For twelve years since the crime Judge Ostrander has lived shut off from the world, except for his appearances on the bench. His grounds are walled off by a high board fence within a high board fence and he lives alone with a huge negro servant. His son and he have parted irrevocably.
When the story opens this negro, Bela, has gone forth on morning errands, unprecedentedly leaving the gate in the fence ajar! A woman in purple, heavily veiled, has entered the grounds. The gaping neighborhood ventures in after her but does not find her. The crowd comes upon the Judge sitting erect and apparently lifeless in his house! It is an attack of catalepsy. A little later the negro, mortally wounded by an automobile, returns and dies trying to guard the iron door in the house which preserves his master’s secret.
The woman in purple turns out to be Mrs. Scoville. She sees the Judge and tells him that his son, Oliver, has fallen in love with her daughter, Reuther. She also tells him of her conviction that her husband did not slay Etheridge. It is a conviction arrived at since his execution. Late as it is, she is determined to do what she can to uncover new evidence.
Chapter by chapter, piling sensation on sensation, Mrs. Green writes of Mrs. Scoville’s quest. There is the shadow of the man in the peaked cap seen advancing into Dark Hollow at the hour of the crime. There is the picture of Oliver Ostrander secreted in his father’s house with a band of black painted across the eyes. There is the point of a knife blade in the stick with which Etheridge was killed, and the blade from which it was broken lies folded in Oliver’s desk. A peaked cap hangs in Oliver’s closet! Just when every circumstance drives home the conviction of Oliver’s guilt Judge Ostrander shows Mrs. Scoville a written statement that establishes the fact of an earlier murder by her husband. She is taken all aback and for the moment she believes again that the right man was put to death for the murder of Etheridge. But the Judge allows her to look at the document a moment too long. It has been tampered with at the close; forgery has been done!
Oliver must be found, for an accusation against him has got abroad and the police are looking for him. There is a race between the agents of the district attorney and the messengers of the Judge. He is found in a remote spot in the Adirondacks and flees, but whether to return home at his father’s summons or to escape to Canada, who knows? By a desperate drop over the side of a cliff he has landed in a tree top. The train is not due for fifteen minutes. He’ll catch it.