABIN ACROSS THE BAYOU
Tom Ware was seated alone over his breakfast. He had left his bed as the pale morning light crept across the great fields that were alike his pride and his despair—what was the use of trying to sleep when sleep was an impossibility! The memory of that tragedy at the church door was a black horror to him; it gave substance to his dreams, it brought him awake with writhing lips that voiced his fear in the dead stillness of the night. The days were scarcely less terrible. Steeled and resolute as his will could make him, he was not able to speak of what he had seen with composure. Being as he was in this terribly perturbed state he had shirked his morning toilet and presented a proportionately haggard and unkempt appearance. He was about to quit the table when big Steve entered the room to say there was a white fellow at the door wished to see him.
“Fetch him along in here,” said Ware briefly, without lifting his bloodshot eyes.