Excerpt from Shadow When George Ogilvie, distinguished Judge of Palmetto County, Florida, read of the death in the papers - the quick death after the surgeon's knife - he felt glad and inexpressibly relieved. To play the part of avenger was sadly out of keeping with his gentle temperament. His wife could have done it without a qualm but since this was not permitted her she would in time have forced the role upon him. Fate, however, had taken her revenge without using him as her instrument, and the man who had brought disgrace into his home had slipped from the world honored by his associates, without visible taint upon his career. Remembering this, the Judge's sense of relief changed to a desire to play the familiar role, to sit himself upon the throne of justice and pronounce sentence upon this fresh-faced, laughing, persuasive criminal. Would he at the Most High Tribunal be given his full penalty? But this autumn night, as the wind howled about the old house shaking the windows in their frames, as the rain tore the leaves from the branches and beat them upon the sodden ground, he almost wished the lad was alive again. He would then find some way to tie the loose, careless life to the life that it had maimed, to the life it had brought into existence. In this driving storm of circumstance that a week since had hurled a human being out of the world and last night had brought a second to take its place, he found himself helpless. His long career, a career in which he had decided with quiet assurance the guilt or innocence of men and women standing fearful before him, was of no assistance. This was not another man's problem but his own. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.