Rousing at last from a heavy dreamless sleep the judge was aware
of a faint impalpable light in his room, the ashen light of a
dull October dawn. He was aware, too, of a feeling of profound
depression. He knew this was the aftermath of indulgence and
that he might look forward to forty-eight hours of utter misery
of soul, and, groaning aloud, he closed his eyes, Sleep was the
thing if he could compass it. Instead, his memory quickened.
Something was to happen at sunup--he could not recall what it was
to be, though he distinctly remembered that Mahaffy had spoken of
this very matter--Mahaffy, the austere and implacable, the
disembodied conscience whose fealty to duty had somehow survived
his own spiritual ruin, so that he had become a sort of moral
sign-post, ever pointing the way yet never going it himself. The
judge lay still and thought deeply as the light intensified
itself. What was it that Mahaffy had said he was to do at
sun-up? The very hour accented his suspicions. Probably it was
no more than some cheerless obligation to be met, or Mahaffy
would not have been so concerned about it. Eventually he decided
to refer everything to Mahaffy. He spoke his friend's name
weakly and in a shaking voice, but received no answer.
"Solomon!" he repeated, and shifting his position, looked in what
should have been the direction of the shake-down bed his friend
occupied. Neither the bed nor Mahaffy were there. The judge
gasped he wondered if this were not a premonition of certain
hallucinations to which he was not a stranger.
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