BOOK III

I

Four miles from town, where a white pike crosses a mud road, is Lulu Corners. There is little at this cross-roads to inspire a name less frivolous, nothing indeed but a weather-beaten store, where the people of the neighborhood wait for the big yellow trolley-cars that sweep across the country hourly, sounding their musical air-whistles over the fields. Half a mile from the Corners two unmarried sisters, Bridget and Margaret Flanagan, for twenty years had lived alone in a hovel that was invaded by pigs and chickens and geese. Together, these aged women, tall, bony and masculine, lived their graceless, squalid lives, untouched by romance or tragedy, working their few acres and selling their pork, and eggs and feathers in the city. The nearest dwelling was a quarter of a mile away, and the neighbors were still farther removed by prejudices, religious and social. Thus the old women were left to themselves. The report was that they were misers, and the miserable manner of their lives supported rather than belied this theory; there was a romantic impression in a country-side that knew so little romance, that a large amount of money was hidden somewhere about the ugly premises.

On an evening in late October, Bridget Flanagan was getting supper. The meal was meager, and when she had made it ready she placed a lamp on the table and waited for Margaret, who had gone out to fasten the shanty in which the barn-yard animals slept. Margaret came in presently, locked the door, and the sisters sat down to their supper. They had just crossed themselves and heaped their plates with potatoes, when they heard a knock at the door.

"Who can that be, sister?" said Bridget, looking up.

"I wonder now!" said Margaret in a surprise that was almost an alarm.

The knocking was repeated.

"Mary help us!" said Bridget, again making the sign of the cross. "No one ever came at this hour before."

The knocking sounded again, louder, more insistent.

"You go on to the door, sister," said Bridget, "and let them in,--whoever they may be, I dunno."

Margaret went to the door, shot back the bolt, and pulled on the knob. And then she turned and cast a look of terror at her sister. Some one was holding the door on the other side. The strange resistance of this late and unknown visitor, who but a moment before had wanted to come in, appalled her. She pressed her knee against the door, and tried to lock it again. But now the door held against her; she strained and pushed, then turned and beckoned her sister with frightened eyes. Bridget came, and the two women, throwing their weight against the door, tried to close it; but the unknown, silent and determined one was holding it on the other side. This strange conflict continued. Presently the two old women glanced up; in the crack, between the door and the jamb, they saw a club. Slowly, slowly, it made way against them, twisting, turning, pushing, forcing its way into the room. They looked in awful fascination. The club grew, presently a foot of it was in the room; then a hand appeared, a man's hand, gripping the club. They watched; presently a wrist with a leather strap around it; then slowly and by degrees, a forearm, bare, enormous, hard as the club, corded with heavy muscles and covered with a thick fell of black hair, came after it. Then there was a final push, an oath, the door flew open, and two masked men burst into the room.

Three hours later, Perkins, a farmer who lived a quarter of a mile away, hearing an unusual sound in his front yard, took a lantern and went out. In the grass heavy with dew, just inside his gate, he saw a woman's body, and going to it, he shed the rays of his lantern into the face of Bridget Flanagan. Her gray hair was matted, and her face was stained with blood; her clothes were torn and covered with the mud through which she had dragged herself along the roadside from her home. Perkins called and his wife came to the door, holding a lamp above her head, shading her eyes with her hand, afraid to go out. When he had borne Bridget indoors, Perkins took his two sons, his lantern and his shot-gun, and went across the fields to the Flanagans'. In the kitchen, bound and gagged, Margaret lay quite dead, her head beaten in by a club. The two old women must have fought desperately for their lives. The robbers, for all their work, as Perkins learned when Bridget almost miraculously recovered, had secured twenty-three silver dollars, which the sisters had kept hidden in a tin can--the fatal fortune which rumor had swelled to such a size.

Perkins roused the neighborhood, and all night long men were riding to and fro between Lulu Corners and the city. A calm Sunday morning followed, and then came the coroner, the reporters and the crowds. While the bell of the little Methodist church a mile away on the Gilboa Pike was ringing, Mark Bentley, the sheriff, dashed up behind a team of lean horses, sweating and splashed with mud from their mad gallop. Behind him came his deputies and the special deputies he had sworn in, and, sitting in his buggy, holding his whip in a gloved hand, waving and flourishing it like a baton, Bentley divided into posses the farmers who had gathered with shot-guns, rifles, pitchforks, axes, clubs, anything, placed a deputy at the head of each posse and sent them forth. Detectives and policemen came, and all that Sunday mobs of angry men were beating up the whole country for miles. Some were mounted, and these flew down the roads, spreading the alarm, leaving women standing horror-stricken in doorways with children whimpering in their skirts; others went in buggies, others plodded on foot. And all day long crowds of women and children pressed about the little house, peering into the kitchen with morbid curiosity. The crowd swelled, then shrank, then swelled again. The newspapers made the most of the tragedy, and under head-lines of bold type, in black ink and in red, they told the story of the crime with all the details the boyish imaginations of their reporters could invent; they printed pictures of the shanty, and diagrams of the kitchen, with crosses to indicate where Margaret had fallen, where Bridget had been left for dead, where the table and the stove had stood, where the door was; and by the time the world had begun a new week, the whole city was in the same state of horror and fear, and breathed the same rage and lust of vengeance that had fallen on Lulu Corners.

II

Four days before the Sunday of the tragedy Archie Koerner finished his year's imprisonment and passed from the prison within the walls to the larger prison that awaited him in the world outside. The same day was released another convict, a man aged at fifty, who had entered the prison twenty years before. The judge who had sentenced him was a young man, just elevated to the bench, and, intoxicated by the power that had come to him so early in life, had read the words, "twenty years," in the statute book, and, assuming as axiomatic that the words were the atonement for the crime the man had committed, without thinking, had pronounced these words aloud, and then written them in a large book. From there a clerk copied them on to a blank form, sealed it with a gilt seal, and, like the young judge, forgot the incident. The day the man was released he could no longer remember what crime he had committed. He was old and shattered, and had looked forward to freedom with terror. Time and again he had asked his guard to report him, so that he might be deprived of his good time and have the day of release postponed. The guard, however, knowing that the man's mind was gone, had refused to do this, and the man was forced out into the world. Having no family, no friends and no home, he clung to Archie as to the last tie that bound him to the only life he knew. Archie, of course, considered him an incubus, but he pitied him, and when they had sold their railroad tickets to a scalper, they beat their way back to the city on a freight-train, Archie showing the old man how it was done.

At eleven o'clock on Friday morning they entered Danny Gibbs's saloon. Archie was glad to find the place unchanged--the same whisky barrels along the wall, the opium pipe above the bar, the old gray cat sleeping in the sun. All was familiar, save the bartender, who, in fresh white jacket, leaned against the bar, a newspaper spread before him, and studied the form sheets that were published daily to instruct men how to gamble on the races.

"Where's Dan?" asked Archie.

The bartender looked at him superciliously, and then concluded to say:

"He's not here."

"Not down yet, heh?" said Archie. "Do you know a certain party called--" Archie glanced about cautiously and leaned over the bar, "--called Curly?"

The bartender looked at him blankly.

"He's a friend of mine--it's all right. If he comes in, just tell him a certain party was asking for him. Tell Dan, too. I've just got home--just done my bit."

But even this distinction, all he had to show for his year in prison, did not impress the bartender as Archie thought it should. He drew from his waistcoat pocket a dollar bill, carefully smoothed it out, and tossed it on to the bar.

"Give us a little drink. Here, Dad," he said to the old convict, "have one." The old man grinned and approached the bar. "Never mind him," said Archie in a confidential undertone, "he's an old-timer."

The old convict had lost the middle finger of his right hand in a machine in the prison years before, and now, in his imbecility, he claimed the one compensation imaginable; he used this mutilation for the entertainment of his fellows. If any one looked at him, he would spread the fingers of his right hand over his face, the stub of the middle finger held against his nose, his first and third fingers drawing down the lower lids of his eyes until their whites showed, and then wiggle his thumb and little finger and look, now gravely, now with a grin, into the eyes of the observer. The old convict, across whose sodden brain must have glimmered a vague notion that something was required of him, was practising his one accomplishment, his silly gaze fixed on the bartender.

When the bartender saw this his face set in a kind of superstitious terror.

"Don't mind him," said Archie; "He's stir simple."

The bartender, as he set out the whisky, was reassured, not so much by the patronage as by Archie's explanation that he had just come from prison. He had been at Danny Gibbs's long enough to know that a man is not to be judged solely by his clothes, and Archie, as a man reduced to the extremity of the garb the state supplied, might still be of importance in their world. While they were drinking, another man entered the saloon, a short, heavy man, and, standing across the room, looked, not at Archie and Dad, but at their reflections in the mirror behind the bar. Archie, recognizing a trick of detectives, turned slightly away. The man went out.

"Elbow, eh?" said Archie.

"Yep," said the bartender. "Cunningham."

"A new one on me. Kouka here yet?"

"Oh, yes."

"Flyin'?"

"Yep."

"Well," said Archie, "give 's another. I got a thirst in the big house anyway--and these rum turns." He smiled an apology for his clothes. They drank again; then Archie said:

"Tell Dan I was here."

"Who shall I say?" inquired the bartender.

"Dutch."

"Oh, yes! All right. He'll be down about one o'clock."

"All right. Come on, Dad," said Archie, and he went out, towing his battered hulk of humanity behind him. At the corner he saw Cunningham with another man, whom he recognized as Quinn. When they met, as was inevitable, Quinn smiled and said:

"Hello, Archie! Back again?"

"Yes," said Archie. He would have kept on, but Quinn laid a hand on his arm.

"Hold on a minute," he said.

"What's the rap?" asked Archie.

"Well, you'd better come down to the front office a minute."

Cunningham had seized the old man, and the two were taken to the Central Police Station. They were charged with being "suspicious persons," and spent the night in prison. The next morning, when they were arraigned before Bostwick, the old man surprised every one by pleading guilty, and Bostwick sentenced him to the workhouse for thirty days. But Archie demanded a jury and asked that word be sent to his attorney.

"Your attorney!" sneered Bostwick, "and who's your attorney?"

"Mr. Marriott," said Archie.

The suggestion of a jury trial maddened Bostwick. He seemed, indeed, to take it almost as a personal insult. He whispered with Quinn, and then said:

"I'll give you till evening to get out of town--you hear?"

Archie, standing at attention in the old military way, said:

"Yes, sir."

"You've got to clear out; we don't want you around, you understand?"

"I understand, sir."

"All right," said Bostwick.

After Archie had bidden good-by to the old convict, who was relieved to get back to prison again, and after he had been photographed for the rogues' gallery--for his confinement and his torture had made him thin and so changed his appearance and his figure that his Bertillon measurements were even more worthless than ever--he was turned out.

Archie, thus officially ordered on, was afraid to go back to Gibbs's, and when he went out of the Central Station that Saturday morning he turned southward into the tenderloin. He thought it possible that he might find Curly at some of the old haunts; at any rate, he might get some word of him.

The morning was brilliant, the autumnal sun lay hot and comforting on his back, and there was a friendliness in the hazy mellow air that was like a welcome to Archie, the first the world had had for him. Though man had cast him out, nature still owned him, and a kind of joy filled his breast. This feeling was intensified by the friendly, familiar faces of the low, decrepit buildings. Two blocks away, he was glad to see the old sign of Cliff Decker's saloon, with the name painted on the window in crude blue letters, and, pictured above it, a preposterous glass of beer foaming like the sea. More familiar than ever, was old man Pepper, the one-eyed, sitting on the doorstep as if it were summer, his lame leg flung aside, as it were, on the walk before him, his square wrinkled face presenting a horrid aspect, with its red and empty socket scarcely less sinister than the remaining eye that swept three quarters of the world in its fierce glance. On another step two doors away, before a house of indulgence frequented only by white men, sat a mulatto girl, in a clean white muslin dress, her kinky hair revealing a wide part from its careful combing. The girl was showing her perfect teeth in her laugh and playing with a white poodle that had a great bow of pink ribbon at its neck. Across the street was Wing Tu's chop-suey joint, deserted thus early in the day, suggesting oriental calm and serenity.

On the other corner was Eva Clason's place, and thither Archie went. He had some vague notion of finding Curly there, for it was Eva who, on that morning, now more than a year ago, in some impotent, puny human effort to stay the fate that had decreed him as the slayer of Benny Moon, had tried to give Curly a refuge.

The place wore its morning quiet. The young bartender, with a stupid, pimpled face, was moping sleepily at the end of the bar; at Archie's step, he looked up. The step was heard also in the "parlor" behind the bar, revealing through chenille portieres its cheap and gaudy rugs and its coarse-grained oaken furniture, upholstered in plush of brilliant reds and blues. One of the two girls who now appeared had yellow hair and wore a skirt of solid pink gingham that came to her knees; her thin legs wore open-work stockings, her feet bulged in high-heeled, much-worn shoes. She wore a blouse of the same pink stuff, cut low, with a sailor collar, baring her scrawny neck and the deep hollows behind her collar bones. In her yellow fingers, with a slip of rice paper, she was rolling a cigarette. The other girl, who wore a dress of the same fashion, but of solid blue gingham, splotched here and there with starch, was dark and buxom, and her low collar displayed the coarse skin of full breasts and round, firm neck. The thin blonde came languidly, pasting her cigarette with her tongue and lighting it; but the buxom brunette came forward with a perfunctory smile of welcome.

"Where's Miss Clason?" Archie asked.

"She's gone out to Steve's," said the brunette. The thin girl sank into a chair beside the portieres and smoked her cigarette. The brunette, divining that there was no significance in Archie's visit, and feeling a temporary self-respect, dismissed her professional smile and became simple, natural and human.

"Did you want to see her?" she asked.

"Yes, I'm looking for a certain party."

"Who?"

"Well, you know him, maybe--they call him Curly; Jackson's his name."

The girl looked at Archie, exchanged glances with the bartender; and then asked:

"You a friend o' hisn?"

"Yes, I just got home, and I must find him."

"Oh," said the girl, wholly satisfied. She turned to the bartender. "Was Mr. Jackson in to-day, Lew? He's around, in and out, you know. Comes in to use the telephone now and then."

Archie was relieved.

"Tell him Dutch was in, will you?" he said.

"Sure," replied the girl.

"Maybe he's in at Hunt's," said the thin girl, speaking for the first time.

"I was going there," said Archie.

"I can run in and ask for you," said the brunette, in the kindly willingness of the helpless to help others. "Or, hold on,--maybe Teddy would know."

"Never mind," said Archie, "I'll go in to Hunt's myself."

"I'll tell Mr. Jackson when he comes in," said the brunette, going to the door with Archie. "Who did you say?"--she looked up into Archie's face with her feminine curiosity all alive.

"Dutch."

"Dutch who?"

"Oh, just Dutch," said Archie, smiling at her insistence. "He'll know."

"Oh, hell!" said the girl, "what's your name?"

Archie looked down into her brown eyes and smiled mockingly; then he relented.

"Well, it's Archie Koerner. Ever hear of me before?"

The girl's black brows, which already met across her nose, thickened in the effort to recall him.

"You're no more wiser than you was; are you, little one?" said Archie, and walked away.

He had reserved Hunt's as a last resort, for there, in a saloon which was a meeting place for yeggs, Hunt himself being an old yegg man who had stolen enough to retire on, Archie was sure of a welcome and of a refuge where he could hide from the police for a day, at least, or until he could form some plan for the future.

Hunt was not in, but Archie found King's wife, Bertha Shanteaux, in the back room. She was a woman of thirty-five, very fleshy, and it seemed that she must crush the low lounge on which she sat, her legs far apart, the calico wrapper she wore for comfort stretching between her knees. She was smoking a cigar, and she breathed heavily with asthma, and, when she welcomed Archie, she spoke in a voice so hoarse and of so deep a bass that she might well have been taken for a man in woman's attire.

"Why, Dutch!" she said, taking her cigar from her lips in surprise. "When did you get home?"

"Yesterday morning," said Archie. "I landed in with an old con, went up to Dan's--then I got pinched, and this morning Bostwick gave me the run."

"Who made the pinch?"

"Quinn and some new gendy."

"Suspicion?"

"Yes."

"Huh," said Bertha, beginning to pull at her cigar again.

"Where's John?"

"Oh, he went up town a while ago."

"Is Curly here?"

"Yes, he's around. Just got in the other day. What you goin' to do?"

"Oh, I'm waiting to see Curly. I've got to get to work and see if I can't make a dollar or two. I want to frame in with some good tribe."

"Well, Curly hasn't been out for a while. He'll be glad to see you."

"Is Gus with him?"

"Oh, no. Gus got settled over in Illinois somewhere--didn't you hear? The boys say he's in wrong. But wait! Curly'll show up after a while."

"Well, I'm hipped, and I don't want to get you in trouble, Mrs. Shanteaux, but if Kouka gets a flash at me, it's all off."

"Oh, you plant here, my boy," she said in a motherly way, "till Curly comes."

The tenderloin awoke earlier than usual that day, for it was Saturday, and the farmers were in town. In the morning they would be busy in Market Place, but by afternoon, their work done, their money in their pockets, they would be free, and beginning at the cheap music halls, they, especially the younger ones, would drift gradually down the line, and by night they would be drinking and carousing in the dives.

Children, pale and hollow-eyed, coming with pitchers and tin buckets to get beer for their awaking elders, seemed to be the first heralds of the day; then a thin woman, clutching her dirty calico wrapper to her shrunken breast, and trying to hide a bruised, blue and swollen eye behind a shawl, came shuffling into the saloon in unbuttoned shoes, and hoarsely asked for some gin. A little later another woman came in to borrow enough oil to fill the lamp she carried without its chimney, and immediately after, a man, ragged, dirty, stepping in old worn shoes as soft as moccasins, flung himself down in a chair and fell into a stupor, his bloodless lips but a shade darker than his yellow face, his jaws set in the rigidity of the opium smoker. Archie looked at him suspiciously and shot a questioning glance at Bertha.

"The long draw?" he said in a low tone, as she passed him to go to the woman who had the lamp.

"Umph huh," said Bertha.

"I thought maybe he might be--"

"No," she said readily. "He's right--he's been hanging around for a month.--Some oil?" she was saying to the woman. "Certainly, my dear." She took the lamp.

"Where's your husband now?" she asked.

"Oh, he's gone," the woman said simply. "When the coppers put the Silver Moon Cafe"--she pronounced it "kafe"--"out of business and he lost his job slinging beer, he dug out."

Archie, beginning to fear the publicity of midday, had gone into the back room again. Presently Bertha joined him.

"Thought it was up to me to plant back here," he said, explaining his withdrawal. "There might be an elbow."

"Oh, no," said Bertha, in her hoarse voice, picking up the cigar she had laid on a clock-shelf and resuming her smoking, "we're running under protection now. That dope fiend in there showed up two months ago with his woman. They had a room in at Eva's for a while, but they stunk up the place so with their hops that she cleaned 'em out--she had to have the room papered again, but she says you can still smell it. They left about five hundred paper-back novels behind 'em. My God! they were readers! Nothing but read and suck the bamboo all the time; they were fiends both ways. One's 'bout as bad as the other, I guess."

She smoked her cigar and ruminated on this excessive love of romanticistic literature.

"When Eva gave 'em the run," she went on later, "the coppers flopped the moll--she got thirty-sixty, and Bostwick copped the pipe to give to a friend, who wanted a ornament for his den. Since then her husband comes in here now and then--and--why, hello there! Here's some one to see you, Curly!"

Archie sprang to his feet to greet Curly, who, checking the nervous impulse that always bore him so energetically onward, suddenly halted in the doorway. The low-crowned felt hat he wore shaded his eyes; he wore it, as always, a little to one side; his curls, in the mortification they had caused him since the mates of his school-days had teased him about them, were cropped closely; his cheeks were pink from the razor, and Archie, looking at him, felt an obscure envy of that air of Curly's which always attracted. Curly looked a moment, and then, with a smile, strode across the room and took Archie's hand. Archie was embarrassed, and his face, white with the prison pallor, flushed--he thought of his clothes, quite as degrading as the hideous stripes he had exchanged for them, and of his hair, a yellow stubble, from the shaving that had been part of his punishment. But the grip in which Curly held his hand while he wrung his greeting into it, made him glad, and Bertha, going out of the room, left them alone. The strangeness there is in all meetings after absence wore away. Curly sat there, his hat tilted back from his brow, leaned forward, and said:

"Well, how are you, anyway? When did you land in?"

"Yesterday morning."

"Been out home yet?"

Archie's eyes fell.

"No," he said, his eyes fixed on the cigarette he had just rolled with Curly's tobacco and paper. "I was pinched the minute I got here; Quinn and some flatty--and I fed the crummers all last night in the boob. This morning Bostwick give me orders."

"Well, you can't stay here," said Curly.

"No, I was waiting to see you. I've got to get to work. Got anything now?"

"Well, Ted and me have a couple of marks--a jug and a p. o."

"Where?"

"Oh, out in the jungle--several of the tribes have filled it out."

"Well, I'm ready."

"Not now," Curly said, shaking his head; "the old stool-pigeon's out--she's a mile high these nights."

A reminiscent smile passed lightly over Curly's face, and he flecked the ash from his cigarette.

"Phillie Dave's out,"--and then he remembered that Archie had never known the thief who had been proselyted by the police and been one of a numerous company of such men to turn detective, and so had bequeathed his name as a synonym for the moon. "But you never knew him, did you?"

"Who?"

"Dave--Phillie Dave we call him; he really belonged to the cat--he's become a copper. He was before your time."

They chatted a little while, and as the noise in the bar-room increased, Curly said:

"You can't hang out here. Those hoosiers are likely to start something any minute--we'll have to lam."

"Where to?"

"We'll go over to old Sam Gray's."

They did not show themselves in the bar-room again. Some young smart Alecks from the country were there, flushed with beer and showing off. Curly and Archie left by a side door, walked hurriedly to the canal, dodged along its edges to the river, then along the wharves to the long bridge up stream, and over to the west side, and at four o'clock, after a wide detour through quiet streets, they gained Sam Gray's at last.

Sam Gray kept a quiet saloon, with a few rooms upstairs for lodgers. Gray was a member of a family noted in the under world; his brothers kept similar places in other cities. His wife was a Rawson, a famous family of thieves, at the head of which was old Scott Rawson, who owned a farm and was then in hiding somewhere with an enormous reward hanging over his head. Gray's wife was a sister of Rawson; and the sister, too, of Nan Rawson, whom Snuffer Wilson had in mind when, on the scaffold, he said, "Tell Nan good-by for me." And in these saloons, kept by the Rawsons and the Grays, and at the Rawson farm, thieves in good standing were always welcome; many a hunted man had found refuge there; the Rawsons would have care of him, and nurse him back to health of the wounds inflicted by official bullets.

When Curly and Archie entered, a man of sixty years with thick white hair above a wide white brow, in shirt-sleeves, his waistcoat unbuttoned, and his trousers girded tightly into the fat at his waist, came out, treading softly in slippers.

"A friend of mine, Mr. Gray," said Curly. "He's right. He's just done his bit; got home last night, and the bulls pinched him. He's got orders and I'm going to take him out with me. But we can't go yet--Phillie Dave's out."

The old man smiled vaguely at the mention of the old thief.

"All right," he said, taking Archie's hand.

Archie felt a glow of pride when Curly mentioned his having done his bit; he was already conscious, now that he had a record, of improved standing.

"Who's back there?" asked Curly, jerking his head toward a partition from behind which voices came.

"A couple of the girls," said old Sam. "You know 'em, I guess."

The two women who sat at a table in the rear room looked up hastily when the men appeared.

"Hello, Curly," they said, in surprise and relief.

They had passed thirty, were well dressed in street gowns, wore gloves, and carried small shopping-bags. They had put their veils up over their hats. Archie, thinking of his appearance, was more self-conscious than ever, and his embarrassment did not diminish when one of the women, after Curly had told them something of their plans, looked at the black mark rubbed into Archie's neck by the prison clothes and said:

"You can't do nothin' in them stir clothes." Before he could reply, she got up impulsively.

"Just wait here," she said. She was gone an hour. When she returned, her cheeks were flushed, and with a smile she walked into the room with a peculiar mincing gait that might have passed as some mode of fashion, went to a corner, shook herself, and then, stepping aside, picked from the floor a suit of clothes she had stolen in a store across the bridge and carried in her skirts all the way back. Curly laughed, and the other woman laughed, and they praised her, and then she said to Archie:

"Here, kid, these'll do. I don't know as they'll fit, but you can have 'em altered. They'll beat them stir rags, anyhow."

Archie tried to thank her, but she laughed his platitudes aside and said:

"Come on, Sadie, we must get to work."

When they were away Archie looked at Curly in surprise. There were things, evidently, he had not yet learned.

"The best lifter in the business," Curly said, but he added a qualification that expressed a tardy loyalty, "except Jane."

Archie found he could wear the clothes, and he felt better when he had them on.

"If I only had a rod now," he remarked. "I'll have to go out and boost one, I guess."

"You can't show for a day," said Curly.

"I wish I had that gat of mine. I wouldn't mind doing time if I had that to show for it!"

"I told you that gat would get you in trouble," said Curly, and then he added peremptorily: "You'll stay here till to-morrow night; then you'll go home and see your mother. Then you'll go to work."

They remained at Gray's all that Saturday night and all the following day, spending the Sunday in reading such meager account of the murder of the Flanagan sisters as the morning papers were able to get into extra editions.

III

Sergeant Cragin, a short, red-haired Irishman with a snub nose that with difficulty kept his steel-bowed spectacles before his small, rheumy eyes, had just finished calling the roll of the night detail at the Central Police Station when the superintendent of police, Michael Cleary, unexpectedly appeared in the great drill hall. Cleary stood in the doorway with Inspector McFee; his cap was drawn to his eyebrows, revealing but a patch of his close-cut white hair; his cheeks were red and freshly shaven, his small chin-whiskers newly trimmed. The velvet collar and cuffs of his blue coat, as usual, were carefully brushed, the diamonds on his big gold badge flashed in the dim, shifting light. The men did not often see their chief; he appeared at the station but seldom, spending most of his time, presumably, in his office at the City Hall.

"Men," he said, "I want a word with you--about this Flanagan job. We've got to get the murderers. They're somewhere in town right now. I want you to keep a lookout; run in every suspicious character you see to-night--no matter who he is--run him in. See what I mean? We're going to have a cleaning up. I want you to pull every place that's open after hours. I want you to pinch every crook and gun in town. See what I mean? I won't stand for any nonsense! You fellows have been loafing around now long enough; by God, if something isn't done before morning, some of you'll lose your stars. You've heard me. You've got your orders; now execute them. See what I mean?"

This proceeding was what Cleary called maintaining discipline on the force, and, in delivering his harangue, he had worked himself into a rage; his face was red, his cheeks puffed out. The line of policemen shifted and shuffled; the red faces became still redder, deepening at last to an angry blue.

Cleary, with their anger and resentment following him, left the drill room, descended the stairs, and burst into the detective bureau. The room, like all the rooms in the old building, was large, the ceiling high, and in the shutters of the tall arched windows the dust of years had settled; on the yellow walls were wire racks, in which were thrust photographs of criminals, each card showing a full face, a profile, and a number; there was little else, save some posters offering rewards for fugitives.

The detectives who had been on duty all the day were preparing to leave; those who were to be on duty that night were there; it was the hour when the day force and the night force gathered for a moment, but this evening the usual good nature, the rude joking and badinage were missing; the men were morose and taciturn; in one corner Kouka and Quinn were quarreling. When Cleary halted in the door, as if with some difficulty he had brought himself to a stop, the detectives glanced up.

"Well," Cleary exploded, "that Flanagan job is twenty-four hours old, and you fly cops haven't turned anything up yet. I want you to turn up something. See what I mean? I want you to get busy, damn you, and get busy right away. See what I mean?"

"But, Chief," one of the men began.

Cleary looked at him with an expression of unutterable scorn.

"G-e-t r-i-g-h-t!" he said, drawling out the words in the lowest register of his harsh bass voice. "Get right! See what I mean? Come to cases, you fellows; I want a show-down. You make some arrests before morning or some of you'll quit flyin' and go back to wearin' the clothes. See what I mean?"

He stood glowering a moment, then repeated all he had said, cursed them all again, and left the room, swearing to himself.

Down-stairs, in the front office, the reporters were waiting. Cleary stopped when he saw them, took off his cap, and wiped his forehead with a large silk handkerchief.

"Do you care to give out anything, Chief, about the Flanagan job?" asked one of the reporters timidly.

"No," said Cleary bluntly.

"Have you any clue?"

Cleary thought a moment.

"We'll have the men to-morrow."

The reporters stepped eagerly forward.

"Any details, Chief?"

"I'd be likely to give 'em to you fellows to print, wouldn't I?" said Cleary sarcastically.

"But--"

"You heard what I said, didn't you? We'll have the men to-morrow. Roll that up in your cigarette and smoke it. See what I mean?"

"Do you care to comment on what the _Post_ said this evening?" asked a representative of that paper.

"What the hell do I care what your dirty, blackmailing sheet says? What the hell do I care?"

Cleary left then, and a moment later they heard his heavy voice through the open window, swearing at the horse as he drove away in his light official wagon.

In truth, the police were wholly at sea. All day the newspapers had been issuing extras giving new details, or repeating old details of the crime. The hatred that had been loosened in the cottage of the Flanagan sisters had, as it were, poured in black streams into the whole people, and the newspapers had gathered up this stream, confined it, and then, with demands for vengeance, poured it out again on the head of the superintendent of police, and he, in turn, maddened and tortured by criticism, had poured out this hatred on the men who were beneath him; and now, at nightfall, they were going out into the dark city, maddened and tormented themselves, ready to pour it on to any one they might encounter. And it was this same hatred that had sickened the breasts of Kouka and Quinn so that, after a friendship of years, they had quarreled, and were quarreling even now up-stairs in the detectives' office.

When he heard of the crime, Kouka realized that if he could discover the murderers of Margaret Flanagan he might come into a notoriety that would be the making of him. And he had wondered how he might achieve this. He had visited Lulu Corners, and all day his mind had been at work, incessantly revolving the subject; he had recalled all the criminals he knew, trying to imagine which of them might have done the deed, trying to decide on which of them he might fasten the crime. For his mind worked like the minds of most policemen--the problem was not necessarily to discover who had committed the crime, but who might have committed it, and this night, with the criticism of the newspapers, and with the abuse of the superintendent, he felt himself more and more driven to the necessity of doing something in order to show that the police were active. And when he heard from Quinn that he had arrested Archie Koerner on Friday, and that Bostwick had ordered him out of the city, he instantly suspected that it was Archie who had murdered Margaret Flanagan. Quinn had laughed at the notion, but this only served to convince Kouka and make him stubborn. The problem then was to find Archie. When Inspector McFee made his details for that night, all with special reference to the Flanagan murder, Kouka asked for a special detail, intimating that he had some clue which he wished to follow alone, and McFee, who was at his wits' end, was willing enough to let Kouka follow his own leading.

The night detail tramped heavily down the dark halls and out into Market Place; the detectives left the building and separated, stealing off in different directions. An hour later, patrol wagons began to roll up to the station; the tenderloin was in a turmoil; saloons, brothels and dives were raided, the night was not half gone before the prison was crowded with miserable men and women, charged with all sorts of crimes, and, when no other charge could be imagined, with suspicion.

Meanwhile, Archie and Curly were trudging through dark side-streets and friendly alleys on their way to Archie's home; for Archie had determined to see his father and his mother once more before he left the city. Archie was armed with a revolver he had procured from Gray.

IV

Kouka visited the tenderloin and learned that Archie had not left town. He learned, too, that he had a companion, and though he could follow the trail no farther, he had decided to watch Archie's home in the chance that the boy might visit it some time during the night. And now, for two hours, in the patience that was part of his stupidity, he had lurked in the black doorway of the grocery. Bolt Street was dark and still. Overhead, low clouds were flying; and the old stool-pigeon, coming later and later each night, as if bad habits were growing on it, had not yet appeared. Now and then, hearing footsteps, Kouka would shrink into the darkest corner of the doorway; the steps would sound louder and louder on the wooden sidewalk, some one would pass, and the steps would gradually fade from his hearing. All this had a curious effect on Kouka's mind. In some doubt at first, the waiting, the watching with one object in view, more and more convinced him that he was right, and in time the idea that Archie was the murderer he sought became definitely fixed. The little house across the street gradually, through the slowly moving hours, took on an aspect that confirmed Kouka's theory; it seemed to be waiting for Archie's coming as expectantly as the detective. During the first hour of his vigil, a shaft of yellow light had streamed out of the kitchen window into the side yard, and Kouka watched this light intently. Finally, at nine o'clock, it was suddenly drawn in, as it were, and the house became dark. After this, the house seemed to enshroud itself with some mysterious tragic apprehension; and Kouka waited, stolidly, patiently, possessed by his theory.

And then, it must have been after ten o'clock, Kouka, who had heard no footsteps and no sound whatever, suddenly, across the street, saw two figures. They stopped, opened the low gate, stepped on to the stoop and knocked. Their summons was answered almost immediately; the door opened, and, in the light that suddenly filled the door-frame, Kouka recognized Archie Koerner; a woman, his mother, doubtless, stood just inside; he heard her give a little cry, then Archie put out his arms and bent toward her; then he went in, his companion following, and the door was closed. In another moment the shaft of light shot out into the side yard again.

Kouka was exultant, happy; he experienced an intense satisfaction; already he realized something of the distinction that would be his the next morning, when the little world he knew would hail him as the man who, all alone, had brought the murderers of that poor old Flanagan woman to the vengeance of the people's law.

And yet, he must be cautious; he knew what yeggs were; he knew how readily they would shoot and how well, and he did not care to risk his own body, and the chance of missing his prey besides, by engaging two bad men alone. Bad men they were, to Kouka, and nothing else; they had come suddenly to impersonate to him all the evil in the world, just as, though unknown, they or some two men impersonated all evil to all the people of the city and the county, whereas Kouka felt himself to be a good man whose mission it was to crush this badness out of the world. He must preserve himself, as must all good men, and he ran down the street, opened a patrolmen's box, called up the precinct station, and gave the alarm. Then he hurried back; the shaft of light was still streaming out into the side yard, its rays, like some luminous vapor, flowing palpably from the small window and slanting downward to be absorbed in the dark earth.

He heard the roll of wheels, the urge of straining horses; the patrol wagon stopped at the corner; he heard the harness rattle and one of the horses blow softly through its delicate fluttering nostrils; a moment later, the squad of policemen came out of the gloom; three of the men were in civilian attire, the other six were in uniform.

Kouka received his little command with his big, heavy hand upraised for silence. It was a fine moment for him; he felt the glow of authority; he felt like an inspector; perhaps this night's work would make an inspector of him; he had never had such an opportunity before. He must evolve a plan, and he paused, scowled, as he felt a commander should who, confronted by a crisis, was thinking. Presently he laid his plan before them; it was profound, strategical. The officers in uniform were to surround the house, but in a certain way; he explained this way. Three of them were to go to the right and cover the ground from the corner of the house to the shaft of light that streamed from the window, the others were to extend themselves around the other way, coming as far as the lighted window; then no one would be exposed.

"You'll go with me," said Kouka to the plain-clothes men. He said it darkly, with a sinister eye, implying that their work was to be heavy and dangerous.

"Don't shoot until I give the command."

They went across the street, bending low, almost crouching, stealing as softly as they could in their great heavy boots, gripping their revolvers nervously, filled with fear. Inside the gate, they surrounded the house.

Kouka led the way, motioning the others behind him with his hand. He stepped on to the low stoop, but stood at one side lest Archie shoot through the door. He stood as a reconnoitering burglar stands at one side of a window, out of range; cautiously he put forth his hand, knocked, and hastily jerked his hand away ... He knocked twice, three times ... After a while the door opened slowly, and Kouka saw Mrs. Koerner standing within, holding a lamp. Kouka instantly pushed his knee inside the door, and shouldered his way into the room. The three officers followed, displaying their revolvers.

"It's all off," said Kouka. "The house is surrounded. Where is he?"

Mrs. Koerner did not speak; she could not. Her face was white, the lamp shook in her hand; its yellow flame licked the rattling chimney, the reek of the oil filled the room. Finally she got to the table and with relief set the lamp down among the trinkets Archie had brought from the Philippines.

"Aw come, old woman!" said Kouka, seizing her by the arm fiercely. "Come, don't give us any of the bull con. Where is he?"

Kouka held to her arm; he shook her and swore. Mrs. Koerner swallowed, managed to say something, but in German. And then instantly the four officers, as if seized by some savage, irresistible impulse, began to rummage and ransack the house. They tore about the little parlor, entered the little bedroom that had been Gusta's; they looked everywhere, in the most unlikely places, turning up mats, chairs, pulling off the bed-clothes. Then they burst into the room behind. Suddenly they halted and huddled in a group.

There, in the center of the room, stood old man Koerner, clad in his red flannel underclothes, in which he must have slept. He had an air of having just got out of bed; his white hair was tumbled, and he leaned on one crutch, as if one crutch were all that was necessary in dishabille. Below the stump of his amputated leg the red flannel leg of his drawers was tied into a knot. He presented a grotesque appearance, like some aged fiend. Under the white bush of his eyebrows, under his touseled white hair, his eyes gleamed fiercely.

"Vat de hell ails you fellers?"

"We want Archie," said Kouka, "and, by God, we're going to have him, dead or alive." He used the words of the advertised reward. "Where is he?"

Kouka and the other officers glanced apprehensively about the room, as if Archie and Curly might start out of some corner, or out of the floor, but in the end their glances came always back to Koerner, standing there in his red flannels, on one crutch and one leg, the red knot of the leg of his drawers dangling between.

"You vant Archie, huh?" asked Koerner. "Dot's it, aind't it--Archie--my poy Archie?"

"Yes, Archie, and we want him quick."

"Vat you want mit him, huh?"

"It's none of your business what we want with him," Kouka replied with an oath. "Where is he? Hurry up!"

"You bin a detective, huh? Dot's it, a detective?"

"Yes."

"You got some bapers for him?"

"That's my business," said Kouka, advancing menacingly toward Koerner. "You tell where he is or I'll run the whole family in. Here," he said suddenly, a thought having occurred to him, "put 'em under arrest, both of 'em!"

The old man shuffled backward, leaned against the table for support and raised his crutch for protection.

"You better look oudt, Mis'er Detective," said Koerner. "You'd better look oudt. Py Gott--"

Kouka stopped, considered, then changed his mind.

"Look here, Mr. Koerner," he said. "It's no use. We know Archie's here and we want him."

"He's not here," suddenly spoke Mrs. Koerner beside him. "He's not here!"

"The hell he ain't!" said Kouka. "I saw him come in--ten minutes ago. Search the house, men." And the rummaging began again.

The men were about to enter the little room where Koerner slept: it was dark in there and one of them took the lamp.

"Look oudt!" Koerner said suddenly. "Look oudt! You go in dere if you vant to, but, py Gott, don't blame me if--"

The men suddenly halted and stepped back.

"Go on in!" commanded Kouka. "What do you want to stand there for? Are you afraid?"

Then they went, ransacked that room, threw everything into disorder and came out.

"No one there," they reported in relief.

They searched the whole house over again, and old man Koerner stood by on one leg and his crutch, with a strange, amused smile on his yellow face. At last, Kouka, lifting his black visage, looked at the ceiling, sought some way as if to an upper story, found none, and then began to swear again, cursing the old man and his wife. Finally he said to the officers:

"He's been kidding us."

Then he called his men, dashed out of the house, and with a dark lantern began seeking signs in the back yard. Near the rear fence he discovered footprints in the soft earth; they climbed over and found other footprints in the mud of the alley.

"Here they went!" cried Kouka.

V

Archie had stood for a moment in his mother's embrace; he had felt her cheek against his; he had heard her voice again. He was forgetful of everything--of Curly's presence, of all he had ever been made to suffer by himself and by others. He knew that his mother's eyes were closed and that tears were squeezing through the lids; he felt his own tears coming, but it did not matter--in that moment he could cry without being made ashamed. It was a supreme moment for him, a moment when all he had been, all he had done, all he had not done, made no difference; no questions now, no reproaches, no accusations, not even forgiveness, for there was no need of forgiveness; a moment merely of love, an incredible moment, working a miracle in which men would not believe, having lost belief in Love. It was a moment that suffused his whole being with a new, surging life, out of which--

But it was only a moment. Curly had turned away, effacing himself. Presently he started, and cast about him that habitual backward glance; he had heard a step. It was Koerner. The old man in his shirt-sleeves, swinging heavily between his crutches, paused in the doorway, and then seeing his boy, his face softened, and, balanced on his crutches, he held out his arms and Archie strode toward him.

Curly waited another moment like the first, taking the chances, almost cynically wondering how far he could brave this fate. It was still in the little room. The words were few. The moment brought memories to him as well,--but he could endure it no longer; the risk was enormous already; they were losing time. For, just as they had entered the house, in that habitual glance over the shoulder, Curly had seen the figure in the dark doorway across the street--and he knew.

"Come on, Archie," he said.

Archie turned in surprise.

"It's all off," Curly said. "We're dogged."

"Why?"

"The bulls--"

"Where?"

"Across the street--an elbow."

"Him?"

"Yes."

"The hell!"

Curly glanced toward the back room. But Archie suddenly grew stubborn.

"No," he said. "Let's stick and slug."

"Don't be a chump," said Curly.

"We're heeled."

"Well, they'd settle you in a minute."

"They can't. We can bust the bulls."

"All right," said Curly. "Be the wise guy if you want to. I'll take it on the lam for mine; they ain't going to bury me. Can I get out that way?"

He brushed past them in the doorway, and called from the kitchen:

"Besides, you've got orders."

Then Archie remembered; he looked at his mother, at his father, glanced about the little room, barren in the poverty that had entered the home, hesitated, then turned and left them standing there. As he passed through the kitchen he heard little Katie and little Jake breathing in their sleep, and the sound tore his heart.

He was over the fence and in the alley just behind Curly. They ran for a block, darted across a lighted street, then into the black alley again. For several blocks they dashed along, getting on as fast as they could. Then at length Archie, soft from his imprisonment, stopped in the utter abandon of physical exhaustion and stood leaning against a barn.

"God!" he said, "I hain't going another step! I'm all in!"

Curly had been leading the way in the tireless energy of the health his out-of-door life gave him, but when Archie stopped, he paused and stood attent, inclining his head and listening.

The night, almost half gone, was still; sounds that in the daytime and in the earlier evening had been lost in the roar of the city became distinct, trolley-cars sweeping along some distant street, the long and lonesome whistles of railroad engines, now and then the ringing of a bell; close by, the nocturnal movements of animals in the barns that staggered grotesquely along the alley.

"It's all right," said Curly; "we've made a getaway."

He relaxed and slouched over to where Archie stood.

"Where are we, do you know?" he asked.

Archie thought. "That must be Fifteenth Street down there. Yes, there's the gas house." He pointed to a dark mass looming in the night. "And the canal--and yes, Maynard's lumber-yard's right beyond."

"How far from the spill?"

"About three blocks."

"Come on, we must get out on the main stem."

They went on, but in the security they felt at not being followed, they ran no more, but paced rapidly along, side by side. They had not had the time nor the breath for talk, but now suddenly, Archie, in a tone that paid tribute to Curly's powers, expressed the subliminal surprise he had had.

"How did you know the bulls was there?"

"I piked off the elbow just as we went in."

"I didn't see him," said Archie. "Where was he?"

"Right across the street, planted in a doorway."

"How do you suppose he'd spotted us?"

"Oh, he was layin' for you, that's all. He had it all framed up. He thought he'd job you and swell himself."

"What do you think of that now!"

They reached the yard where the black shadows cast by the tall leaning piles of lumber welcomed them like friends, and through this they passed, coming out at length on the railroad. They reconnoitered. The sky of the October night was overcast by thin clouds which, gray at first, turned bright silver as they flew beneath the risen moon.

"The dog's out," said Curly, who had almost as many names for the moon as a poet.

Before them the rails gleamed and glinted; over the yards myriads of switch-lights glowed red and green, sinister and confusing. Not far away a switch-engine stood, leisurely working the pump of its air-brake, emitting steamy sighs, as if it were snatching a moment's rest from its labors. On the damp and heavy air the voices of the engineer and fireman were borne to them. At times other switch-engines slid up and down the tracks. Curly and Archie sat down in the shadow of the lumber and waited. After a while, down the rails a white light swung in an arc, the resting switch-engine moved and began to make up a freight-train.

"Now's our chance," said Curly.

The switch-engine went to and fro and up and down, whistling now and then, ringing its bell constantly, drawing cars back and forth interminably, pulling strings of them here and there, adding to and taking from its train, stopping finally for a few minutes while a heavy passenger-train swept by, its sleeping-cars all dark, rolling heavily, mysteriously, their solid wheels clicking delicately over the joints of the rails.

"I wish we were on that rattler," said Archie, with the longing a departing train inspires, and more than the normal longing. Curly laughed.

"The John O'Brien's good enough for us," he said.

The passenger-train, shrinking in size by swift perceptible degrees as it lost itself in the darkness, soon was gone. The white lantern swung again, and the switch-engine resumed its monotonous labors, confined to the tedious limits of that yard, never allowed to go out into the larger world. Gradually it worked the train it was patiently piecing together over to the side of the yard where Archie and Curly waited. Then, at last, watching their chance, they slipped out, found an open car, sprang into it, slunk out of possible sight of conductor or switchman, and were happy.

The car was bumped and buffeted up and down the yard for an hour; but Archie and Curly within were laughing at having thus eluded the officers. They sat against the wall of the car, their knees to their chins, talking under cover of the noise the cars made. After a while the engine whistled and the train moved.

When they awoke, the car was standing still and a gray light came through the cracks of the door.

"I wonder where we are," said Archie, rubbing his eyes.

Curly got up, stretched, crept to the middle of the car and looked out. Presently Archie heard him say:

"By God!"

He joined him. And there were the lumber piles. It was morning, the city was awake, the grinding of its weary mills had begun. They were just where they had been the night before.

"Marooned!" said Curly, and he laughed.

They decided, or Curly decided, that they must wait. Some of those restless switch-engines would make up another train before long, and in it they might leave the town, in which there was now no place of safety for them. The morning was cold; the chill of the damp atmosphere stiffened them. Just outside, in the lumber-yard, several men were working, and the fugitives must not be seen by them, for they would be as hostile as the whole world had suddenly become. They waited, but the men did not leave. Their task seemed to be as endless as that of the switch-engine. For a long while the railroad yards were strangely still. Now and then Curly crept to the door and peeped out; the lumber-shovers were not twenty feet away. The door on the opposite side of the car was locked. Finally, they grew restless; they decided to go out anyhow.

"Hell!" said Archie. "There's nothing to it. Let's mope."

Something of Archie's recklessness and disregard of consequences affected Curly.

"Well, all right," he said; "come on."

They went to the door of the car. And there, looking full in their faces, was a switchman with a red, rough face and a stubble of reddish beard. The switchman drew back with a curse to express his astonishment, his surprise, the sudden fright that confused and angered him.

"Come out o' that, you hobos," he called, stepping back. The men in the lumber-yard heard his sudden cry, stopped and looked up. The switchman cursed and called again.

Curly and Archie shrank into the darkness of the car. Archie had drawn his revolver.

"Put it up," said Curly, with the anger of his disappointment.

They waited and listened; the switchman's voice was heard no more; he must have gone away.

"He'll blow us to the railroad coppers. Now's our only chance!"

They went to the door, leaped out, bent their heads and ran. And instantly, with the howl of the hunter, the men in the lumber-yard, not knowing Archie or Curly or what they had done, or whether they had done anything, left their work and ran after them, raising the old hue and cry of English justice. Even the engines in the yards joined by sounding sharp, angry blasts on their whistles, and behind the little group that was rapidly becoming a mob, raced the switchman with two of the railroad's detectives.

As swiftly as they could, in their stiffness and their hunger and their cold, Archie and Curly ran down the long yards, over cinders and uneven ties. They ran for a quarter of a mile and the yard narrowed, the tracks began to converge, to unite, marking the beginning of the main line. On either side rose the clayey banks, ahead there was a narrow cut with an elevated crossing; near this was a switchman's shanty. Just then something sang over their heads, a musical humming sound. They knew the sound a bullet makes and dodged into the switchman's shanty, slammed the door behind them, locked it and, a moment later, were at bay with the mob. The crowd surged up to the very door, flung itself against the shanty. Then Curly called:

"Stand back!"

The cry of the crowd was given in a lower, angrier tone; again it hurled itself against the door, and the little shanty, painted in the yellow and white of the railroad, rocked. Another shot pierced the shanty, splintering the boards above their heads. Then Archie stepped to the little window, thrust out his revolver. There was an angry cry outside, then stillness; the crowd gave way, withdrew, and kept its distance.

"Don't push the rod!" Curly commanded. "What in hell ails you?"

"Oh, sin not leery! I'll plug 'em for keeps!"

Curly looked into Archie's white face.

"Are the bulls tailing on?" he asked.

"They're coming strong! Listen!"

"We'd better cave!" urged Curly.

"Like hell!" Archie replied. "They don't drop me without a muss now. If you want to flunk--"

Curly's face flamed and his little eyes pierced Archie.

"Look out, young fellow!" he said, taking a sudden step toward him. Archie looked at him with a sneer. Then Curly stopped.

"Look here, Dutch," he said. "Don't be a fool. We're--"

"I've told you what I'll do," said Archie, all the dogged stubbornness of his nature aroused. Then Curly seemed to lose interest. Outside they could hear the crowd again.

Half an hour passed. They heard the clang of a gong in the near-by street.

"The pie wagon," said Curly.

Archie was quiet. There was a cheer, then a voice, deep, commanding and official:

"Surrender in the name of the law!"

Curly looked a question at Archie.

"What ails you to-day?" asked Archie. "Lost your nerve?"

"I haven't lost my nut."

"We'll give you three minutes," said the voice, "then if you don't come out, holding up your hands, we'll fire."

For what seemed a long time there was utter quiet, then bullets tore through the pine boards of the little shanty and Archie sprang to the window and fired. Curly was squatting on the floor. Archie fired again, and again, and yet again.

"I've only got one left," he said, turning from the window.

"All right, then we'll cave."

Curly got up, went to the door, flung it open and held up his hands. The mob cheered.

But Archie stayed. The officer called again, Curly called, the crowd called; then the shooting began again. Presently Archie appeared in the doorway and looked about with a white, defiant face. And there, before him, a rod away, stood Kouka, revolver in hand. He saw Archie, his brow wrinkled, and he smiled darkly.

"You might as well--" he began.

Archie looked at him an instant, slowly raised his revolver above his head, lowered it in deliberate aim, fired, and Kouka fell to his knees, toppled forward with a groan and collapsed in a heap on the ground, dead.

The crowd was stricken still. Archie stood looking at Kouka, his eyes burning, his face white, his smoking revolver lowered in his hand. A smile came to his pale, tense lips. Then the crowd closed in on him; the policemen, angry and ferocious, caught and pinioned him, began to club him. The crowd pressed closer, growing savage, shaking fists at him, trying to strike him. Suddenly some one began to call for a rope.

Then the policemen, so eager a moment before to wreak their own vengeance on him, were now concerned for his safety. A sergeant gave a command; they dragged Archie toward the patrol wagon. The crowd surged that way, and Archie, bareheaded, his yellow hair disordered, his eyes flashing, his white brow stained with blood, stared about on the policemen and on the crowd with a look of hatred. Then he glanced back to where some men were bending over Kouka, and he smiled again.

"Well, I croaked him all right," he said.

A patrolman struck him with a club; and he staggered as the blow fell with a sharp crash on his head.

"Get on there!" said the sergeant, cursing him. He was thrown into the patrol wagon beside Curly, and he sat there, white, with the blood trickling in two streams from his forehead, his eyes flashing, and the strange smile on his lips whenever he looked back where Kouka lay. The patrol wagon dashed away.

VI

Marriott was sensible of a hostile atmosphere the moment he entered the police station. The desk sergeant glanced at him with disapproval, kept him waiting, finally consulted an inspector, blew savagely into a speaking tube, and said:

"Here's a young lawyer to see Koerner."

The contemptuous description, the tone, the attitude, all expressed the hatred the police had for Archie, a hatred that Marriott realized would extend itself to him for taking sides with Archie. The turnkey, a thin German with cheek-bones that seemed about to perforate his sallow skin, a black mustache, and two black, glossy curls plastered on his low forehead, likewise scowled and showed reluctance.

"How many damned lawyers," he said, taking a corn-cob pipe from his mouth, "is that feller going to have, anyway?"

"Why," asked Marriott in a sudden hope that ignored the man's insolence, "have there been others?"

"Humph!" said the turnkey, jangling his heavy keys. "Only about a dozen."

"Well, I'll see him anyway."

Marriott had waited thus for Archie and for other men who had done crimes; but never for one who had killed a man. He felt a new, unpleasant sensation, a nervous apprehension, just a faint sickness, and then--Archie came.

The boy stepped into the turnkey's room with a certain air of relief; he straightened himself, stretched, and within the flannel undershirt that showed his white, muscular neck to its base, his chest expanded as he filled his lungs with the welcome air. He threw away his cigarette, came forward and pressed Marriott's hand, strongly, with hearty gratitude.

The turnkey led them to a dingy room, and locked them in a closet used as a consulting cabinet by those few prisoners who could secure lawyers. The gloom was almost as thick as the dust in the closet. Marriott thought of all the tragedies the black hole had known; and wondered if Archie had any such thoughts. He could not see Archie's face clearly, but it seemed to be clouded by too many realities to be conscious of the romantic or the tragic side of things. It was essential to talk in low tones, for they knew that the turnkey was listening through the thin, wooden partition. Marriott waited for Archie to begin.

"Well?" he said presently.

"Got a match, Mr. Marriott?" Archie asked.

Marriott drew out his silver match-box, and then looked at Archie's face glowing red in the tiny flame of the light he made for his cigarette. The action calmed and reassured Marriott Archie's face wore no unwonted or tragic expression; if his experience had changed him, it had not as yet set its mark on him. Marriott lighted a cigarette himself.

"I was afraid you wouldn't come," said Archie, dropping to the floor the match he economically shared with Marriott, and then solicitously pressing out its little embers with his foot.

"I got your message only this morning."

"Humph!" sneered Archie. "That's the way of them coppers. I asked 'em to 'phone you the morning they made the pinch."

"Well, they didn't."

"No, they've got it in for me, Mr. Marriott; they'll job me if they can. I was worried and 'fraid I'd have to take some other lawyer."

"They told me you had seen others."

"Oh, some of them guys was here tryin' to tout out a case; you know the kind. Frisby and Pennell, some of them dead ones. I s'pose they were lookin' for a little notoriety."

The unpleasant sensation Marriott felt at Archie's recognition of his own notoriety was lost in the greater disgust that he had for the lawyers who were so anxious to share that notoriety. He knew how Frisby solicited such cases, how the poor and friendless prisoners eagerly grasped at the hopes he could so shamelessly hold out to them, how their friends and relatives mortgaged their homes, when they had them, or their furniture, or their labor in the future, to pay the fees he extorted. And he knew Pennell, the youth just out of law-school, who had the gift of the gab, and was an incorrigible spouter, having had the misfortune while in college to win a debate and to obtain a prize for oratory. His boundless conceit and assurance made up for his utter lack of knowledge of law, or of human nature, his utter lack of experience, or of sympathy. He had no principles, either, but merely a determination to get on in the world; he was ever for sale, and Marriott knew how his charlatanism would win, how soon he would be among the successful of the city.

"I tell you, Archie," he was saying, "I can't consent to represent you if either of these fellows is in the case."

"Who? Them guys? Not much!" Archie puffed at his cigarette. "Not for me. I'm up against the real thing this time." He gave a little sardonic laugh.

It was difficult to discuss the case to any purpose in that little closet with its dirt and darkness, and the repressing knowledge that some one was straining to hear what they would say. Marriott watched the spark of Archie's cigarette glow and fade and glow and fade again.

"We can't talk here," said Archie. "You pull off my hearing as soon as possible, and get me out of here. When I get over to the pogey I'll have a chance to turn around, and we can talk. Bring it on as soon's you can, Mr. Marriott. Won't you? God! It's hell in that crum box, and those drunks snoring and snorting and havin' the willies all night. Can't you get it on to-morrow morning?"

"Can we be ready by then?"

"Oh, there's nothin' to it down here. We'll waive."

"We'll see," said Marriott, with the professional dislike of permitting clients to dictate how their desperate affairs should be managed. "You see I don't know the circumstances of the affair yet. All I know is what I've read in the papers."

"Oh, well, to hell with them," said Archie. "Never mind what they say. They're tryin' to stick me for that Flanagan job. You know, Mr. Marriott, I didn't have nothin' to do with that, don't you?"

Archie leaned forward in an appeal that was irresistible, convincing.

"Yes, I know that."

"All right, I want you to know that. I ain't that kind, you know. But Kouka--well, I got him, but I had to, Mr. Marriott; I had to. You see that, don't you? He agitated me to it; he agitated me to it."

He repeated the word thus strangely employed a number of times, as if it gave him relief and comfort.

"Yes, sir, he agitated me to it. I had to; that's all. It was a case of self-defense."

Marriott was silent for a few moments. Then he asked:

"Have you talked to the police?"

Archie laughed.

"They give me the third degree, but--there was nothin' doin'."

Marriott was relieved to find that he did not have to face the usual admission the police wring from their subjects, but Archie went on:

"Of course, that don't make no difference. They can frame up a confession all right."

"They'd hardly do anything that desperate," said Marriott, though not with the greatest assurance.

"Well," said Archie, "I wouldn't put it past 'em."

Marriott finished his cigarette in a reflective silence, dropped it to the floor and imitated Archie in the care with which he extinguished it. Then he sighed, straightened up and said:

"Well, Archie, let's get down to business; tell me the particulars."

And Archie narrated the events that led up to the tragedy.

"I wanted to see the old people--and the kids--and Gus." He was silent then, and Marriott did not break the silence.

"Say, Mr. Marriott," the boy suddenly asked, "where is Gus?"

"I don't know."

"What's become of her? Do you know that?"

"N-no--," said Marriott. He felt that Archie was eying him shrewdly.

"You know," said Archie in the lowest tone, "I'm afraid, I've got a kind of hunch--that she's--gone wrong."

Marriott feared his own silence, but he could not speak.

"Hell!" Archie exclaimed, in a tone that dismissed the question. "Well, I wanted to go home, and I goes, Curly and me. Kouka followed; he plants himself across the street, gets the harness bulls, and they goes gunning. Curly, he sees him--Curly can see anything. We lammed. The coppers misses us; and we gets on a freight-car. They cuts that car out, and we stays in it all night. Damn it! Did you ever hear o' such luck? Now did you, Mr. Marriott?"

Marriott owned that he had not.

"In the morning," Archie went on, "they lagged us and we ran--they began to shoot, and--"

He stopped.

"Well," he said very quietly. "I had my rod, and barked at Kouka. I got him."

Marriott wished that he could see Archie's face. It was not so dim in there as it had been, or so it seemed to Marriott, for his eyes had accommodated themselves to the gloom, but he could not read Archie's expression. He waited for him to go on. He was intensely interested now in the human side of the question; the legal side might wait. He longed to put a dozen questions to Archie, but he dared not; he felt that he could not profane this soul that had erred and gone astray, by prying out its secrets; he was conscious only of a great pity. He thought he might ask Archie if he had shot, aimed, intentionally; he wished to know just what had been in the boy's heart at that moment: then he had a great fear that Archie might tell him. But Archie was speaking again.

"Say, Mr. Marriott," he said, "could you go out to my home and get me some clothes? I want to make as good a front as I can when I go into court."

"Your clothes seem pretty good; they look new. They gave them to you, I suppose, at the penitentiary?"

Archie laughed.

"I'd look like a jay in them stir clothes," he said. "These--well, these ain't mine," he added simply. "But get me a shirt, if you can, and a collar and--a tie--a blue one. And say, if you can, get word to the folks--tell 'em not to worry. And if you can find Gus, tell her to come down. You know."

Marriott went out into the street, glad of the sunlight, the air, the bustle of normal life. And yet, as he analyzed his sensations, he was surprised to note that the whole affair had lacked the sense of tragedy he had expected; it all seemed natural and commonplace enough. Archie was the same boy he had known before. The murder was but an incident in Archie's life, that was all, just as his own sins and follies and mistakes were incidents that usually appeared to be necessary and unavoidable--incidents he could always abundantly account for and palliate and excuse and justify. Sometimes it seemed that even good grew out of them. Sometimes! Yes, always, he felt, else were the universe wrong. And after all--where was the difference between sins? What made one greater than another? Wherein was the murder Archie had done worse than the unkind word he, Gordon Marriott, had spoken that morning? But Marriott put this phase of the question aside, and tried to trace Archie's deed back to its first cause. As he did this, he became fascinated with the speculation, and his heart beat fast as he thought that if he could present the case to a jury in all its clarity and truth--perhaps--perhaps--

VII

Archie did not have his hearing the next morning. The newspapers said "the State" was not ready, which meant that Allen, the prosecutor, and the police were not ready. Quinn and Allen had conferences. They felt it to be their duty to have Archie put to death if possible, and they were undecided as to which case would the better insure this result. Allen found legal difficulties; there was a question whether or not the murder of Kouka had been murder in the first degree. Hence he wished to have Bridget Flanagan identify Archie.

Several days elapsed, and then one morning, Bentley, the sheriff, brought Bridget Flanagan to the Central Police Station in a carriage. Allen and Cleary and Quinn, with several officers and reporters, were waiting to witness her confrontation of Archie.

The old woman was dressed in black; she wore a black shawl and a black bonnet, but these had faded independently of each other, so that each was now of its own dingy shade. The dress had a brown cast, the shawl a tone of green, the bonnet was dusty and graying, and the black veil that was tightly bound about her brow, like the band of a nun, had been empurpled in the process of decay. She leaned heavily on Bentley, tottering in her weakness, now and then lifting her arms with a wild, nervous gesture. Bentley's huge, disproportionate bulk moved uncertainly beside her, lurching this way and that, as if he feared to step on her feet or her ancient gown, finding it difficult, at arm's length, to support and guide her. But at last he got her to a chair. At the edge of the purplish veil bound across the hairless brows, a strip of adhesive plaster showed. The old woman wearily closed the eyes that had gazed on the horrors of the tragedy; her mouth moved in senile spasms. Now and then she mumbled little prayers that sounded like oaths; and raised to her lips the little ball into which she had wadded her handkerchief. And she sat there, her palsied head shaking disparaging negatives. The police, the detectives, the prosecutor, the reporters looked on. They said nothing for a long time.

Cleary, trying to speak with an exaggerated tenderness, finally said:

"Miss Flanagan, we hate to trouble you, but we won't keep you long. We think we have the man who killed your dear sister--we'd like to have you see him--"

The old woman started, tried to get up, sank back, made a strange noise in her throat, pushed out her hands toward Cleary as if to repulse him and his suggestion, then clasped her hands, wrung them, closed her eyes, swayed to and fro in her chair and moaned, ejaculating the little prayers that sounded like oaths. Cleary waited. Quinn brought a glass of water. Presently the old woman grew calm again; after a while Cleary renewed his suggestion. The old woman continued to moan. Cleary whispered to two policemen and they left the room. The policemen were gone what seemed a long time, but at last they appeared in the doorway, and between them, looking expectantly about him, was Archie Koerner. The policemen led him into the room, the group made way, they halted before the old woman. Cleary advanced.

"Miss Flanagan," he said very gently, standing beside her, and bending assiduously, "Miss Flanagan, will you please take a look now, and tell us--if you ever saw this man before, if he is the man who--"

Wearily, slowly, the old woman raised her blue eyelids; and then she shuddered, started, seemed to have a sudden access of strength, got to her feet and cried out:

"Oh, my poor sister! my poor sister! You kilt her! You kilt her!"

Then she sank to her knees and collapsed on the floor. Bentley ran across the room, brought a glass of water, and stood uncertainly, awkwardly about, while the others bore the old woman to a couch, stretched her out, threw up a window, began to fan her with newspapers, with hats, anything. Some one took the water from the sheriff, pressed the glass to the old woman's lips; it clicked against her teeth.

Then Cleary, Quinn, Bentley, the policemen, the detectives, the reporters, looked at one another and smiled, Cleary bent over the old woman.

"That's all, Miss Flanagan. You needn't worry any more. We're sorry we had to trouble you, but the law, you know, and our duty--"

He repeated the words "law" and "duty" several times. Meanwhile Archie stood there, between the two policemen. He looked about him, at the men in the room, at the old woman stretched on the lounge; finally his gaze fastened on Cleary, and his lips slowly curled in a sneer, and his face hardened into an expression of utter scorn.

"Take him down!" shouted Cleary angrily.

The reporters rushed out. An hour later the extras were on the streets, announcing the complete and positive identification of Archie Koerner by Bridget Flanagan.

"The hardened prisoner," the reports said, "stood and sneered while the old woman confronted him. The police have not known so desperate a character in years."

VIII

Marriott had attended to all of Archie's commissions, save one--that of telling Gusta to go to him. He had not done this because he did not know where to find her. But Gusta went herself, just as she seemed to do most things in life, because she could not help doing them, because something impelled, forced her to do them,--some power that made sport of her, using a dozen agencies, forces hereditary, economic, social, moral, all sorts--driving her this way and that. She had read of the murder, and then, with horror, of Archie's arrest. She did not know he was out of prison until she heard that he was in prison again. She began to calculate the time that had flowed by so swiftly, making such changes in her life. Her first impulse was to go to him, but now she feared the police. She recalled her former visits, that first Sunday at the workhouse, on which she had thought herself so sad, whereas she had not begun to learn what sorrow was. She recalled the day in the police station a year before, and remembered the policeman who had held her arm so suggestively. She read the newspapers eagerly, absorbed every detail, her heart sinking lower than it had ever gone before. When she read that Marriott was to defend Archie, she allowed herself to hope. The next day she read an account of the identification of Archie by the surviving Flanagan sister, and then, when hope was gone, she could resist no longer the impulse to go to him.

She paused again at the door of the sergeant's room, her heart beating painfully with the fear that showed itself in little white spots on each side of her nostrils; then the timid parleying with the officers, the delay, the suspicion, the opposition, the reluctance, until an officer in uniform took her in charge, led her down the iron stairway to the basement, and had the turnkey open the prison doors. Archie came to the bars, and peered purblindly into the gloom. And Gusta went close now, closer than she had ever gone before; the bars had no longer the old meaning for her, they had no longer their old repulsion, and she looked at Archie no more with the old feeling of reproach and moral superiority. In fact, she judged no more; sin had healed her of such faults as self-satisfaction and moral complacency; it had softened and instructed her, and in its great kindness revealed to her her own relation to all who sin, so that she came now with nothing but compassion, sympathy and love. Tears were streaming down her cheeks.

"Oh, Archie!" she said. "Oh, Archie!"

Archie looked at her and at the officers. Gusta was oblivious; she put her face to the greasy bars, and pressed her lips mutely between them. Archie, who did not like to cry before an officer and before the other prisoners, struggled hard. Then he kissed her, coldly.

"Oh, Archie, Archie!" was all she could say, putting all her anguish, her distress, her sorrow, her impotent desire to help into the varying inflections of her tone.

"Oh, Archie! Archie! _Archie!_"

She spoke his name this last time as if she must find relief by wringing her whole soul into it. Then she stood, biting her lip as if to stop its quivering. Archie, on his part, looked at her a moment, then at the floor.

"Say you didn't do it, Archie."

"Do what?"

"You know--"

"You mean Kouka?"

"Oh, no," she said, impatient with the question.

"That Flanagan job?"

She nodded rapidly.

"Of course not; you ought to know that. Every one knows that--even the coppers." His sentence ended with a sneer cast in the officer's direction. And Gusta sighed.

"I'm so glad!" she said, her bosom rising and falling in relief. "They all said--"

"Oh, that's just the frame-up," said Archie. "They'd job me for it quick enough." He was sneering again at the officer, as incarnating the whole police system, and his face was darkened by a look of all hatred and malignity. The officer smiled calmly.

"I'm so glad," Gusta was smiling now. "But--" she began. Her lip quivered; the tears started afresh. "What about the other?"

"That was self-defense; he agitated me to it. But don't let's talk before that copper there--" He could not avert his look of hatred from the officer, whose face was darkening, as he plucked nervously at his mustache.

"He'd say anything--that's his business," Archie went on, unable to restrain himself.

"Sh! Don't, Archie!" Gusta said. "Don't!"

Archie drew in full breaths, inflating his white chest. The officer returned his look of hatred, his bronzed face had taken on a shade of green; the two men struggled silently, then controlled themselves. Gusta was trying again to choke down her sobs.

"How's father?" Archie asked, after a silence, striving for a commonplace tone.

"He's well,--I guess."

"He knows, does he?"

"I--don't know."

"What! Why--can't you tell him? He could get down here, couldn't he? He had a crutch when I was there."

She was silent, her head drooped, the flowers in her hat brushed the bars at Archie's face. She thrust the toe of a patent-leather boot between the bars at the bottom of the door. The tips of her gloved fingers touched the bars lightly; there was a slight odor of perfume in the entry-way.

"You see," she said, "I--I can't go out there--any more." Her tears were falling on the cement floor, falling beside the iron bucket in which was kept the water for the prisoners to drink.

"Oh!" said Archie coldly.

She looked up suddenly, read the meaning of his changed expression, and then she pressed her face against the bars tightly, and cried out:

"Oh, Archie! Don't! Don't!"

He was hard with her.

"By God!" he said. "I don't know why _you_ should have--oh, hell!"

He whirled on his heel, as if he would go away.

She clung to the bars, pressing her face against them, trying, as it were, to thrust her lips through them.

"Oh, Archie!" she said. "Archie! Don't do that--don't go that way! Listen--listen--listen to your sister! I'm the same old Gus--honest, honest, Archie! Listen! Look at me!"

He had thrust his hands into his pockets and walked to the end of the corridor. He paused there a moment, then turned and came back.

"Say, Gus," he said, "I wish you'd go tell Mr. Marriott I want to see him again. And say, if you go out to the house, see if you can't find that shirt of mine with the white and pink stripes--you know. I guess mother knows where it is. Do that now. And--"

"Time's up," said the officer. "I've got to go."

"And come down to-morrow, Gus," said Archie. She scarcely heard him as she turned to go.

"Hold on!" he called, pressing his face to the bars. "Say! Gus! Come here a minute."

She returned. She lifted her face, and he kissed her through the bars. And she went away, with sobs that racked her whole form.

As she started out by the convenient side door into the alley, the officer laid a hand on her shoulder.

"This way, young woman."

She looked at him a moment.

"You'd better go out the other door," he said.

She climbed the steps behind him, wondering why one door would not do as well as another. She had always gone out that side door before. When they were up-stairs, passing the sergeant's room, he touched her again.

"Hold on," he said.

"What do you want?" she asked in surprise,

"I guess you'd better stay here."

"Why?" she exclaimed. Her surprise had become a great fear. He made no reply, and pushed her into the sergeant's room. Then he whistled into a tube--some one answered. "Come down," he commanded. Presently a woman appeared, a woman with gray hair, in a blue gingham gown something like a nurse's uniform, with a metal badge on her full breast.

"Matron," said the officer, "take this girl in charge."

"Why! What do you mean?" Gusta exclaimed, her eyes wide, her lips parted. "What do you mean? What have I done? What do you--am I--_arrested_?"

"That's what they call it," said the officer.

"But what for?"

"You'll find out in time. Take her up-stairs, Matron."

Gusta looked at the officer, then at the matron. Her face was perfectly white.

The matron drew near, put her arm about her, and said:

"Come with me."

Gusta swayed uncertainly, tottered, then dragged herself off, leaning against the matron, walking as if in a daze.

IX

It had been months since Marriott had gone up those steps at the Wards', and he mounted them that November evening with a regret at the loss of the old footing, and an impatience with the events that had kept him away. He had waited for some such excuse as Gusta's commission now gave him, and the indignation he felt at the girl's arrest was not strong enough to suppress his gratitude for the opportunity the injustice opened to him. He was sure that Elizabeth knew he was to defend Archie; she must know how sensitive he was to the criticism that was implied in the tone with which the newspapers announced the fact. The newspapers, indeed, had shown feeling that Archie should be represented at all. They had published warnings against the law's delays, of which, they said, there had already been too many in that county, forgetting how they had celebrated the success and promptness, the industry and enterprise of John Eades. They had spoken of Archie as if he were a millionaire, about to evade and confound law and justice by the use of money. Marriott told himself, bitterly, that Elizabeth's circle would discuss the tragedy in this same tone, and speak of him with disappointment and distrust; that was the attitude his own friends had adopted; that was the way the lawyers and judges even had spoken to him of it; he recalled how cold and disapproving Eades had been. This recollection gave Marriott pause; would it not now be natural for Elizabeth to take Eades's attitude? He shrank from the thought and wished he had not come, but he was at the door and he had Gusta's message--impossible as it seemed after all these thoughts had crossed his mind.

She received him in her old manner, without any of the stiffness he had feared the months might have made.

"Ah, Gordon," she said. "I'm so glad you came."

She led the way swiftly into the library. A little wood fire, against the chill of the autumn evening, was blazing in the wide fireplace; under the lamp on the broad table lay a book she must have put down a moment before.

"What have you been reading? Oh, _Walden_!" And he turned to her with the smile of their old comradeship in such things.

"I've been reading it again, yes," she said, "and I've wished to talk it over again with you. So you see I'm glad you came."

"I came with a message from--"

"Oh!" The bright look faded from her eyes. "Well, I'm glad, then, that some one sent you to me."

He saw his mistake, and grieved for it.

"I wanted to come," he stammered. "I've been intending to come, Elizabeth, anyway, and--"

He felt he was only making the matter worse, and he hated himself for his awkwardness.

"Well," she was saying, "sit down then, and tell me whom this fortunate message is from."

She leaned back in her chair, rather grandly, he felt. He regretted the touch of formality that was almost an irony in her speech. But he thought it best to let it pass,--they could get back to the old footing more quickly if they did it that way.

"You'd never guess," he said.

"I'll not try. Tell me."

"Gusta."

"Gusta!" Elizabeth leaned forward eagerly, and Marriott thought that he had never before seen her so good to look upon; she was so virile, so alive. He noted her gray eyes, bright with interest and surprise, her brown hair, too soft to be confined in any conventional way, and worn as ever with a characteristic independence that recognized without succumbing to fashion. He fixed his eyes on her hands, white, strong, full of character. And he bemoaned the loss of those months; why, he wondered, had he been so absurd?

"Gusta!" she repeated. "Where did you see Gusta?"

"In prison."

"What! No! Oh, Gordon!" she started with the shock, and Marriott found this attitude even more fascinating than the last; her various expressions changing swiftly, responding with instant sensitiveness to every new influence or suggestion, were all delightful.

"What for? Tell me! Why don't you tell me, Gordon? Why do you sit there?"

Her eyes flashed a reproach at him--and he smiled. He was wholly at ease now.

"For nothing. She's done nothing. She went to see Archie, and the police, stupid and brutal as usual, detained her. That's all; they placed the charge of suspicion against her to satisfy the law. The law!"

He sneered out the word.

Elizabeth had fallen back in her chair with an expression of pain.

"Oh, Gordon!" she said with a shudder. "Isn't it horrible, horrible!"

"Horrible!" he echoed.

"That poor Koerner family! What can the fates be about? You know--you know it all seems to come so near. Such things happen in the world, of course, every day the newspapers, the dreadful newspapers, are filled with them. But they never were real at all, because they never happened to people I knew. But this comes so near. Just think. I've seen that Archie Koerner, and he has spoken to me, and to think of him now, a murderer! Will--they hang him?"

She leaned forward earnestly.

"No," he said slowly. "They may electrocute him though--to use their barbarous word."

"And now Gusta's in prison!" Elizabeth went on, forgetting Archie. "But her message! You haven't given me her message!"

Marriott waited a moment, perhaps in his inability to forego the theatrical possibilities of the situation.

"She wants you--to come to her."

Elizabeth stared at him blankly.

"To come to her?"

"Yes."

"In prison?"

"Yes."

Her brows contracted, her eyes winked rapidly.

"But Gordon, how--how can I?"

"I don't know." He sat at his ease in the great chair, enjoying the meaning, the whole significance of her predicament. He had already appreciated its difficulties, its impossibilities, and he was prepared now to wring from every one of them its last sensation. Elizabeth, with her elbow on the arm of her chair, her laces falling away from her white forearm, bit her lip delicately. She seemed to be looking at the toe of her suede shoe.

"Poor little thing!" She spoke abstractedly, as if she were oblivious to Marriott's presence. He was satisfied; it was good just then to sit, merely, and look at her. "I must go to her." And then suddenly she looked up and said in another tone:

"But how am I to do it, Gordon?"

He did not answer at once and she did not wait for a reply, but went on, speaking rapidly, her eyes in a dark glow as her interest was intensified.

"Isn't it a peculiar situation? I don't know how to deal with it. I never was so placed before. You must see the difficulties, Gordon. People, well, people don't go to such places, don't you know? I really don't see how it is possible; it makes me shudder to think of it! Ugh!" She shrugged her shoulders. "What shall you say to her, Gordon?" She said this as if the problem were his, not hers, and showed a relief in this transfer of the responsibility.

"I don't know yet," he said. "Whatever you tell me."

"But you must tell her something; you must make her understand. It won't do for you to hurt the poor girl's feelings."

"Well, I'll just say that I delivered her message and that you wouldn't come."

"Oh, Gordon! How could you be so cruel? You certainly would not be so heartless as to say I _wouldn't_!"

"Well, then, that you _couldn't_."

"But she would want a reason, and she'd be entitled to one. What one could you give her? You must think, Gordon, we must both think, and decide on something that will help you out. What are you laughing at?"

"Why, Elizabeth," he said, "it isn't my predicament. It's your predicament."

He leaned back in his chair comfortably, in an attitude of irresponsibility.

"How can you sit there," Elizabeth said, "and leave it all to me?"

And then she laughed,--and was grave again.

"Of course," she said. "Well--I'm sure I can't solve it. Poor little Gusta! She was so pretty and so good, and so--comfortable to have around--don't you know? Really, we've never had a maid like her. She was ideal. And now to think of her--in prison! Isn't it awful?"

Marriott sat with half-closed eyes and looked at her through the haze of his lashes. The room was still; the fire burned slowly in the black chimney; now and then the oil gurgled cozily in the lamp.

"What is a prison like, Gordon? Is it really such an awful place?"

Marriott thought of the miserable room in the women's quarters, with its iron wainscoting, the narrow iron bed; the wooden table and chair, and he contrasted it with this luxurious library of the Wards.

"Well," he said, turning rather lazily toward the fire, "it's nothing like this."

"But,"--Elizabeth looked up suddenly with the eagerness of a new idea,--"can't you get her out on bail--isn't that what it's called? Can't you get some kind of document, some writ?--yes, that's it." She spoke with pleasure because she had found a word with a legal sound. "Get a writ. Surely you are a lawyer clever enough to get her out. I always thought that any one could get out of prison if he had a good lawyer. The papers all say so."

"You get in prison once and see," said Marriott.

"Mercy, I expect to be in prison next!" Elizabeth exclaimed. "Prisons! We seem to have had nothing but prisons for a year or more. I don't know what started it--first it was that poor Harry Graves, then Archie, and now it's Gusta. And you talk of them and John Eades talks of them--and I had to see them one night taking some prisoners to the penitentiary. I'd never even thought of prisons before, but since then I've thought of nothing else; I've lived in an atmosphere of prisons. It's just like a new word, one you never heard before,--you see it some day, and then you're constantly running across it. Don't you know? It's the same way with history--I never knew who Pestalozzi was until the other day; never had heard of him. But I saw his name in Emerson, then looked him up--now everything I read mentions him. And oh! the memory of those men they were taking to the penitentiary! I'll never escape it! I see their faces always!"

"Were they such bad faces?"

"Oh, no! such poor, pale, pathetic faces! Just like a page from a Russian novel!"

The memory brought pain to her eyes, and she suffered a moment. Then she sat erect and folded her hands with determination.

"We might as well face it, Gordon, of course. I just can't go; you see that, don't you? What shall we do?"

"You might try your Organized Charities." His eyes twinkled.

"Don't ever mention that to me," she commanded. "I never want to hear the word. That's a page from my past that I'm ashamed of."

"Ashamed! Of the Organized Charities?"

"Oh, Gordon, I needn't tell you what a farce that is--you know it is organized not to help the poor, but to help the rich to _forget_ the poor, to keep the poor at a distance, where they can't reproach you and prick your conscience. The Organized Charities is an institution for the benefit of the unworthy rich." Her eyes showed her pleasure in her epigram, and they both laughed. But the pleasure could not last long; in another instant Elizabeth's hands fell to her lap, and she looked at Marriott soberly. Then she said, with hopeless conviction:

"I just can't go, Gordon."

Before Marriott could reply there was a sense of interruption; he heard doors softly open and close, the muffled and proper step of a maid, the well-known sounds that told him that somewhere in the house a bell had rung. In another moment he heard voices in the hall; a laugh of familiarity, more steps,--and then Eades and Modderwell and Mrs. Ward entered the room. Elizabeth cast at Marriott a quick glance of disappointment and displeasure; his heart leaped, he wondered if it were because of Eades's coming. Then he decided, against his will, that it was because of Modderwell. A constraint came over him, he suddenly felt it impossible that he should speak, he withdrew wholly within himself, and sat with an air of detachment.

The clergyman, stooping an instant to chafe his palms before the fire, had taken a chair close to Elizabeth, and he now began making remarks about nothing, his clean, ruddy face smiling constantly, showing his perfect teeth, his eyes roving over Elizabeth's figure.

"Well! Well! Well!" he cried. "What grave questions have you two been deciding this time?"

Elizabeth glanced at Marriott, whose face was drawn, then at Eades, who sat there in the full propriety of his evening clothes, then at her mother, seated in what was considered the correct attitude for a lady on whom her rector had called.

"I think it's good we came, eh, Eades?" the clergyman went on, without waiting for an answer. "It is not good for you to be too serious, Miss Elizabeth,--my pastoral calls are meant as much as anything to take people out of themselves." He laughed again in his abundant self-satisfaction and reclined comfortably in his chair. And he rolled his head in his clerical collar, with a smile to show Elizabeth how he regarded duties that in all propriety must not be considered too seriously or too sincerely. But Elizabeth did not smile. She met his eyes calmly.

"Dear me," he said, mocking her gravity. "It must have been serious."

"It was," said Elizabeth soberly. "It was--the murder!"

"The murder! Shocking!" said Modderwell. "I've read something about it. The newspapers say the identification of Koerner by that poor old woman was complete and positive; they say the shock was such that she fainted, and that he stood there all the time and sneered. I hope, Eades, you will see that the wretch gets his deserts promptly, and send him to the gallows, where he belongs!"

"Marriott here doesn't join you in that wish, I know," said Eades.

"No? Why not?" asked Modderwell. "Surely he--"

"He's going to defend the murderer." Eades spoke in a tone that had a sting for Marriott.

"Oh!" said Modderwell rather coldly. "I don't see how you can do such a thing, Marriott. For your own sake, as much as anybody's, I'm sorry I can't wish you success."

"I wish he hadn't undertaken the task," said Eades.

"I'm sure it must be most disagreeable," said Mrs. Ward, feeling that she must say something.

"Why do you wish it?" said Marriott, suddenly turning almost savagely on Eades.

"Why," said Eades, elevating his brows in a superior way, "I don't like to see you in such work. A criminal practice is the disreputable part of the profession."

"But you have a criminal practice."

"Oh, but on the other side!" said Modderwell. "And we all expect so much better things of Mr. Marriott."

"Oh, don't trouble yourselves about me!" said Marriott. "I'm sure I prefer my side of the case to Eades's."

The atmosphere was surcharged with bitterness. Mrs. Ward gave a sidelong glance of pain, deprecating such a _contretemps_.

"And I'm going to try to save him," Marriott was forging on.

"Well," said Eades, looking down on his large oval polished nails, and speaking in a tone that would finally dispose of the problem, "for my part, I revere the law and I want to see it enforced."

"Exactly!" Modderwell agreed. "And if there were fewer delays in bringing these criminals to justice, there would be fewer lynchings and more respect for the law."

Marriott did not even try to conceal the disgust with which he received this hackneyed and conventional formula of thoughtless respectability. He felt that it was useless to argue with Eades or Modderwell; it seemed to him that they had never thought seriously of such questions, and would not do so, but that they were merely echoing speeches they had heard all their lives, inherited speeches that had been in vogue for generations, ages, one might say.

"I am sure it must be a most disagreeable task," Mrs. Ward was saying, looking at her daughter in the hope that Elizabeth might relieve a situation with which she felt herself powerless to deal. Marriott seemed always to be introducing such topics, and she had the distaste of her class for the real vital questions of life. But Elizabeth was speaking.

"I'm sure that Gordon's task isn't more disagreeable than mine."

"Yours?" Mrs. Ward turned toward her daughter, dreading things even worse now.

"Yes," replied Elizabeth, looking about in pleasure at the surprise she had created.

"Why, what problem have you?" asked Modderwell.

"I've been sent for--to come to the prison to see--"

"Not _him_!" said Modderwell.

Eades started suddenly forward.

"No," said Elizabeth calmly, enjoying the situation, "his sister."

"His sister!"

"Yes," she turned to her mother. "You know, dear; Gusta. She's been arrested."

"Oh!" exclaimed Mrs. Ward. "Elizabeth! The idea! What impertinence! Who could have brought such an insolent message!" She looked at Marriott, as did the others.

"The idea!" Mrs. Ward went on. "Why, I had no notion he was _her_ brother. To think of our harboring such people!"

Mrs. Ward stiffened in her chair, with glances from time to time for Marriott and Elizabeth, in an attitude of chilling and austere social disapproval; then, as if she had forgotten to claim the reassurance she felt to be certain, she leaned forward, out of the attitude as it were, to say:

"Of course you sent the reply her assurance deserved."

"No," said Elizabeth in a bird-like tone, "I didn't. What would you do, Mr. Eades?"

"Why, of course you could not go to a prison," replied Eades.

"But you could, couldn't you? And you do?"

"Only when necessary."

"But you do, Mr. Modderwell?"

"Only professionally," said Modderwell solemnly, for once remembering his clerical dignity.

"Oh, professionally!" said Elizabeth with a meaning. "You go professionally, too, Gordon, don't you? And I--I can't go that way. I can go only--what shall I say?--humanly? So I suppose I can't go at all!"

"Certainly not," said Mrs. Ward. "How can you ask such a question?" She was now too disapproving for words. "I can not consent to your going at all, so let that end it."

"But, Mr. Modderwell," said Elizabeth, with a smile for her mother, "we pray, don't we, every Sunday for 'pity upon all prisoners and captives'?"

"That's entirely different," said Modderwell.

"What does it mean,--'I was in prison and ye visited me'?" She sat with her hands folded in humility, as if seeking wisdom and instruction.

"That was in another day," said Modderwell. "Society was not organized then as it is now; it was--all different, of course." Modderwell went on groping for justification. "If these people are repentant--are seeking to turn from their wickedness, the church has appointed the clergy to visit them and give them instruction."

"Then perhaps you'd better go!" Elizabeth's eyes sparkled, and she looked at Modderwell, who feared a joke or a trap; then at Eades, who was almost as deeply distressed as Mrs. Ward, and then at Marriott, whose eyes showed the relish with which he enjoyed the situation.

"I don't think she wishes to see me," said Modderwell, with a significance that did not have a tribute for Gusta. No one disputed him, and there was silence, in which Eades looked intently at Elizabeth, and then, just as he seemed on the point of speaking to her, he turned to Marriott and said:

"You certainly don't think that a proper place for her to go?"

"Oh," said Marriott, "don't refer to me; I'm out of it. I've been, I brought the message--it's--it's up to Elizabeth."

"Well," said Eades, turning to Elizabeth, "you surely can't be seriously considering such a thing. You don't know, of course, what kind of place that is, or what kind of people you would be going among, or what risks you would be exposing yourself to."

"There would be no danger, would there?" said Elizabeth in her most innocent manner. "There would be plenty of policemen at hand, wouldn't there,--in case of need?"

"Well, I don't think you'd willingly elect to go among policemen," said Eades.

"Perhaps you three would go with me?" suggested Elizabeth. "I'd be safe then--all I'd lack would be a physician to make my escort completely representative of the learned professions."

"The newspaper men would be there," said Eades, "you may be sure of that, and the publicity--"

At the word "publicity" Mrs. Ward cringed with genuine alarm.

"Do you find publicity so annoying?" asked Elizabeth, smiling on the three men.

"Elizabeth!" said Mrs. Ward, "I do wish you'd stop this nonsense! It may seem very amusing to you, but I assure you it is not amusing to me; I find it very distressing." She looked her distress, and then turned away in the disgust that was a part of her distress. "It would be shocking!" she said, when she seemed to them all to have had her say.

"I'm sorry to shock you all," said Elizabeth meekly. "It's very kind of you, I'm sure, to act as mentors and censors of my conduct. I feel sufficiently put down; you have helped me to a decision. I have decided, after hearing your arguments, and out of deference to your sentiments and opinions, to--"

They all looked up expectantly.

"--to go," she concluded.

She smiled on them all with serenity; and they looked at her with that blank helplessness that came over them whenever they tried to understand her.

X

Though Elizabeth, as long as Eades and Modderwell were there, had chosen to satirize her predicament, and had experienced the pleasure of shocking them by the decision she reached, she found when they had gone that night, and she was alone in her room, that it was no decision at all. The situation presented itself in all seriousness, and she found that she must deal with it, not in any whimsical spirit, but in sober earnestness. She found it to be a real problem, incapable of isolation from those artificialities which were all that made it a problem. She had found it easy and simple enough, and even proper and respectable to visit the poor in their homes, but when she contemplated visiting them in the prisons which seemed made for them alone, and were too often so much better than their homes, obstacles at once arose. As she more accurately imagined these obstacles, they became formidable. She sat by the table in her room, under the reading-lamp that stood among the books she kept beside her, and determined to think it out. She made elaborate preparations, deciding to marshal all the arguments and then make deductions and comparisons, and thus, by a process almost mathematical, determine what to do. But she never got beyond the preparations; her mind worked, after all, intuitively, she felt rather than thought; she imagined herself, in the morning, going to the police station, confronting the officers, finally, perhaps, seeing Gusta. She saw clearly what her family, her friends, her set, the people she knew, would say--how horrified they would be, how they would judge and condemn her. Her mother, Eades and Modderwell accurately represented the world she knew. And the newspapers, in their eagerness for every detail touching the tragedy, however remotely, would publish the fact! "This morning Miss Elizabeth Ward, daughter of Stephen Ward, the broker, called on the Koerner girl. Fashionably dressed--" She could already see the cold black types! It was impossible, unheard of. Gusta had no right--ah, Gusta! She saw the girl's face, pretty as ever, but sad now, and stained by tears, pleading for human companionship and sympathy. She remembered how Gusta had served her almost slavishly, how she had sat up at night for her, and helped her at her toilet, sending delicious little thrills through her by the magnetic touch of her soft fingers. If she should send for Gusta, how quickly she would come, though she had to crawl!

And what, after all, was it that made it hard? What had decreed that she, one girl, should not go to see another girl who was in trouble? Such a natural human action was dictated by the ethics and by the religion of her kind and by all the teachings of her church, and yet, when it was proposed to practise these precepts, she found them treated cynically, as if they were of no worth or meaning. That very evening the representatives of the law and of theology had urged against it!

At breakfast her mother sat at table with her. Mrs. Ward had breakfasted an hour earlier with her husband, but she had a kindly way of following the members of her family one after another to the table, and of entertaining them while they ate. She had told her husband of Elizabeth's contemplated visit to the prison, and then had decided to say nothing of it to Elizabeth, in the hope that the whim would have passed with the night. But Mrs. Ward could not long keep anything in her heart, and she was presently saying:

"I hope, dear, that you have given up that notion of going to see Gusta. I hope," she quickly added, putting it in the way she wished she had put it at first, "that you see your duty more clearly this morning."

"No," said Elizabeth, idly tilting a china cup in her fingers, and allowing the light that came through the tall, broad windows to fill it with the golden luminosity of the sun, "I don't see it clearly at all. I wish I did."

"Don't you think, dear, that you allow yourself to grow morbid, pondering over your duty so much?"

"I don't think I'm morbid." She would as readily have admitted that she was superstitious as that she was morbid.

"You have--what kind of conscience was it that Mr. Parrish was talking about the other night?" Mrs. Ward knitted the brows that life had marked so lightly.

"New England, I suppose," Elizabeth answered wearily. "But I have no New England conscience, mama. I have very little conscience at all, and as for my duty, I almost never do it. I am perfectly aware that if I did my duty I should lead an entirely different life; but I don't; I go on weakly, day after day, year after year, leading a perfectly useless existence, surrounded by wholly artificial duties, and now these same artificial duties keep me from performing my real duty--which, just now, seems to me to go and see poor little Gusta."

Mrs. Ward was more disturbed, now that her daughter saw her duty, than she had been a moment before, when she had declared she could not see it.

"I do wish you could be like other girls," she said, speaking her thought as her habit was.

"I am," said Elizabeth, "am I not?"

"Well," Mrs. Ward qualified.

"In all except one thing."

Mrs. Ward looked her question.

"I'm not getting married very fast."

"No," said Mrs. Ward.

Elizabeth laughed for the first time that morning.

"You dear little mother, I really believe you're anxious to get rid of me!"

"Why, Elizabeth!" said Mrs. Ward, lifting her eyes and then lowering them suddenly, in her reproach. "How can you say such a thing!"

"But never mind," Elizabeth went on:

"'If no one ever marries me I sha'n't mind very much; I shall buy a squirrel in a cage and a little rabbit hutch. I shall have a cottage in a wood, and a pony all my own, And a little lamb quite clean and tame that I can take to town. And when I'm getting really old--at twenty-eight or nine-- I shall buy a little orphan girl and bring her up as mine."

She smiled as she finished her quotation, and then suddenly sobered as she said:

"I'm twenty-seven already!"

"Who wrote that?" asked Mrs. Ward.

"Alma-Tadema."

"Oh! I thought Mr. Marriott might have done it. It's certainly very silly."

Nora had brought her breakfast, and the action recalled Gusta to Elizabeth.

"What did papa say--about my going to the prison?"

"He said," Mrs. Ward began gladly, "that, of course, we all felt very sorry for Gusta, but that you couldn't go _there_. He said it would be absurd; that you don't understand." Mrs. Ward was silent for a moment, knowing how much greater the father's influence was than her own. She was glad that Elizabeth seemed altogether docile and practicable this morning.

"There's a good girl now," Mrs. Ward added in the hope of pressing her advantage home.

Elizabeth gave a little start of irritability.

"I wish you wouldn't talk to me in that way, mama. I'm not a child."

"But surely your father knows best, dear," the mother insisted, "more than--we do."

"Not necessarily," said Elizabeth.

"Why! How can you say so!" exclaimed Mrs. Ward, who bowed to all authority as a part of her religion.

"Papa takes merely the conventional view," Elizabeth went on, "and the conventional view is taken without thought."

"But--surely--" Mrs. Ward stammered, in the impotence of one who, easily convinced without reasons, has no reasons at command--"surely--you heard what Mr. Modderwell and Mr. Eades said."

"Their view is conventional," said Elizabeth, "and proper." She gave a little curl of her lip as she spoke this last word.

"Well, I'm sure, dear, that we all wish to be proper, and Mr. Modderwell and Mr. Eades--"

"Oh! Don't quote those two men to me! Two such prigs, such Pharisees, I never saw!"

Mrs. Ward looked at her daughter in a new horror. "Why, Elizabeth! I'm surprised--I thought that Mr. Eades especially--"

"Well, don't you think Mr. Eades especially at all! He's not especially; he thinks he is, no doubt, and so does everybody else, but they have no right to, and hereafter Mr. Eades can't come here--that's all!" Her eyes were flashing.

Mrs. Ward ventured no further just then, but presently resumed:

"Think what people would say!"

"Oh, mother! Please don't use that argument. I have often told you that I don't care at all what people say."

"I only wish you cared more." She looked at Elizabeth helplessly a moment and then broke out with what she had been tempted all along to say.

"It's that Gordon Marriott! That's what it is! He has such strange, wild notions. He defends these criminals, it seems. I don't see how he can approve their actions the way he does."

"Why, mother!" said Elizabeth. "How you talk! You might think I was a little child with no mind of my own. And besides, Gordon does not approve of their actions, he disapproves of their actions, but he recognizes them as people, as human beings, just like us--"

"Just like us!" exclaimed Mrs. Ward, withdrawing herself wholly from any contact with the mere suggestion. "Just like us, indeed! Well, I'd have him know they're not like us, at all!"

Elizabeth saw how hopeless it was to try to make her mother understand Marriott's attitude, especially when she found it difficult to understand it herself.

"Just like us, indeed!" Mrs. Ward repeated. "You are certainly the most astonishing girl."

"What's the excitement?"

It was Dick, just entering the room. He was clean-shaved, and glowing from his plunge, his face ruddy and his eyes bright. He was good-humored that morning, for he had had nearly five hours of sleep. His mother poured his coffee and he began eating his breakfast.

"What's the matter, Bess?" he asked, seizing the paper his father had laid aside, and glancing at it in a man's ability to read and converse with women at the same time.

"Why, she threatens to go to the jail," Mrs. Ward hastened to reply, in her eagerness for a partizan in her cause. "And her father and Mr. Modderwell and Mr. Eades have all advised her that it would be improper--to say nothing of my own wishes in the matter."

Dick, to his mother's disappointment, only laughed.

"What do you want to go there for? Some of your friends been run in?"

"Yes," said Elizabeth calmly.

"That's too bad! Why don't you have Eades let 'em out,--you certainly have a swell pull with him."

"You have just had Mr. Eades's opinion from mama."

"Who is your friend?"

"Gusta."

Dick's face was suddenly swept with scarlet, and he started--looked up, then hastily raised his coffee-cup, drained its last drop, flung his napkin on his plate, and said:

"Oh, that girl that used to work for us?"

"Yes."

"Well, mother's right."

Mrs. Ward looked her gratitude.

"Of course, you can't go."

"I can't?"

He had risen from the table, and Elizabeth's tone impressed him.

"Look here," he said peremptorily. "You just can't go there, that's all there is about it!"

"Why not?"

"Because you can't. It wouldn't do, it wouldn't be the thing; you ought to know that."

"But why?" Elizabeth persisted. "I want a reason."

"You don't mean to say you seriously consider it?" asked Dick in real alarm.

"Yes, I do."

Dick suddenly grew excited, his eyes flamed, and he was very red.

"Look here, Bess," he said. "You just can't, that's all."

"Can't I?" she said, and she gave a little laugh. It was not her usual pleasant laugh.

"No, you can't." He spoke more than insistently, he spoke angrily. He snatched out his thin gold watch and glanced at it. "I've not got time to discuss this thing. You just can't go--that's all there is to it."

Elizabeth rose from the table calmly, went out of the room, and Dick, after a hesitant moment, ran after her.

"Bess! Bess!"

She stopped.

"See here, Bess, you must not go there to see that girl. I'm surprised! She isn't the sort, you understand! You don't know what you're doing. Now look here--wait a minute!" He caught her by the arm. "I tell you it's not the thing, you mustn't!"

He was quite beside himself.

"You seem greatly excited," she said.

He made a great effort, controlled himself, and, still holding her, began to plead.

"Please don't go, Bess!" he said. "Please don't!"

"But why--_why_?" she insisted.

"Because I say so."

"Humph!"

"Because I ask it. Please don't; do it for me, this once. You'll be sorry if you do. Please don't go!"

His eyes were full of the plea he was incoherently stammering. He was greatly moved, greatly agitated.

"Why, Dick," she said, "what is the matter with you? You seem to take this trifle very much to heart. You seem to have some special interest, some deep reason. I wish you'd tell me what it is. Why shouldn't I go to see poor Gusta? She's in trouble--she was always good to me."

There was a sudden strange wild expression in his face, his lips were slightly parted. The moments were flying, and he must be off.

"Oh, Bess," he said, "for God's sake, don't go!"

He implored her in his look, then snatching out his watch ran to the hall, seized his hat and top-coat, and went out, flinging on his coat as he ran, and leaving the door flying wide behind him. Elizabeth stood looking after him. When she turned, her mother was in the room.

"What can be the matter with Dick?" said Elizabeth. "I never saw him so excited before. He seemed--" She paused, and bit her lip.

"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Ward calmly, "you see now, I hope, just how the world regards such a wild action. It was his love and respect for his sister, of course."

XI

"No, don't say anything more. I've thought it all out; my duty's clear now, I must go." Elizabeth laid her hand on her father's shoulder, and though he turned from the great desk at which he sat in his private office, he hesitated. "Come on."

"That conscience of yours, Bess--" he began, drawing down the lid of his desk.

"Yes, I know, but I can't help it."

"How did you decide at last to go?" asked Ward, as they walked rapidly along in the crowded street.

"Well, it tortured me--I couldn't decide. It seemed so difficult,--every one--mama, our dear Modderwell, Mr. Eades, Dick--he nearly lost his reason, and he did lose his temper--thought it impossible. But at last I decided--"

"Yes?"

"--just to go."

Elizabeth gave a little laugh at this not very illuminating explanation.

"I didn't know what the proprieties were," she went on. "Our little code had not provided rules--what to wear, the chaperonage, and all that, you know. And then,"--she abandoned her irony,--"I thought of you."

"As a last resort, eh?" said Ward, looking fondly into her face, flushing behind her veil in the keen November air. She drew close to him, put her hand on his arm.

"Yes," she said, "and as a first resort, as a constant, never-failing resort."

She gave his arm a little squeeze, and he pressed her hand to his side in silence.

"Do you know where it is?" Elizabeth asked presently.

"Oh, yes, I was there once."

"When?"

"When that boy of mine was arrested--Graves."

"Yes, I remember."

"I wonder," he said after a pause, and he paused again at the question he seemed to fear--"whatever became of him!"

She had never told him of that day at the charity bureau; she wondered if she should do so now, but she heard him sigh, and she let it pass.

"Yes," he went on as if she had been privy to his rapid train of thought, "I suppose such things must be; something must be done with them, of course. I hope I did right."

At the Central Station they encountered a young policeman, who, when he saw Ward, evidently recognized him as a man of affairs, for he came forward with flattering alacrity, touching his helmet in the respect which authority always has ready for the rich, as perhaps the real source of its privilege and its strength. The young policeman, with a smile on his pleasant Irish face, took Ward and Elizabeth in charge.

"I'll take yez to the front office," he said, "and let yez speak to the inspector himself."

When McFee understood who Ward was, he came out instantly, with an unofficial readiness to make a difficult experience easy for them; he implied an instant and delicate recognition of the patronage he saw, or thought it proper to see, in this visit, and he even expressed a sympathy for Gusta herself.

"I'm glad you came, Mr. Ward," he said. "We had to hold the poor girl, of course, for a few days, until we could finish our investigation of the case. Will you go up--or shall I have her brought down?"

"Oh, we'll go up," said Ward, wondering where that was, and discovering suddenly in himself the usual morbid desire to look at the inmates of a prison. The sergeant detailed to conduct them led them up two broad flights of stairs, and down a long hall, where, at his step, a matron appeared, with a bunch of keys hanging at her white apron. Elizabeth went with none of the sensations she had expected. She had been surprised to find the police station a quiet place, and the policemen themselves had been very polite, obliging and disinterested. But when the matron unlocked one of the doors, and stood aside, Elizabeth felt her breast flutter with fear.

The sergeant stood in the hall, silent and unconcerned, and when the matron asked him if he would be present at the interview he shook his head in a way that indicated the occasion as one of those when rules and regulations may be suspended. Ward, though he would have liked to go in, elected to remain outside with the sergeant, and as he did this he smiled reassuringly at Elizabeth, just then hesitating on the threshold.

"Oh, just step right in," said the matron, standing politely aside. And Elizabeth drew a deep breath and took the step.

She entered a small vestibule formed of high partitions of flanged boards that were painted drab; and she waited another moment, with its gathering anxiety and apprehension, for the matron to unlock a second door. The door opened with a whine and there, at the other end of the room in the morning light that struggled through the dirty glass of the grated window, she saw Gusta. The girl sat on a common wooden chair that had once been yellow, her hat on, her hands gloved and folded in her lap, as if in another instant she were to leave the room she somehow had an air of refusing to identify herself with.

"She's sat that way ever since she came," the matron whispered. "She hasn't slep' a wink, nor e't a mouthful."

Elizabeth's glance swept the room which was Gusta's prison, its walls lined higher than her head with sheet-iron; on one side a narrow cot, frowsy, filthy, that looked as if it were never made, though the dirty pillow told how many persons had slept in it--or tried to sleep in it. There was a wooden table, with a battered tin cup, a few crusts and crumbs of rye bread, and cockroaches that raced energetically about, pausing now and then to wave their inquisitive antennae, and, besides, a cheap, small edition of the Bible, adding with a kind of brutal mockery the final touch of squalor to the room.

Gusta moved, looked up, made sure, and then suddenly rose and came toward her.

"I knew you'd come, Miss Elizabeth," the girl said, with a relief that compromised the certainty she had just expressed.

"I came as soon as I could, Gusta," said Elizabeth, with an amused conjecture as to what Gusta might think had the girl known what difficulties she had had in getting there at all.

"Yes," said Gusta, "thank you, I--"

She blushed to her throat. They stood there in the middle of that common prison; a sudden constraint lay on them. Elizabeth, conscious of the difficulty of the whole situation, and with a little palpitating fear at being in a prison at all--a haunting apprehension of some mistake, some oversight, some sudden slip or sliding of a bolt--did not know what to say to Gusta now that she was there. She felt helpless, there was not even a chair to sit in; she shuddered at the thought of contact with any of the mean articles of furniture, and stood rigidly in the middle of the room. She looked at Gusta closely; already, of course, with her feminine instinct, she had taken in Gusta's dress--the clothes that she instantly recognized as being better than Gusta had ever before worn--a hat heavy with plumes, a tan coat, long and of that extreme mode which foretold its early passing from the fashion, the high-heeled boots. Her coat was open and revealed a thin bodice with a lace yoke, and a chain of some sort. An odor of perfume enveloped her. The whole costume was distasteful to Elizabeth, it was something too much, and had an indefinable quality of tawdriness that was hard to confirm, until she saw in it, somehow, the first signs of moral disintegration. And this showed in Gusta's face, fuller--as was her whole figure--than Elizabeth remembered it, and in a certain coarseness of expression that had scarcely as yet gone the length of fixing itself in lines. Elizabeth felt something that she recoiled from, and her attitude stiffened imperceptibly. But not imperceptibly to Gusta, who was a woman, too, and had an instant sense of the woman in Elizabeth shrinking from what the woman in her no longer had to protect itself with, and she felt the woman's rush of anger and rebellion in such a relation. But then, she softened, and looked up with big tears. She had a sudden yearning to fling herself on Elizabeth's breast, but leave was wanting, and then, almost desperately, for she must assert her sisterhood, must touch and cling to her, she seized Elizabeth's hand and held it.

"Oh, Miss Elizabeth," she said, "I oughtn't to 'av' sent for you. I know I had no right; but you was always good to me, and I had no one. I've done nothing. I've done nothing, honest, honest, Miss Elizabeth, I've done nothing. I don't know what I'm here for at all; they won't tell me. And Archie, too, it must have something to do with him, but he's innocent, too. He hasn't done nothing either. Won't you believe me? Oh, say you will!"

She still clung to Elizabeth's hand, and now she pressed it in both her own, and raised it, and came closer, and looked into Elizabeth's face.

"Say you believe me!" she insisted, and Elizabeth, half in fear, as though to pacify a maniac, nodded.

"Of course, of course, Gusta."

"You mean it?"

"Surely I do."

"And you know I'm just as good as I ever was, don't you?"

"Why--of course, I do, Gusta." It is so hard to lie; the truth, in its divine persistence, springs so incautiously to the eyes before it can be checked at the lips.

The tears dried suddenly in Gusta's blue eyes. She spoke fiercely.

"You don't mean it! No, you don't mean it! I see you don't--you needn't say you do! Oh, you needn't say you do!"

She squeezed Elizabeth's hand almost maliciously and Elizabeth winced with pain.

"You--you don't know!" Gusta went on. And then she hesitated, seemed to deliberate on the verge of a certain desperation, to pause for an instant before a temptation to which she longed to yield.

"I could tell you something," she said significantly.

A wonder gathered in Elizabeth's eyes. Her heart was beating rapidly, she could feel it throbbing.

"Do you know why I sent for you--what I had to tell you?"

She was looking directly in Elizabeth's eyes; the faces of both girls became pale. And Elizabeth groped in her startled mind for some clear recognition, some postulation of a fact, a horrible, blasting certitude that was beginning to formulate itself, a certitude that would have swept away in an instant all those formal barriers that had stood in the way of her coming to this haggard prison. She shuddered, and closed her mind, as she closed her eyes just then, to shut out the look in the eyes of this imprisoned girl.

But the moment was too tense to last. Some mercy was in the breast of the girl to whom life had shown so little mercy. Voluntarily, she released Elizabeth, and put up her hands to her face, and shook with sobs.

"Don't, don't, Gusta," Elizabeth pleaded, "don't cry, dear."

The endearment made Gusta cry the harder. And then Elizabeth, who had shrunk from her and from everything in the room, put her arms about her, and supported her, and patted her shoulder and repeated:

"There, dear, there, you mustn't cry."

And then presently:

"Tell me what I can do to help you. I want to help you."

Gusta sobbed a moment longer.

"Nothing, there is nothing," she said. "I just wanted you. I wanted some one--"

"Yes, I understand," said Elizabeth. She did understand many things now that made life clearer, if sadder.

"I wanted you to tell my poor old mother," said Gusta. "That's all--that's what I had to tell you."

She said it so unconvincingly, and looked up suddenly with a wan smile that begged forgiveness, and then Elizabeth did what a while before would have been impossible--she kissed the girl's cheek. And Gusta cuddled close to her in a peace that almost purred, and was contented.

Gusta was held for a week; then released.

XII

Archie was looking well that Monday morning in January on which his trial was to begin. He had slept soundly in his canvas hammock; not even the whimpering of Reinhart, the young sneak thief whom every one in the jail detested, nor the strange noises and startled outcries he made in his sleep--when he did sleep--had disturbed him. The night before, Utter had allowed Archie a bath, though he had broken a rule in doing so, and that morning Archie had borrowed a whisk from Utter, brushed his old clothes industriously, and then he had put on the underwear his mother had washed and patched and mended, and the shirt of blue and white stripes Marriott had provided. Then with scrupulous care he set his cell in order, arranged his few things on the little table--the deck of cards, the yellow-covered dog's-eared novel and a broken comb. Beside these, lay his fresh collar and his beloved blue cravat with the white polka dots; his coat and waistcoat hung over the back of his chair. At seven o'clock Willie Kirkpatrick, alias "Toughie," a boy who, after two terms in the Reform School, was now going to the Intermediate Prison, had brought in the bread and coffee. At eight o'clock Archie was turned into the corridor, and with him Blanco, the bigamist, whose two young wives were being held as witnesses in the women's quarter. Blanco was a barber, and he made himself useful by shaving the other prisoners. This morning, with scissors, razor, lather-brush and cup, he took especial pains with Archie. Now and then he paused, cocked his little head with its plume of black hair, and surveyed his handiwork with honest pride.

"I'll fix you up swell, Dutch, so's they'll have to acquit you."

From the cells came laughter. The prisoners began to josh Blanco--it was one of their few pastimes.

"Don't stand for one of them gilly hair-cuts, Dutch," cried Billy Whee, a porch-climber. "It'll be a fritzer, sure."

"Yes, he'll make your knob look like a mop."

"When I was doing my bit at the Pork Dump," began O'Grady, in the tone that portends a story; the cell doors began to rattle.

"Cheese it," cried the voices. They had grown tired of O'Grady's boasting.

After Archie had returned to his cell, an English thief whom they called the Duke, began to sing in a clear tenor voice, to the tune of _Dixie_:

"I wish there were no prisons, I do, I does--'cause why?-- This old treadmill makes me feel ill, I only pinch my belly for to fill, Wi' me 'ands, Wi' me dukes, Wi' me clawrs, Me mud hooks."

Archie scowled; he wished, for once, the Duke would keep still. He was trying to think, trying to assure himself that his trial would turn out well. Day after day, Marriott had come, and for hours he and Archie had sat in the long gray corridor, in the dry atmosphere of the overheated jail, conferring in whispers, because Archie knew Danner was listening at the peep-hole in the wall. Marriott was perplexed; how could he get Archie's true story before the jury? He had even consulted Elizabeth, told her the story.

"Oh, horrible!" she exclaimed. "But surely, you can tell the jury--surely they will sympathize."

He had shaken his head.

"Why not?"

"Because," said Marriott, "the rules of evidence are designed to keep out the truth."

"But can't Archie tell it?"

"I don't dare to let him take the stand."

"Why?"

"Because he'll be convicted if he does."

"And if he doesn't?"

"The same result--he'll be convicted. He's convicted now--the mob has already done that; the trial is only a conventional formality."

"What mob?"

"The newspapers, the preachers, the great moral, respectable mob that holds a man guilty until he proves himself innocent, and, if he asserts his innocence, looks even on that as a proof of his guilt."

Eades had announced that Archie would be tried for the murder of Kouka, and Elizabeth had been impressed.

"Wasn't that rather fine in him?" she asked.

"Yes," said Marriott, "and very clever."

"Clever?"

"He means to try him for the murder of Kouka, and convict him of the murder of Margaret Flanagan."

This morning then, Archie awaited the hour of his trial. The night before he had played solitaire, trying to read his fate in the fall of the fickle cards. The first game he had lost; then he decided that he was entitled to two out of three chances. He played again, and lost. Then he decided to play another--best three out of five--he might win the other two. He played and won the third game. He lost the fourth. And now he stood and waited. At half-past eight he drew on his waistcoat and his coat, giving them a final brushing. The Duke was singing again:

"An' I wish there were no bobbies, I do, I does--'cause why?-- This oakum pickin' gives me such a lickin', But still I likes to do a bit o' nickin', Wi' me 'ands, Wi' me dukes, Wi' me clawrs, Me mud hooks."

The last words of the song were punctuated by the clanging of the bolts.

"Koerner!" called out Danner's voice.

He was throwing the locks of Archie's cell from the big steel box by the door. Archie sprang to his feet, gave his cravat a final touch, and adjusted his coat. The steel door went gliding back in its hard grooves. He stepped out, thence through the other door, and there Danner waited. Archie held out his right hand, Danner slipped on the handcuff and its spring clicked. As they went out, cries came from the cells.

"So long, Archie! Good luck to ye!"

"Good luck!" came the chorus.

Archie, standing in the strange light outside the prison, seemed to take on a changed aspect. He had grown fat during his two months' idleness in jail; his skin was white and soft. Now in the gray light of the January morning, his face had lost the ruddy glow Blanco's shaving had imparted to it, and was pale. The snow lay on the ground, the air was cold and raw. Archie gasped in the surprise his lungs felt in this atmosphere, startling in its cold and freshness after the hot air of the steam-heated jail. He filled his lungs with the air and blew it out again in frost. A shudder ran through him. Danner was jovial for once.

"Fine day," he said.

Archie did not reply. He hated Danner more than he hated most people, and he hated every one, almost--save Marriott and Gusta, and his father and mother and the kids, and Elizabeth, who, as Marriott had reported to him, wished him well. The air and the light gave him pain--he shrank from them; he had not been outdoors since that day, a month before, when he had been taken over with Curly to be arraigned. He looked on the world again, the world that was so strange and new. Once more there swept over him that queer sensation that always came as he stepped out of prison, the sensation of fear, of uncertainty, a doubt of reality, the blur before his eyes. The streets were deserted, the houses still. The snow crunched frigidly under his heels. The handcuff chain clicked in the frost. A wagon turned the corner; the driver walked beside his steaming horses and flapped his arms about his shoulders; the wheels whined on the snow. Archie looked at the man; it was strange, he felt, that a man should be free to walk the streets and flap his arms that way.

XIII

The court-room was already crowded and buzzed with a pleasant yet excited hum of voices. Mrs. Koerner, the first to appear that morning, had been given a seat directly in front of the bailiff's elevated desk, where she was to sit, a conspicuous figure of sorrow through all the trial. The twenty-four aged men of the special venire were seated inside the bar; the reporters were at their table; two policemen, wearing their heavy overcoats as if they were no discomfort at all, were gossiping together; Giles, the court stenographer, grown old in automatic service, wandered about in a thin coat with ragged sleeves, its shoulders powdered by dandruff. The life that for so many years had been unfolded to him in a series of dramatic tableaux could have interested him but little; he seemed, indeed, to have reduced it to mere symbols--dashes, pothooks, points and outlines. At one of the trial tables sat Marriott. He was nervous, not having slept well the night before. At the table with him was Pennell, the young lawyer with the gift of the gab, who had been so unfortunate as to win the oratorical prize in college. Pennell, at the last moment, somehow--Marriott never knew exactly how--had insinuated himself into the case. He explained his appearance by saying, in his grand, mysterious way, that he had been engaged by "certain influential friends" of Archie's, who preferred to remain unknown. Archie, who did not know that he had any influential friends, could not explain Pennell's presence, but, feeling that the more lawyers he had the better, he was secretly glad, and Marriott, who bowed before the whole situation in a kind of helpless fatalism, made no objection.

But suddenly a change occurred. The atmosphere became electric. Men started up, their eyes glistened, they leaned forward, a low murmur arose; the old bailiff started violently, smote his marble slab with his gavel, and Mark Bentley, very red in the face, was seen striding toward the door, waving his authoritative hand and calling:

"Back there! Get back, I tell you!"

Archie had just been brought in. Danner led him to the trial table, and he took his seat, hid his manacled hands, and sat motionless, gazing straight before him, unconsciously obeying some long-hidden, obscure instinct of the hunted. But Marriott's hand had found his.

"How did you sleep last night?"

"Pretty well," said Archie as politely as possible, the occasion seeming to require those conventionalities of which he was so very uncertain.

"Well, we'll soon be at it now," said Marriott, thinking, however, of his own wretched night.

Archie watched Marriott tumble the papers out of his green bag and arrange his briefs and memoranda; he did not take his eyes from the green bag. Whenever he did, they met other eyes that looked at him with an expression that combined all the lower, brutish impulses--curiosity, fear and hate.

At half-past nine Glassford, having finished his cigar, entered the court-room. Directly behind him came Eades. The bailiff, who if he had been drowsing again, had been drowsing as always, with one eye on Glassford, now got to his feet, and, as Glassford ascended the bench, struck the marble slab with the gavel and in the instant stillness, repeated his worn formula.

"The case of the State _versus_ Archie Koerner," said Glassford, reading from his docket. He glanced over his gold glasses at Marriott.

"Are you ready for trial, Mr. Marriott?"

"We are ready, your Honor."

Danner unlocked the handcuffs from Archie's wrists. The reporters began writing feverishly; already messenger boys were coming and going. Gard, the clerk, was calling the roll of the venire-men, and when he had done, it was time for the lawyers to begin examining them; but before this could be done, it was necessary that a formula be repeated to them, and Gard told them to stand up. As soon as they could comprehend his meaning, they got to their feet with their various difficulties, and Gard proceeded:

"'You and each of you do solemnly swear'--hold up your right hands--'that the answers you are about to give will be the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, s'elp you God.'"

And then, in a lower voice, as if the real business were now to begin, he called:

"William C. McGiffert."

An aged man came forward leaning on a crooked cane, and took the witness-stand. Eades began his examination by telling McGiffert about the death of Kouka, and, when he had finished, asked him if he had ever heard of it, or read of it, or formed or expressed an opinion about it, if he were related to Koerner, or to Marriott, or to Pennell, or had ever employed them, or either of them, as attorney. Then he asked McGiffert if Lamborn or himself had acted as his attorney; finally, with an air of the utmost fairness, as if he would not for worlds have any but an entirely unprejudiced jury, he appealed to McGiffert to tell whether he knew of any reason why he could not give Koerner a fair and impartial trial and render a verdict according to the law and the evidence. McGiffert had shaken his head hastily at each one of Eades's questions. Eades paused impressively, then asked a question that sent a thrill through the onlookers.

"Mr. McGiffert, have you any conscientious scruples against capital punishment?"

The suggestive possibility affected men strangely; they leaned forward, hanging on the reply. McGiffert shook his aged head again as if it were a gratuitous reflection on his character to hint at his being in any way unfit for this office.

Eades, having had McGiffert on many juries and knowing that he invariably voted for conviction, with a graceful gesture of his white hand, waved him, as it were, to Marriott.

Marriott, after an examination he knew was hopeless from the start, found no cause for challenge; and after Glassford, as if some deeper possibilities had occurred to his superior mind, had asked McGiffert about his age and his health, McGiffert, with the relief of a man who has passed successfully through an ordeal, climbed hastily into the jury-box and retreated to its farthest corner, as if it were a safe place from which he could not be dislodged.

One by one the venire-men were examined; several were excused. One old man, although he protested, was manifestly deaf, another had employed Eades, another rose and, hanging over the desk, whispered to Glassford, who immediately excused him because of physical disability; finally, by noon, the panel was full.

Marriott scanned the twelve bearded men. Viewed as a whole, they seemed well to typify the great institution of the English law, centuries old; their beards clung to them like the gray moss of a live-oak, hoary with age. But these patriarchal beards could lend little dignity. The old men sat there suggesting the diseases of age--rheumatism, lumbago, palsy--death and decay. Their faces were mere masks of clay; they were lacking in imagination, in humor, in sympathy, in pity, in mercy, all the high human qualities having long ago died within them, leaving their bodies untenanted. He knew they were ready at that moment to convict Archie. He had sixteen peremptory challenges, and as he reflected that these would soon be exhausted and that the men who were thus excused would be replaced by others just like them, a despair seized him. But it was imperative to get rid of these; they were, for the most part, professional jurors who would invariably vote for the state. He must begin to use those precious peremptory challenges and compel the court to issue special venires; in the haste and confusion men might be found who would be less professional and more intelligent. In this case, involving, as it did, the Flanagan case, he needed strong, independent men, whereas Eades required instead weak, subservient and stupid men--men with crystallized minds, dull, orthodox, inaccessible to ideas. Furthermore, Marriott recalled that juries are not made up of twelve men, as the law boasts, but of two or three men, or more often, of one man stronger than the rest, who dominates his fellows, lays his masterful will upon them, and bends them to his wishes and his prejudices. Perhaps, in some special venire, quite by accident, when the sheriff's deputies began to scour the town, there might be found one such man, who, for some obscure reason, would incline to Archie's side. On such a caprice of fate hung Archie's life.

"Mr. Marriott, the court is waiting," said Glassford.

"If your Honor will indulge us a moment." Then Marriott whispered to Archie.

"Je's," said Archie. "Looks cheesy to me. Looks to me like a lot o' rummy blokes. They've got it all framed up now. Them old hoosiers would cop the cush all right." Archie whispered with the sneering cynicism of one who holds the belief of the all-powerful influence of money. "That old harp back there in the corner with the green benny on, he looks like a bull to me. Go after him and knock him off."

Archie had indicated quite openly an aged Irishman who sat huddled in a faded overcoat in the rear row. He had white chin-whiskers and a long, broad, clean-shaven upper lip.

"Mr. McGee," said Marriott, rising, "what business are you in?"

"Oi'm retired, sor."

"Were you ever on the police force?"

"Well, sor," said McGee uneasily, "Oi wor wance, sor--yes, sor."

He looked up now with a nonchalant air.

"How long were you on the force?"

"Twinty-wan years, sor."

Marriott questioned him at length, finally challenged him for cause; Eades objected, they argued, and Glassford overruled the challenge. Then, having certainly offended McGee, there was nothing for Marriott to do but to submit a peremptory challenge.

By night the venire was exhausted and Glassford ordered a special venire. With the serving of the special venires, a difference was noted; whereas the men on the first venire had studied how they should qualify themselves for jury service, the men whom Bentley and his deputies now haled into court, studied how they should disqualify themselves. They were all impatient of the senseless tedium, of the costly interruption, being men with real work to do. They replied like experts; all had read of the case, all had formed and expressed opinions, and their opinions could not be shaken by any evidence that might be adduced. Glassford plied them with metaphysical questions; drew psychological distinctions; but in vain. Many of them had scruples against capital punishment; a score of them, fifty of them swore to this, to the delight but disappointment of Marriott, the discomfiture of Eades, the perplexity of Glassford, and the dull amazement of the men in the jury-box, who had no conscientious scruples against anything. Still others had certificates of various kinds exempting them from jury service, which they exhibited with calm smiles and were excused.

Marriott eked out his precious peremptory challenges for three days; venire after venire was issued, and Bentley was happy, for all this meant fees. The crowd diminished. The lawyers grew weary and no longer exerted themselves to say clever things. The sky, which had sparkled a cold, frosty blue for days, was overcast with gray clouds, the atmosphere was saturated with a chill and penetrating moisture. This atmosphere affected men strangely. Eades and Marriott had a dispute, Danner ordered Archie to sit erect, Glassford sharply rebuked two citizens who did not believe in capital punishment for their lack of a sense of civic duty; then he whirled about in his chair and exclaimed angrily:

"We'll not adjourn to-night until we have a jury!"

Marriott had one peremptory challenge left, and eleven men had been accepted. It was now a matter of luck.

"George Holden," called the clerk.

A broad-shouldered man of medium height came promptly forward, took the oath, leaned back in his chair, crossed his legs, folded his strong hands in his lap, and raised a pair of deep blue eyes to Eades. As he sat there, something in the poise of his fine head, with its thick curly hair, claimed attention; interest revived; every one looked at him. He had a smooth-shaven face and a wide white brow, and the collar of his dark flannel shirt was open, freeing his strong neck and ample throat. Marriott suddenly conceived a liking for the man.

"What is your occupation, Mr. Holden?" asked Eades.

"Machinist."

He had read the newspaper accounts of the murder of Kouka and of the Flanagan tragedy, but he had not formed any real opinions; he may have formed impressions, but he could lay them aside; he didn't go much anyway, he said, on what he read in the newspapers.

The formal questions were put and answered to Eades's satisfaction; then came the real question:

"Are you opposed to capital punishment?"

"Yes, sir, I am."

"Are your scruples conscientious ones?"

"Yes, sir."

"And not to be overcome?"

"They are not to be overcome."

Just then Glassford, impatient of all these scruples he was hearing so much about, whirled on Holden with a scowl. Holden turned; his blue eyes met those of Glassford.

"You don't want to sit on this jury, do you?" demanded Glassford.

"No, sir."

"It would interfere with your business, wouldn't it?"

"No, sir."

"It wouldn't? You earn good wages, don't you?"

"I'm out of a job now, sir."

"Well, are your scruples such that you can't lay them aside long enough to do your duty as a citizen?"

Holden flushed.

"I can't lay them aside, no; but it doesn't follow that I can't do my duty as a citizen."

"But," began Glassford in his tone of legal argument, "assuming that the law as it is should be altered, nevertheless, knowing the law, can you lay aside your private views and perform a public duty by applying this law to a given state of facts as the court instructs you?--You understand me, do you?"

"I understand perfectly, sir."

"Well, what do you say?"

"I have no private views that are not public ones; I can't see any distinction. I say that I would not take an oath that might oblige me to vote to kill a man."

The atmosphere became tense.

"But assuming you had taken an oath, would you rather break that oath than discharge your duty?"

"I wouldn't take such an oath."

"Then you place your private opinions above the law, do you?"

"In this instance, I do. I don't believe in that law, and I won't help enforce it."

"You mean,"--Glassford was plainly angry--"that you wouldn't take an oath to enforce a law you didn't believe in?"

"That's just what I mean."

Glassford looked an instant at Holden as if trying to decide what he had better do with him for these heresies. Holden's blue eyes were steady; they returned Glassford's gaze, seeming scarcely to wink. And just then Eades, fearing the effect of the man's scruples on the jury, thought best to relieve the situation.

"We submit a challenge for cause," he said.

"Allowed," Glassford snapped. "We don't want such men as you on juries."

He whirled about in his chair, turned his back on Holden, and as Holden walked directly from the courtroom, the eyes of all followed him, with a strange interest in a man who was considered unfit for jury service because he had principles he would not forego.

"Samuel Walker," called Gard.

An aged, doddering man tottered to the chair. He scarcely spoke in answer to Eades's questions; when he did, it was in the weak, quavering voice of senility. He had no occupation, knew none of the lawyers, had no knowledge of the case, had neither formed nor expressed opinions, and had no scruples against capital punishment.

"You believe that the laws should be executed and upheld?" said Eades in an insinuating tone.

"Heh?" said the old man, leaning forward with an open palm behind his hairy ear.

Eades repeated the question and the fellow nodded.

Marriott turned in disgust from this stupid, senile man who was qualified, as impatiently as Glassford had turned from the intelligent man who was disqualified. And then, just as Walker was making for the jury-box, Marriott used his last peremptory challenge.

A moment later he saw his mistake. Gard was calling a name he knew.

"William A. Broadwell."

The short winter afternoon was closing in. For half an hour shadows had been stealing wearily through the room; the spectators had become a blurred mass, the jurymen lounging in the box had grown indistinct in the gloom. For some time, the green shade of the electric lamp on the clerk's desk had been glowing, but now, as Broadwell came forward, the old bailiff, shuffling across the floor, suddenly switched on the electricity, and group by group, cluster by cluster, the bulbs sprang into light, first in the ceiling, then on the walls, then about the judge's bench. There was a touch of the theatrical in it, for the lights seemed to have been switched on to illuminate the entrance of this important man.

He was sworn and took the witness-chair, which he completely filled, and clasped his white hands across his round paunch with an air that savored of piety and unction. The few gray hairs glistening at the sides of his round bald head gave it a tonsured appearance; fat enfolded his skull, rounding at his temples, swelling on his clean-shaven, monkish cheeks, falling in folds like dewlaps over his linen collar. He sat there with satisfaction, breathing heavily, making no movement, excepting as to his thin lips which he pursed now and then as if to adjust them more and more perfectly to what he considered the proper expression of impeccability. Marriott was utterly sick at heart. For he knew William A. Broadwell, orthodox, formal, eminently respectable, a server on committees, a deacon with certain cheap honors of the churchly kind, a Pharisee of the Pharisees.

In his low solemn voice, pursing his lips nicely after each sentence as if his own words tasted good to him, Broadwell answered Eades's questions; he had no opposition to capital punishment, indeed, he added quite gratuitously, he believed in supporting it; he had great veneration for the law, and--oh, yes, he had read accounts of the murder; read them merely because he esteemed it a citizen's duty to be conversant with affairs of the day, and he had formed opinions as any intelligent man must necessarily.

"But you could lay aside those opinions and reach a conclusion based purely on evidence, of course, Mr. Broadwell?"

"Oh, yes, sir," said Broadwell, with an unctuous smile that deprecated the idea of his being influenced in any but the legitimate way.

"We are thoroughly satisfied with Mr. Broadwell, your Honor," said Eades.

"One minute, Mr. Broadwell," began Marriott.

Glassford looked at Marriott the surprise he felt at his presumption, and Marriott felt an opposition in the room. Broadwell shifted slightly, pursed his lips smugly and looked down on Marriott with his wise benevolence.

"Mr. Broadwell, you say you read the accounts of the tragedy?"

"Yes."

"Did you read all of them?"

"I believe so."

"Read the report of the evidence given on the preliminary hearing?"

"Yes."

"Read the editorials in the _Courier_?"

"Yes."

"You respect its opinions?"

"I do, yes."

"Your pastor preached a sermon on this case, did he not?"

"He made applications of it in an illustrative way."

"Quite edifying, of course?"

Marriott knew he had made a mistake, but the impulse to have this fling had been irresistible. Broadwell bowed coldly.

"And all these things influenced you?"

"Yes."

"Exactly. And on them you have formed an opinion respecting the guilt or innocence of this young man?"

Broadwell cast a hasty sidelong glance at Glassford, as if this had gone quite far enough, but he said patiently:

"Yes."

"And it would require evidence to remove that opinion?"

"I presume it would."

"You know it would, don't you?"

"Yes."

"We submit a challenge for cause, your Honor," said Marriott.

Glassford turned to Broadwell with an air that told how speedily he would make an end of this business.

"You have talked with none of the witnesses, Mr. Broadwell?"

"Oh, no, sir," said Broadwell, smiling at the absurdity.

"The accounts you read were not stenographic reports of the evidence?"

"No, sir; abstracts, rather, I should say."

"Exactly. Were the conclusions you came to opinions, or mere impressions?"

"Mere impressions I should say, your Honor."

"They are not to be dignified by the name of opinions?"

"Hardly, your Honor."

"If they were, you could lay them aside and try this case on its merits, basing your judgment on the evidence as it is adduced, and on the law as the court shall declare it to you?"

"Certainly, your Honor."

Glassford turned away.

"If the court," he said, "had any doubts in this matter, they would be resolved in favor of the defendant, but the court has none. My own knowledge of Mr. Broadwell and of his standing in the community leads me to declare that he is the very man for such important service, and the court feels that we are to be congratulated on having him to assist us in trying this case. The challenge is overruled. You may take your seat in the jury-box, Mr. Broadwell."

Glassford consulted his notes; the peremptory challenges were all exhausted now.

"The jury will rise and be sworn," he said.

Marriott had suffered his first defeat. He looked at the jury. A change had taken place; these twelve men no longer impressed him as an institution grown old and gray with the waste of ages. They no longer held for him any symbolic meaning; little by little, during the long, tedious hours, individualities had developed, the idea of unity had receded. Seen thus closely and with increasing familiarity, the formal disappeared, the man emerged from the mass, and Marriott found himself face to face with the personal equation. He sat with one arm thrown over the back of his chair and looked at them, watching, as it were, this institution disintegrate into men, merely; men without the inspiration of noble ideals, swayed by primitive impulses, unconsciously responsive to the obscure and mysterious currents of human feeling then flowing through the minds of the people, generating and setting in motion vague, terrible and irresistible powers. He could feel those strange, occult currents moving in him--he must set himself against them that he might stand, though all alone, for the ignorant boy whose soul had strayed so far.

He studied the faces of the twelve men, trying to discover some hope, some means of moving and winning them. There was old McGiffert, who alone of all the first venire had withstood the mutations of the last four days, sitting serene and triumphant, sure of his two dollars a day, utterly unconscious of the grave and tragic significance of the responsibilities he had been so anxious to assume. There was Osgood, the contractor, a long row of cigars, a tooth-brush, and a narrow comb sticking out of his waistcoat pocket; Duncan, with his short sandy hair covering sparsely a red scalp that moved curiously when he uttered certain words; Foley, constantly munching his tobacco, as he had been doing for sixty years, so that when he spoke he did so with closed lips; Slade, the man with the rough red face, who found, as Marriott had at first thought, amusement in everything, for he smiled often, showing his gums and a row of tiny unclean teeth; there was Grey, constantly moving his false teeth about in his mouth; Church, with thin gray hair, white mustache and one large front tooth that pressed into his lower lip; and then Menard, the grocer's clerk, wearing black clothes that long ago had passed out of fashion; his sallow, thin, unhealthy face wearing an expression of fright. Marriott recalled how uncertain Menard had been in his notions about capital punishment; how, at first, he had said he was opposed to it, and how at last, under Glassford's metaphysical distinctions, the boy had declared that he would do his duty. Marriott had been encouraged, thinking that Menard's natural impulses might reassert themselves, but now, alas, he recognized that Menard in the hands of other men would be but the putty he so much resembled. Then there were Reder, the gray old German, and Chisholm and McCann, the aged farmers with the unkempt beards, and Broadwell--ah, Broadwell! For it was Broadwell who held Marriott's gaze at last, as he held his interest; it was Broadwell, indeed, who was that jury. Naturally stronger than the rest, his reputation, his pomposity, the character Glassford had generously given him--all these marked him as the man who would reach that jury's verdict for it, and then, as foreman, solemnly bear it in. Marriott looked at him, smug, sleek, overfed, unctuous, his shining bald head inclined at a meek angle, his little eyes half closed, his pendulous jowls hiding his collar, and realized that this was the man to whom he had to try Archie's case, and he would rather have tried the case to any other man in town. He wished that he had used his challenges differently; any other twelve of the two hundred men who had been summoned would have served his purpose better; he had a wild, impotent regret that he had not allowed the last man to remain before Broadwell suddenly appeared. Broadwell was standing there now with the others, his hand raised, his head thrown back, stretching the white flabby skin of his throat like a frog's, his eyes closed, as if he were about to pronounce a benediction on Archie before sending him to his doom.

Gard was repeating the oath:

"'You and each of you do solemnly swear that you will well and truly try and true deliverance make in the cause now pending, wherein the State is plaintiff and Archie Koerner is defendant, s'elp you God.'"

Broadwell bowed, as if for the jury; Marriott almost expected him to say "Amen."

XIV

The next morning there were the same eager, impatient crowds, but there were yet other preliminaries; the case must now be stated to the jury. And Eades, speaking solemnly, told the jury of the pursuit of Archie and the death of Kouka, all of which had been repeated many times. He spoke of the importance of government, of the sacredness of human life, how heinous a sin it is to kill people, and how important it was to put Archie to death immediately in order that this truth might be better understood, how serious were the juror's duties, how disagreeable his own duties, and so forth. Then he began to describe the murder of Margaret Flanagan, but Marriott objected. They wrangled over this for some time, and, indeed, until Eades, assured that the jurors had been sufficiently reminded of the Flanagan murder, felt satisfied. Then Marriott stated the case for the defense, and finally, that afternoon, the trial began in earnest.

Bentley, following his elaborate system of arrangement, bustled about with a deputy at hand so that he could command him, pushed back the crowd, locked the doors, and thereafter admitted no one unless he wished to. The spectators filled the space outside the bar, and encroached on the space within, forming a dense, closely-packed circle in the center of which were the jury, the lawyers at their tables, Archie and Danner, the reporters, the old stenographer, and Glassford looking down from the bench. The spectators in a strained, nervous silence stared into the pit where the game was to be played, the game for which Eades and Marriott were nerving themselves, the game that had Archie's life for its colossal stake.

But as the afternoon wore on, expectations were not realized; the interest flagged. It was seen that the sensations would not come for days, the proceedings were to move slowly and with a vast and pompous deliberation to their unrevealed climax. Eades called as witnesses several laborers who had been of the crowd that pursued Archie and Curly down the tracks that morning. After them came Weber, the coroner, a fleshy man with red face and neck, who described the inquest, then his official physician, Doctor Zimmerman, a young man with a pointed beard, who wore three chains on his breast, one for the eye-glasses he was constantly readjusting, another for his clinical thermometer, and another for his watch. He gave the details of the post-mortem examination, described the dissection of Kouka's body, and identified the bullet.

The crowd pressed forward, trying to find some sensation in the ghastly relic. Eades gave the bullet to the nearest juryman, who examined it carefully and passed it on. It went from hand to hand of the jurymen, each rolled it in his palm, studied it with a look of wisdom; finally it returned to Eades. And the jurors leaned back in their chairs, convinced that Kouka was dead.

The next morning there were other laborers, other physicians, then railroad detectives, who identified the revolver. The day wore away, the atmosphere of the court-room became heavy and somnolent. As skilfully as he could, Eades drew from his witnesses their stories, avoiding all questions that might disclose facts to Archie's advantage, and Marriott battled with these hostile witnesses in long cross-examinations, seeking in vain for some flaw, some inconsistency. The tedium told on the nerves,--Eades and Marriott had several quarrels, exchanged insults, Glassford was petulant, the stolid jurymen exhaled breaths as heavy as snores. Another day came, and judge and lawyers began with steadier nerves, more impersonal and formal manners; they were able to maintain a studious courtesy, the proceedings had an institutional character, something above the human, but as the day advanced, as the struggle grew more intense, as the wrangling became more frequent, it was seen that they were but men, breaking down and giving way to those passions their calm and stately institution condemned and punished in other men.

And through it all Archie sat there silent, and, as the newspaper men scrupulously reported each day, unmoved. But Marriott could hear him breathe, and when occasionally he glanced at him, could see tiny drops of moisture glistening on his brow, could see the cords swelling in his neck, could even hear the gurgle in his throat as he tried to swallow. Archie rarely spoke; he glanced at the witnesses, now and then at the jurors, but most of all at Eades. Thus far, however, the testimony had been formal; there was yet no evidence of premeditation on Archie's part, and that was the vital thing.

XV

And yet Marriott knew better than to hope. As he walked to the court-house Monday morning, he wondered how he was to get through the week. He looked on those he met as the strangely happy and favored beings of another world, and envied them keenly, even the ragged outcasts shoveling the newly-fallen snow from the sidewalks. And there in the upper corridor was that hated crowd, that seemed to be in league with Eades, Glassford, the jury, the police, the whole machinery of the state, to kill Archie, to stamp his identity out of the world. Just then the crowd gyrated in precipitated interest, and he saw Bentley and Danner bringing Archie down the hall, all three stamping the snow from their boots. And he saw another figure, new to him, but one that instantly filled him with strange foreboding. Why, he could not tell, but this was the effect of the figure that shambled down the corridor. The man was alone, a tall gaunt form in rough gray clothes, with a long gray face, walking in loose gangling strides, flinging his huge feet one after the other, leaving moist tracks behind him. A hickory cane dangled by its crook from his left arm, he slowly smoked a cigar, taking it from his mouth occasionally with an uncouth gesture. As he swung along in his awkward, spraddling gait, his frame somehow conveyed paradoxically an impression of strength. It seemed that at any moment this man was in danger of coming apart and collapsing--until Marriott caught his restless eye.

Archie had seen him the instant he entered the corridor. Marriott detected Archie's recognition, and he looked intently for some inkling of the meaning. The man, in the same instant, saw Archie, stopped, took his cigar from his lips, spat, and said in a peculiar, soft voice:

"Why, Archie, my boy."

This incident deepened Marriott's foreboding. A few moments later, as the bailiff was opening court, the man entered with a familiar and accustomed air, and Bentley got a chair and made him comfortable so that he might enjoy the trial.

"Who's that man?" Marriott whispered to Archie.

"That? That's old Jimmy Ball, the deputy warden at the pen."

"What do you suppose--"

"He's here to knock, that's what. He's here to rap ag'in me, the old--"

Archie applied his ugly epithet with an expression of intensest hatred, and glared at Ball. Now and then Archie repeated the epithet under his breath, trying each time to strengthen it with some new oath.

But Marriott just then had no time to learn the significance of this strange presence. Eades was calling a witness.

"Detective Quinn!"

Quinn came in after the usual delay, walking with the policeman's swagger even after years on the detective force. He came in with his heavy shoulders set well back, and his head held high, but his eyes had the fixed stare of self-consciousness. Taking the oath, he ascended the witness-stand, leaned over, placed his hat against the side of the chair, and then, crossing one fat thigh over the other, held it in position with his hand. On his finger flashed a diamond, another diamond sparkled on his shirt-front.

"Pipe the rocks!" whispered Archie. "Know where he got 'em? Jane nicked a sucker and Quinn made her give 'em to him for not rapping."

Marriott impatiently waved Archie into silence; like all clients he was constantly leaning over at critical moments of the trial to say immaterial things, and, besides, his hot moist breath directly in Marriott's ear was very unpleasant.

Eades led Quinn through the preliminaries of his examination, and then in a tone that indicated an approach to significant parts of the testimony, he said:

"You may now state, Mr. Quinn, when you next saw the defendant."

Quinn threw back his head, fingered his close-cropped red mustache, and reflected as if he had not thought of the subject for a long time. He was conscious that he was thus far the most important witness of the trial. He relished the sensation, and, knowing how damaging his testimony would be, he felt a crude satisfaction. Presently he spoke, his voice vibrating like a guitar string in the tense atmosphere.

"The Friday morning before the Flanagan murder."

"Where did you meet him?"

"In Kentucky Street near Cherokee."

"Was he alone, or was some one with him?"

"Another man was with him."

"Who was that other man--if you know?"

"He was an old-timer; they call him Dad."

"What do you mean by an 'old-timer'?"

"An old-time thief--an ex-convict."

"Very well. Now tell the jury what you did--if anything."

"Well, I knowed Koerner was just back from the pen, and we got to talking."

"What did he say?"

"Oh, I don't just remember. We chewed the rag a little."

Eades scowled and hitched up his chair.

"Did he say anything about Kouka?"

"Hold on!" Marriott shouted. "We object! You know perfectly well you can't lead the witness."

"Well, don't get excited," said Eades, as if he never got excited himself; as he had not, indeed, in that instance, his lawyer's ruse having so well served its purpose. "I'll withdraw the question." He thought a moment and then asked:

"What further, if anything, was said?"

"Oh," said Quinn, who had understood. "Well, he asked me where Kouka was. You see he had it in for Kouka."

"No!" cried Marriott. "Not that."

"Just tell what he said about Kouka," Eades continued.

"I was trying to," said Quinn, as if hurt by Marriott's interruption. "Ever since Kouka sent him up for--"

"Now look here!" Marriott cried, "this has gone far enough. Mr. Eades knows--"

"Oh, proceed, gentlemen," said Glassford wearily, as if he were far above any such petty differences, and the spectators laughed, relishing these little passages between the lawyers.

"Mr. Quinn," said Eades in a low, almost confidential tone, "confine yourself to the questions, please. Answer the last question."

Quinn, flashing surly and reproachful glances at Marriott, replied:

"Well, he asked about Kouka, where he was and all that, and he said, says he, 'I'm going to get him!'"

The jury was listening intently. Even Glassford cocked his head.

"I asked him what he meant, and he said he had it in for Kouka and was going to croak him."

Archie had been leaning forward, his eyes fixed in an incredulous stare, his face had turned red, then white, and now he said, almost audibly:

"Well, listen to that, will you!"

"Sh!" said Marriott.

Archie dropped back, and Marriott heard him muttering under his breath, marveling at Quinn's effrontery.

"Tell the jury what further, if anything, was said," Eades was saying.

"Nothing much," said Quinn; "that was about all."

"What did you do after that?"

"I placed him under arrest."

"Why?"

"Well, I didn't think it was safe for him to be around--feeling that way."

"If he ain't the limit!" Marriott heard Archie exclaim, and he began his whispered curses and objurgations again. In his excitement and impotent rage, Marriott was exceedingly irritable, and again he commanded Archie to be still.

Eades paused in his examination, bit his lip, and winked rapidly as he thought. The atmosphere of the trial showed that a critical moment had come. Marriott, watching Eades out of the corner of his eye, had quietly, almost surreptitiously moved back from the table, and he sat now on the edge of the chair. The jurymen were glancing from Eades to Marriott, then at Quinn, with curious, puzzled expressions.

"Mr. Quinn," said Eades, looking up, "when did you next see Koerner--if at all?"

"On the next Tuesday after that."

"Where?"

"In the C. and M. railroad yards."

"Who was with you, if any one?"

"Detectives Kouka, and Officers Delaney and O'Brien, of the railroad, and Officers Flaherty, Nunnally, O'Toole and Finn--besides a lot of citizens. I don't--"

"That will suffice. And how came you--but first--" Eades interrupted himself. Marriott was still watching him narrowly, and Eades, it seemed, was postponing a question he feared to ask. "First, tell me--tell the jury--where Koerner was, and who, if anybody, was with him?"

"Well, sir, this here fellow they call Curly--Jackson's his name--he's a thief--a yegg man as they call 'em--he was with him; they was running and we was chasing 'em."

"And why were you chasing them?"

"We had orders."

"From whom?"

"Inspector McFee."

"What were those orders?"

"Well, sir, there had been a report of that Flanagan job--"

"Stop!" Marriott shouted. "We object."

"One moment, Mr. Quinn," said Eades, with an effect of quieting Marriott as much as of staying Quinn. Marriott had risen and was leaning over the table. Eades hesitated, realizing that the question on his lips would precipitate one of the great conflicts of the trial. He was in grave doubt of the propriety of this question; he had been considering it for weeks, not only in its legal but in its moral aspect. He had been unable to convince himself that Archie had been concerned in the murder of Margaret Flanagan; he had been uncertain of his ability to show premeditation in the killing of Kouka. He knew that he could not legally convict Archie of murdering the woman, and he knew he could not convict him of murdering the detective unless he took advantage of the feeling that had been aroused by the Flanagan tragedy. Furthermore, if he failed to convict Archie, the public would not understand, but would doubt and criticize him, and his reputation would suffer. And he hesitated, afraid of his case, afraid of himself. The moments were flying, a change even then was taking place, a subtle doubt was being instilled in the minds of the crowd, of the jurymen even. He hesitated another moment, and then to justify himself in his own mind, he said:

"Mr. Quinn, don't answer the question I am about to ask until the court tells you to do so." He paused, and then: "I'll ask you, Mr. Quinn, to tell the jury when you first heard the report of the murder of Margaret Flanagan."

"Object!"

Marriott sprang to his feet, his eyes blazing, his figure tense with protest.

"I object! We might as well fight this thing out right here."

"What is your objection?" asked Glassford.

"Just this, your Honor," Marriott replied. "The question, if allowed, would involve another homicide, for which this defendant is not on trial. It is not competent at this stage of the case to show specifically or generally other offenses with which this defendant has been charged or of which he is suspected. It would be competent, if ever, only as showing reputation, and the reputation of the defendant has not yet been put in evidence. Further, if answered in its present form, the evidence would be hearsay."

Eades had been idly turning a lead-pencil end for end on the table, and now with a smile he slowly got to his feet.

"If the Court please," he began, "Mr. Marriott evidently does not understand; we are not seeking to show the defendant's reputation, or that he is charged with or suspected of any other crime. What we are trying to show is that these officers, Detective Quinn and the deceased, were merely performing a duty when they attempted to arrest Koerner, that they were acting under orders. What we offer to show is this: Margaret Flanagan had been murdered and the officers had reasonable grounds to believe that Koerner--"

"Now see here!" cried Marriott. "That isn't fair, and you know it. You are trying to influence the jury, and I'm surprised that a lawyer of your ability and standing should resort to tactics so unprofessional--"

Eades colored and was about to reply, but Marriott would not yield.

"I say that such tactics are unworthy of counsel; they would be unworthy of the veriest pettifogger!"

Eades flushed angrily.

"Do you mean to charge--" he challenged.

"Gentlemen, gentlemen!" Glassford warned them. "Address yourselves to the Court."

Eades and Marriott exchanged angry and menacing glances. The jury looked on with a passivity that passed very well for gravity. At the risk of incurring the jurors' displeasure, Marriott asked that they be excused while the question was debated, and Glassford sent them from the room.

The legal argument began. Marriott had countless precedents to justify Glassford's ruling in his favor, just as Eades had countless precedents to justify Glassford's ruling in his favor, but to the spectators it all seemed useless, tedious and silly. A murder had been committed, they thought, and hence it was necessary that some one be killed; and there sat Archie Koerner--why wait and waste all this time? why not proceed at once to the tragic denouement and decree his death?

Glassford, maintaining a gravity, and as if he were considering all the cases Marriott and Eades were citing, and weighing them nicely one against the other, listened to the arguments all day, gazing out of the window at the scene so familiar to him. Across the street, in an upper room of a house, was a window he had been interested in for months. A woman now and then hovered near it, and Glassford had long been tantalized by his inability to see clearly what she was doing.

The next morning Glassford announced his decision. It was to the effect that the State would be permitted to show only that a felony had been committed, and that the officers had had grounds for believing that Archie had committed it; but as to details of that murder, or whether Archie had committed it, or who had committed it--that should all be excluded. This was looked upon as a victory for the defense, and, at Marriott's request, Glassford told the jurors that they were not to consider anything that had been said about the Flanagan murder or Archie's connection with it. All this, he told them, they were to dismiss from their minds and not to be influenced by it in the least. The jurymen paid Glassford an exaggerated, almost servile attention, and when he had done, several of them nodded. And all were glad that they were to hear nothing more of the Flanagan murder, for, during the long hours of their exclusion from the court-room, they had talked of nothing but the Flanagan murder, had recalled all of its details, and argued and disputed about it, until they had tired of it, and then had gone on to recall other murders that had been committed in the county, and finally, other murders of which they had heard and read.

Quinn, in telling again the story the jurors had heard so many times in court, and had read in the newspapers, frequently referred to the Flanagan murder, until Marriott wearied of the effort to prevent him. He knew that it was useless to cross-examine Quinn, useless to attempt to impress on the crystallized minds of the jurymen the facts as they had occurred. The jurymen were not listening; they were looking at the ceiling, or leaning their heads on their hands, enduring the proceedings as patiently as they could, as patiently as Eades or Quinn or Glassford. And Marriott reflected on the inadequacy of every means of communication between human beings. How was he to make them understand? How was he to get them to assume, if for an instant only, his point of view? Here they were in a court of justice, an institution that had been evolved, by the pressure of economic and social forces, through slow, toiling ages; the witnesses were sworn to tell "the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth," and yet, such was man's puerility and impotence, such was the imperfection of his means of conveying ideas, that the whole truth could not possibly be told--a thousand elements and incidents must be omitted; the moods, for instance, of Archie when he talked to Quinn or to Kouka, the expressions on their faces, the light in their eyes, indications far more potent than mere words, words that might be lightly, trivially, innocently spoken one day and under one set of circumstances, but which, on some other day and under other circumstances, would take on a terrible, blasting, tragic significance. Above all, that intangible thing, the atmosphere of the occasion--this could by no possibility be reproduced even though Quinn made every effort to be honest. And how much greater the impossibility when Quinn was willing to be disingenuous, to allow the prejudices and the passions of his hearers to reflect on his words their own sentiments, so that the hatred in the hearts of this this jury, these prosecutors, might seem to be a hatred, instead, in Archie's breast! Realizing the impossibility, Marriott felt again the strong, occult influences that opposed him, and had scarcely the strength to cross-examine Quinn. And yet he must make the effort, and for two long hours he battled with Quinn, set his wits and his will against him, but it was all hopeless. For he was not opposing Quinn's mind alone, he was opposing the collective mind of this crowd behind him, and that larger crowd in the city outside.

"Anything further, Mr. Marriott?" asked Glassford.

Marriott had a momentary rage at this impersonation of the vengeful state sitting before him, and exclaimed with disgust:

"Oh, I guess not."

XVI

The instant Marriott entered the court-house the next morning he was sensible of a change; it was as palpable as the heavy, overheated atmosphere indoors after the cool air outdoors. He could not account for this change; he knew only that it had come in the night, and that it boded some calamity in the world. Already it seemed to have had its effect on the men he met, clerks, attaches, and loafers; they glanced at him stealthily, then averted their eyes quickly. Somehow they filled Marriott with loathing and disgust.

As he went up in the swiftly-ascending elevator, the old man who operated it gave him that same look, and then observed:

"Something's in the air to-day."

Yes, thought Marriott, something is in the air. But what?

"I reckon it's going to storm," the white-headed veteran of the great war went on. "My rheumatiz hurts like hell this morning."

What mysterious relation was it, wondered Marriott, that bound this old man through his joints--gnarled by the exposure of his service to his country so long before--to all nature, foretelling her convulsions and cataclysms? What mysterious relation was it that bound men's minds to the moral world, foretelling as well its catastrophes and tragedies?

"I reckon it's the January thaw," the old fellow jabbered on, his mind never rising above the mere physical manifestations of nature.

The crowd was denser than ever, and there in the front row, where she had been every day of the trial, was old Mrs. Koerner, with eyes that every day grew deeper and wider, as more and more tragedy was reflected in their profound and mysterious depths.

"Call Henry Griscom," said Eades.

The crowd, the jury, the lawyers, waited. Marriott wondered; he felt Archie's breath in his ear and heard his teeth chatter as he whispered:

"I knew old Jimmy Ball had something framed up. Great God!"

The crowd made way, and the tall, lank form of the deputy warden shambled into the court-room. A man was chained to him.

"Great God!" Archie was chattering; "he's going to split on me!"

The man whom Ball had just unshackled took the oath, and looked indecisively into Ball's eyes. Ball motioned with his cane, and with a slow mechanical step, the man walked to the witness-stand and perched himself uneasily on the edge of the chair.

Archie fixed his eyes on the man in a steady, intense blaze; Marriott heard him cursing horribly.

"The snitch!" he said finally, and then was silent, as if he had put his whole contempt into that one word.

The emaciated form of the man in the witness chair was clothed in the gray jacket and trousers of a convict of the first grade. The collar of his jacket stood out from a scrawny neck that had a nude, leathery, rugose appearance, like the neck of a buzzard. If he wore a shirt, it was not visible, either at his neck or at his spindling wrists. As he hung his head and tried to shrink from the concentrated gaze of the crowd into his miserable garments, he suggested a skeleton, dressed up in ribald sport. It was not until Eades had spoken twice that the man raised his head, and then he raised it slowly, carefully, as if dreading to look men in the eyes. His shaven face was long and yellow; the skin at the points of his jaw, at his retreating chin and at his high cheek-bones was tightly stretched, and shone; he rolled his yellow eye-balls, and winked rapidly in the light of freedom to which he was so unaccustomed.

"Who is he?" Marriott whispered quickly.

"An old con.--a lifer," Archie explained. "One o' them false alarms. He's no good. They've promised to put him on the street for this."

But Eades had begun his examination.

"And where do you reside, Mr. Griscom?" Eades was asking in a respectful tone, just as if the man might be a resident of Claybourne Avenue.

"In the penitentiary."

"How long have you been there?"

"Seventeen years."

"And your sentence is for how long?" Eades continued.

The man's eyes drooped.

"Life." The word fell in a hollow silence.

"And do you know this man here--Archie Koerner?"

The convict, as if by an effort, raised his eyes to Archie, dropped them hastily and nodded.

"What do you say?" said Eades. "You must speak up."

"Yes, I know him."

"Where did you know him?"

"In the pen."

It was all clear now, the presence of Ball, the newspapers' promise of a sensation, the doom that had hung in the atmosphere that morning. Marriott watched the convict first with loathing, then with pity, as he realized the fact that when this man had spoken the one word "life"--he had meant "death"--a long, lingering death, drawn out through meaningless days and months and years, blank and barren, a waste in which this one incident, this railroad journey in chains, this temporary reassertion of personality, this brief distinction in the crowded court-room, this hour of change, of contact with free men, were circumstances to occupy his vacant mind during the remaining years of his misery, until his death should end and life once more come to him.

"And now, Mr. Griscom," Eades was saying with a respect that was a mockery, "tell the jury just what Koerner said to you about Detective Kouka."

The convict hesitated, his chin sank into the upright collar of his jacket, his eyes roved over the floor, he crossed, uncrossed and recrossed his legs, picked at his cap nervously.

"Just tell the jury," urged Eades.

The convict stiffly raised his bony hand to his blue lips to stifle the cough in which lay his only hope of release.

"I don't just--" He stopped.

The crowd strained forward. The jury glanced uneasily from Griscom to Eades, and back to Griscom again. And then there was a stir. Ball was sidling over from the clerk's desk to a chair Bentley wheeled forward for him, and as he sank into it, he fixed his eyes on Griscom. The convict shifted uneasily, took down his hand, coughed loosely and swallowed painfully, his protuberant larynx rising and falling.

"Just give Koerner's exact words," urged Eades.

"Well, he said he had it in for Kouka, and was going to croak him when he got home."

"What did he mean by 'croak,' if you know?"

"Kill him. He said he was a dead shot--he'd learned it in the army."

"How many times did you talk with him?"

"Oh, lots of times--every time we got a chance. Sometimes in the bolt shop, sometimes in the hall when we had permits."

"What else, if anything, did he say about Kouka?"

"Oh, he said Kouka'd been laggin' him, and he was goin' to get him. He talked about it pretty much all the time."

"Is that all?"

"That's about all, yes, sir."

"Take the witness."

Griscom, evidently relieved, had started to leave the chair, and as he moved he drew his palm across a gray brow that suddenly broke out in repulsive little drops of perspiration.

"One moment, Griscom," said Marriott, "I'd like to ask you a few questions."

The court was very still, and every one hung with an interest equal to Marriott's on the convict's next words. Griscom found all this interest too strong; his pallid lips were parted; he drew his breath with difficulty, his chest was moving with automatic jerks; presently he coughed.

Marriott began to question the convict about his conversations with Archie. He did this in the belief that while Archie had no doubt breathed his vengeance against Kouka, his words, under the circumstances, were not to be given that dreadful significance which now they were made to assume. He could imagine that they had been uttered idly, and that they bore no real relation to his shooting of Kouka. But the difficulty was to make this clear to the crystallized, stupid and formal minds of the jury, or rather to Broadwell, who was the jury. He tried to induce Griscom to describe the circumstances under which Archie had made these threats, but Griscom was almost as stupid as the jurors, and the law was more stupid than either, for Griscom in his effort to meet the questions was continually making answers that involved his own conclusions, and to them Eades always objected, and Glassford always sustained the objections. And Marriott experienced the same sensations that he had when Quinn was testifying. There was no way to reproduce Archie's manner--his tone, his expression, the look in his eyes.

To hide his chagrin, Marriott wiped his mouth with his handkerchief, leaned over and consulted his notes.

"A life is a long time, isn't it, Griscom?" he resumed, gently now.

"Yes." Griscom's chin fell to his breast.

"And the penitentiary is not a good place to be?"

Griscom looked up with the first flash of real spirit he had displayed.

"I wouldn't send a dog there, Mr. Marriott!"

"No," said Marriott, "and you'd like to get out?"

"Sure."

"You've applied for a pardon?"

"Yes."

Marriott's heart was beating fast. At last he had a hope. He could hear the ticking of the big clock on the wall, he could catch the faint echoes of his voice against the high ceiling of the room whose acoustic properties were so poor, he could hear the very breathing of the crowd behind him.

"Mr. Griscom," said Marriott, wondering if that were the right question, longing for some inspiration that would be the one infallible test for this situation, "did you report to the authorities these remarks of Koerner's at the time he made them?"

Griscom hesitated.

"No, sir," he answered.

"Why not?"

"I didn't think it necessary."

"Why didn't you think it necessary?"

"Well--I didn't."

"Was it because you didn't think Archie was in earnest--because his words were not serious?"

"I didn't think it necessary."

Marriott wondered whether to press him further--he was on dangerous ground.

"To whom did you first mention them?"

"To the deputy warden."

"This man here?" Marriott waved his hand at Ball with a contempt he was not at all careful to conceal.

"Yes, sir."

"When was that?"

"Oh, about a month ago."

"After Kouka's death?"

"Yes."

"Griscom," said Marriott, risking his whole case on the words, and the silence in the room deepened until it throbbed like a profound pain, "when Ball came to tell you to testify as you have against Archie, he promised to get you a pardon, did he not?"

Eades was on his feet.

"There is no evidence here that Ball went to the witness," he cried. He was angry; his face was very red.

Marriott smiled.

"Let the witness answer," he said.

"The question is improper," said Glassford.

"Is it not a fact, Griscom, that Ball made you some promise to induce you to testify as you have?"

Griscom hesitated, his eyes were already wavering, and Marriott felt an irresistible impulse to follow them. Slowly the convict's glance turned toward Ball, sitting low in his chair, one leg hung over the other, a big foot dangling above the floor. His arm was thrust straight out before him, his hand grasped his cane, his attitude was apparently careless and indifferent, but the knuckles of the hand that held the cane were white, and his eyes, peering from their narrow slits, were fastened in a steady, compelling stare on Griscom. The convict looked an instant and then he said, still looking at Ball:

"No, it isn't."

The convict had a sudden fit of coughing. He fumbled frantically in the breast of his jacket, then clapped his hand to his mouth; his face was blue, his eyes were staring; presently between his fingers there trickled a thin bright stream of blood. Ball got up and tenderly helped the convict from the chair and the court-room. And Marriott knew that he had lost.

Yes, Marriott knew that he had lost and he felt himself sinking into the lethargy of despair. The atmosphere of the trial had become more inimical; he found it hard to contain himself, hard to maintain that air of unconcern a lawyer must constantly affect. He found it hard to look at Eades, who seemed suddenly to have a new buoyancy of voice and manner. In truth, Eades had been uncertain about Griscom, but now that the convict had given his testimony and all had gone well for Eades and his side, Eades was immensely relieved. He felt that the turning point in the great game had been passed. But it would not do to display any elation; he must take it all quite impersonally, and in every way conduct himself as a fearless, disinterested official, and not as a human being at all. Eades felt, of course, that this result was due to his own sagacity, his own skill as a lawyer, his generalship in marshaling his evidence; he felt the crowd behind him to be mere spectators, whose part it was to look on and applaud; he did not know that this result was attributable to those mysterious, transcendental impulses of the human passions, moving in an irresistible current, sweeping him along and the jury and the judge, and bearing Archie to his doom. But Eades was so encouraged that he decided to call another witness he had been uncertainly holding in reserve. He had had his doubts about this witness as he had had them about Griscom, but now these doubts were swept away by that same occult force.

"Swear Uri Marsh."

There was the usual wait, the stillness, the suspended curiosity, and then Bentley came in, leading an old man. This old man was cleanly shaven, his hair was white, and he wore a new suit of ready-made clothes. The cheap and paltry garments seemed to shrink away from the wasted form they fitted so imperfectly, grudgingly lending themselves, as for this occasion only, to the purpose of restoring and disguising their disreputable wearer. Beneath them it was quite easy to detect the figure of dishonorable poverty that in another hour or another day would step out of them and resume its appropriate rags and tatters, to flutter on and lose itself in the squalid streets of the city where it would wander alone, abandoned by all, even by the police.

As Archie recognized this man, his face went white even to the lips. Marriott looked at him, but the only other sign of feeling Archie gave was in the swelling and tightening of the cords of his neck. He swallowed as if in pain, and seemed about to choke. Marriott spoke, but he did not hear. Strangely enough, it did not seem to Marriott to matter.

This witness, like Griscom, had been a convict, like Griscom he had known Archie in prison; he and Archie had been released the same day, and he had come back to town with Archie.

"What did he say?" the old man was repeating Eades's question; he always repeated each question before he answered it--"what did he say? Well, sir, he said, so he did, he said he was going to kill a detective here. That's what he said, sir. I wouldn't lie to you, no, sir, not me--I wouldn't lie--no, sir."

"That will do," said Eades. "Now tell us, Mr. Marsh, what, if anything, Koerner said to Detective Quinn in your presence?"

"What'd he say to Detective Quinn? What'd he say to Detective Quinn? Well, sir," the old man paused and spat out his saliva, "he said the same thing."

"Just give his words."

"His words? Well, sir, he said he was going to kill that fellow--that detective--what's his name? You know his name."

The garrulous old fellow ran on. There was something ludicrous in it all; the crowd became suddenly merry; it seemed to feel such a gloating sense of triumph that it could afford amusement. The old man in the witness-chair enjoyed it immensely, he laughed too, and spat and laughed again.

It was with difficulty that Marriott and Eades and Glassford got him to recognize Marriott's right to cross-examine him, and when at last the idea pierced its way to his benumbed and aged mind, he hesitated, as the old do before a new impression, and then sank back in his chair. His face all at once became impassive, almost imbecile. And he utterly refused to answer any of Marriott's questions. Marriott put them to him again and again, in the same form and in different forms, but the old man sat there and stared at him blankly. Glassford took the witness in hand, finally threatened him with imprisonment for contempt.

"Now you answer or go to jail," said Glassford, with the most impressive sternness he could command.

Then Marriott said again:

"I asked you where you had been staying since you came to town and who provided for you?"

The old man looked at him an instant, a peculiar cunning stole gradually into his swimming eyes, and then slowly he lifted his right hand to his face. His middle finger was missing, and thrusting the stump beneath his nose, he placed his index finger to his right eye, his third finger to his left, drew down the lower lids until their red linings were revealed, and then he wiggled his thumb and little finger.

The court-room burst into a roar, the laughter pealed and echoed in the high-ceiled room, even the jurymen, save Broadwell, permitted themselves wary smiles. The bailiff sprang up and pounded with his gavel, and Glassford, his face red with fury, shouted:

"Mr. Sheriff, take the witness to jail! And if this demonstration does not instantly cease, clear the courtroom!"

The _contretemps_ completed Marriott's sense of utter humiliation and defeat. As if it were not enough to be beaten, he now suffered the chagrin of having been made ridiculous. He was oblivious to everything but his own misery and discomfiture; he forgot even Archie. Bentley and a deputy were hustling the offending old man from the court-room, and he shambled between them loosely, grotesquely, presenting the miserable, demoralizing and pathetic spectacle that age always presents when it has dishonored itself.

As they were dragging the old man past Archie, his feet scuffling and dragging like those of a paralytic, Archie spoke:

"Why, Dad!" he said.

In his tone were all disappointment and reproach.

The incident was over, but try as they would, Glassford, Eades, Lamborn, Marriott, all the attaches and officials of the court could not restore to the tribunal its lost dignity. This awesome and imposing structure mankind has been ages in rearing, this institution men had thought to make something more than themselves, at the grotesque gesture of one of its poorest, meanest, oldest and most miserable victims, had suddenly collapsed, disintegrated into its mere human entities. Unconsciously this aged imbecile had taken a supreme and mighty revenge on the institution that had bereft him of his reason and his life; it could not resist the shock; it must pause to reconstruct itself, to resume its lost prestige, and men were glad when Glassford, with what solemnity he could command, told the bailiff to adjourn court.

XVII

At six o'clock on the evening of the day the State rested, Marriott found himself once more at the jail. He passed the series of grated cells from which their inmates peered with the wistful look common to prisoners, and paused before Archie's door. He could see only the boy's muscular back bowed over the tiny table, slowly dipping chunks of bread into his pan of molasses, eating his supper silently and humbly. The figure was intensely pathetic to Marriott. He gazed a moment in the regret with which one gazes on the dead, struck down in an instant by some useless accident. "And yet," he thought, "it is not done, there is still hope. He must be saved!"

"Hello, Archie!" he said, forcing a cheerful tone.

Archie started, pushed back his chair, drew his hand across his mouth to wipe away the crumbs, and thrust it through the bars.

"Don't let me keep you from your supper," said Marriott.

Archie smiled a wan smile.

"That's all right," he said. "It isn't much of a supper, and I ain't exactly hungry."

Archie grasped the bars above his head and leaned his breast against the door.

"Well, what do you think of it, Mr. Marriott?"

"I don't know, Archie."

"Looks as if I was the fall guy all right."

Marriott bit his lip.

"We have to put in our evidence in the morning, you know."

"Yes."

"And we must decide whether you're going on the stand or not."

"I'll leave it to you, Mr. Marriott."

Marriott thought a moment.

"What do you think about it?" he asked presently.

"I don't know. You see, I've got a record."

"Yes, but they already know you've been in prison."

"Sure, but my taking the stand would make the rap harder. That fellow Eades would tear me to pieces."

Marriott was silent.

"And then that old hixer on the jury, that wise guy up there in the corner." Archie shook his head in despair. "Every time he pikes me off, I know he's ready to hand it all to me."

"You mean Broadwell?"

"Yes. He's one of those church-members. That's a bad sign, a bad sign." Archie shook his head sadly. "No, it's a kangaroo all right, they're going to job me." Archie hung his head. "Of course, Mr. Marriott, I know you've done your best. You're the only friend I got, and I wish--I wish there was some way for me to pay you. I can't promise you, like some of these guys, that I'll work and pay you when I get--" He looked up with a sadly humorous and appreciative smile. "Of course, I--"

"Don't, Archie!" said Marriott. "Don't talk that way. That part of it's all right. Cheer up, my boy, cheer up!" Marriott was trying so hard to cheer up himself. "We haven't played our hand yet; we'll give 'em a fight. There are higher courts, and there's always the governor."

Archie shook his head.

"Maybe you won't believe me, Mr. Marriott, but I'd rather go to the chair than take life down there. You don't know what that place is, Mr. Marriott."

"No," said Marriott, "but I can imagine."

Then he changed his tone.

"We've plenty of time to talk about all that," he went on. "Now we must talk about to-morrow. Look here, Archie. Why can't you go on the stand and tell your whole story--just as you've told it to me a hundred times? It convinced me the first time I heard it; maybe it would convince the jury. They'd see that you had cause to kill Kouka!"

"Cause!" exclaimed the boy. "Great God! After the way he hounded me--I should say so! Why, Mr. Marriott, he made me do it, he made me what I am. Don't you see that?"

"Of course I do. And why can't you tell them so?" Marriott was enthusiastic with his new hope.

"Oh, well," said Archie with no enthusiasm at all, "with you it's different. You look at things different; you can see things; you know there's some good in me, don't you?"

It was an appeal that touched Marriott, and yet he felt powerless to make the boy see how deeply it touched him.

"And then," Archie went on--he talked with an intense earnestness and he leaned so close that Marriott could smell the odor of coffee on his breath--"when I talk to you, I know somehow that--well--you believe me, and we're sitting down, just talking together with no one else around. But there in that court-room, with all those people ready to tear my heart out and eat it, and the beak--Glassford, I mean--and the blokes in the box, and Eades ready to twist everything I say; well, what show have I got? You can see for yourself, Mr. Marriott."

Archie spread his hands wide to show the hopelessness of it all.

"Well, I think you'd better try, anyhow. Will you think it over?"

XVIII

Marriott heard the commotion as he entered the elevator the next morning, and as the cage ascended, the noise increased. He heard the click of heels, the scuff of damp soles on the marble, and then the growl of many men, angry, beside themselves, possessed by their lower natures. The chorus of rough voices had lost its human note and sunk to the ugly register of the brutish. Drawing nearer, he distinguished curses and desperate cries. And there in the half-light at the end of the long corridor, the crowd swayed this way and that, struggling, scrambling, fighting. Hats were knocked off and spun in the air; now and then an arm was lifted out of the mass; now and then a white fist was shaken above the huddle of heads. Two deputy sheriffs, Hersch and Cumrow, were flattened against the doors of the criminal court, their faces trickling with sweat, their waistcoats torn open; and they strained mightily. The crowd surged against them, threatening to press the breath out of their bodies. They paused, panting from their efforts, then tried again to force back the crowd, shouting:

"Get back there, damn you! Get back!"

Marriott slipped through a side door into the judge's chamber. The room was filled. Glassford, Eades, Lamborn, all the attaches of the court were there. Bentley, the sheriff, had flung up a window, and stood there fanning himself with his broad-brimmed hat, disregarding exposure, his breath floating in vapor out of the window. On the low leather lounge where Glassford took his naps sat Archie close beside Danner. When he saw Marriott a wan smile came to his white face.

"They tried to get at me!" The phrase seemed sufficient to him to explain it all, and at the same time to express his own surprise and consternation in it all.

"They tried to get at me!" Archie repeated in another tone, expressing another meaning, another sensation, a wholly different thought. The boy's lips were drawn tightly across his teeth; he shook with fear.

"They tried to get at me!" he repeated, in yet another tone.

Old Doctor Bitner, the jail physician, had come with a tumbler half-full of whisky and water.

"Here, Archie," he said, "try a sip of this. You'll be all right in a minute."

"He's collapsed," the physician whispered to Marriott, as Archie snatched the glass and gulped down the whisky, making a wry face, and shuddering as if the stuff sickened him.

"I'm all in, Mr. Marriott," said Archie. "I've gone to pieces. I'm down and out. It's no use." He hung his head, as if ashamed of his weakness.

"Well, you know, my boy, that we must begin. It's up to us now. Can you take the stand?"

"No! No!" Archie shook his head with emphasis. "I can't! I can't! That fellow Eades would tear me to pieces!"

Marriott argued, expostulated, pleaded, but in vain. The boy only shook his head and said over and over, each time with a new access of terror:

"No, Eades would tear me to pieces."

"Come on, Gordon," called Glassford, who had finished his cigar, "we can't wait any longer."

The following morning, the defense having put in its evidence and rested, Lamborn began the opening argument for the State. It had long been Lamborn's ambition to make a speech that would last a whole day. He had made copious notes, and when he succeeded in speaking a full half-hour without referring to them, he was greatly encouraged. When he was compelled finally to succumb, and consult his notes, he began to review the evidence, that is, he repeated what the witnesses had already told. After that he began to fail noticeably in ideas and frequently glanced at the clock, but he thought of the statutes, and he read to the jury the laws defining murder in the first degree, murder in the second degree, and manslaughter, and then declaring that the crime Archie had committed was clearly murder in the first degree, he closed by urging the jury to find him guilty of this crime.

In the afternoon Pennell opened the arguments for the defense. Having won the oratorical contest at college, and having once been spoken of in print as the silver-tongued, Pennell pitched his voice in the highest key, and soon filled the court-room with a prodigious noise; he had not spoken fifteen minutes before he had lashed himself into a fury, and with each new, fresh burst of enthusiasm, he raised his hoarse voice higher and higher, until the throats of his hearers ached in sympathy. But at the end of two hours he ceased to wave his arms, no longer struck the bar of the jury-box with his fist, the strain died away, and he sank into his chair, his hair disheveled, his brow and neck and wrists glistening with perspiration, utterly exhausted, but still wearing the oratorical scowl.

All this time Eades and Marriott were lying back in their chairs, in the attitudes of counsel who are reserving themselves for the great and telling efforts of the trial, that is, the closing arguments. When Marriott arose the next morning to begin his address, the silence was profound. He looked about him, at Glassford, at Eades, at the crowd, straining with curious, gleaming eyes. In the overflowing line of men within the bar on either side of the jury-box he recognized several lawyers; their faces were white against the wall; they seemed strange, unnatural, out of place. The jury were uneasy and glanced away, and though Broadwell lifted his small eyes to him, it was without response or sympathy. Marriott was chilled by the patent opposition. Then, somehow, he detected old man Reder stealing a glance at Archie; he kept his eye on Reder. What was Reder thinking of? "Thinking, I suppose," thought Marriott, "that this settles it, and that there is nothing to do now but to send Archie to the chair."

Reder, however, in that moment was really thinking of his boyhood in Germany, where his father had been a judge like Glassford; one day he had found among the papers on his father's desk the statement of a case. An old peasant had accidentally set fire to a forest on an estate and burned up wood to the value of forty marks, for this he was being tried. He felt sorry for the peasant and had begged his father to let him go. When he came home at night he asked his father--

Marriott made an effort, mastered himself; he thought of Archie, leaning forward eagerly, his eyes fixed on him with their last hope. He had a vision of Archie as he had seen him in the jail--he saw again the supple play of his muscles under the white skin of his breast, full of health, of strength, of life--kill him? It was monstrous! A passion swelled within him; he would speak for him, he would speak for old man Koerner, for Gusta, for all the voiceless, submerged poor in the world.... He began.... Some one was sobbing.... He glanced about. It was old Mrs. Koerner, in tears, the first she had shed during the trial.... Archie was looking at her.... He was making an effort, but tears were glistening in the corners of his eyes....

It was over at last. He had done all he could. Men were crowding about him, congratulating him--Pennell, Bentley, his friends among the lawyers, Glassford, and, yes, even Eades.

"I never heard you do better, Gordon," said Eades.

Marriott thanked him. But then Eades could always be depended on to do the correct thing.

All that afternoon Archie sat there and listened to Eades denouncing him. When Marriott had finished his speech, Archie had felt a happiness and a hope--but now there was no hope. Eades was, indeed, tearing him to pieces. How long must he sit there and be game, and endure this thing? Would it never end? Could Eades speak on for ever and for ever and never cease his abuse and denunciation? Would it end with evening--if evening ever came? No; evening came, but Eades had not finished. Morning came, and Eades spoke on and on. He was speaking some strange words; they sounded like the words the mission stiffs used; they must be out of the Bible. He noticed that Broadwell was very attentive.

"He'll soon be done now, Archie," whispered Marriott, giving him a little pat on the knee; "when they quote Scripture, that's a sign--"

Yes, he had finished; this was all; soon it would be over and he would know.

The jurymen were moving in their seats; but there was yet more to be done. The judge must deliver his charge, and the jurors settled down again to listen to Glassford with even greater respect than they had shown Eades.

During the closing sentences of Eades's speech Glassford had drawn some papers from a drawer and arranged them on his desk. These papers contained portions of charges he had made in other criminal cases. Glassford motioned to the bailiff, who bore him a glass of iced water, from which Glassford took a sip and set it before him, as if he would need it and find it useful in making his charge. Then he took off his gold eye-glasses, raised his eyebrows two or three times, drew out a large handkerchief and began polishing his glasses as if that were the most important business of his life. He breathed on the lenses, then polished them, then breathed again, and polished again.

Glassford had selected those portions of the charges he kept in stock, which assured the jury of the greatness of the English law, told how they must consider a man innocent until he had been proved guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, that they must not draw any conclusions unfavorable to the prisoner at the bar from the fact that he had not taken the witness-stand, and so on. These instructions were written in long, involved sentences, composed as nearly as possible of words of Latin derivation. Glassford read them slowly, but so as to give the impression that it was an extemporaneous production.

The jurymen, though many of them did not know the meaning of the words Glassford used, thought they all sounded ominous and portentous, and seemed to suggest Archie's guilt very strongly. For half an hour Glassford read from his instructions, from the indictment and from the statutes, then suddenly recalling the fact that the public was greatly interested in this case, he began to talk of the heinousness of this form of crime and the sacredness of human life. In imagination he could already see the editorials that would be printed in the newspapers, praising him for his stand, and this, he reflected, would be beneficial to him in his campaign for renomination and reelection. Finally he told the jurymen that they must not be affected by motives of sympathy or compassion or pity for the prisoner at the bar or his family, for they had nothing to do with the punishment that would be inflicted upon him. Then he read the various verdicts to them, casually mentioning the verdict of "not guilty" in the tone of an after-thought and as a contingency not likely to occur, and then told them, at last, that they could retire.

At five o'clock the jury stumbled out of the box and entered the little room to the left.

XIX

It was four o'clock in the morning, and the twelve men who were to decide Archie's fate were still huddled in the jury room. For eleven hours they had been there, balloting, arguing, disputing, quarreling, and then balloting again. Time after time young Menard had passed around his hat for the little scraps of paper, and always the result was the same, eleven for conviction, one for acquittal. For a while after the jury assembled there had been three votes for conviction of murder in the second degree, but long ago, as it seemed at that hour, these three votes had been won over for conviction of murder in the first degree, which meant death. At two o'clock Broadwell had declared that there was no use in wasting more time in voting, and for two hours no ballot had been taken. The electric lamps had glowed all night, filling the room with a fierce light, which, at this hour of the winter morning, had taken on an unnatural glare. The air was vitiated, and would have sickened one coming from outside, but these men, whose lungs had been gradually accustomed to it, were not aware how foul it was. Once or twice in the night some one had thrown up a window, but the older men had complained of the cold, and the window had to be closed down again. In that air hung the dead odor of tobacco smoke, for in the earlier hours of the night most of the men--all, indeed, save Broadwell--had smoked, some of them cigars, some pipes. But now they were so steeped in bodily weariness and in physical discomfort and misery that none of them smoked any longer. On the big oaken table in the middle of the room Menard's hat lay tilted on its side, and all about lay the ballots. Ballots, too, strewed the floor and filled the cuspidors, little scraps of paper on which was scribbled for the most part the one word, "Guilty," the same word on all of them, though not always spelled the same. One man wrote it "Gildy," another "Gilty," still another "Gility." But among all those scattered scraps there was a series of ballots, the sight of which angered eleven of the men, and drove them to profanity; on this series of ballots was written "Not guilty." The words were written in an invariable, beautiful script, plainly the chirography of some German.

It was evident that in this barren room, with its table and twelve chairs, its high blank walls and lofty ceiling, a mighty conflict had been waged. But now at the mystic hour when the tide of human forces is at its farthest ebb, the men had become exhausted, and they sat about in dejected attitudes of lassitude and weariness, their brains and souls benumbed. Young Menard had drawn his chair up to the table and thrown his head forward on his arms. He was wholly spent, his brow was bathed with clammy perspiration, and a nausea had seized him. His mind was too tired to work longer, and he was only irritably conscious of some unpleasant interruption when any one spoke. The old men had suffered greatly from the confinement; the long night in that miserable little room, without comforts, had accentuated their various diseases, all the latent pains and aches of age had been awakened, and now, at this low hour, they had lost the sense of time and place, the trial seemed far away in the past, there was no future, and they could but sit there and suffer dumbly. In one corner Osgood had tilted back a chair and fallen asleep. He sprawled there, his head fallen to one side, his wide-open mouth revealing his throat; his face was bathed in sweat, and he snored horribly.

In another corner sat Broadwell, his hands folded across his paunch. The flesh on his fat face had darkened, beneath his eyes were deep blue circles and he looked very old. He had been elected foreman, of course, and early in the evening had made long and solemn addresses to the jury, the same kind of addresses he delivered to his Bible-class--instructive, patronizing, every one of his arguments based on some hackneyed and obvious moral premise. Particularly was this the case, when, as had befallen early in the evening, they had discussed the death penalty. This subject roused him to a high degree of anger, and he raged about it, defended the practice of capital punishment, then, growing calm, spoke of it reverently and as if, indeed, it were a sacrament like baptism, or the Lord's Supper, quoting from the ninth chapter of Genesis. Old Reder had opposed him, and Broadwell had demanded of him to know what he would wish to have done to a man who killed his wife, for instance. Reder, quite insensible to the tribute implied in the suggestion that his action would furnish the standard for all action in such an emergency, had for a while maintained that he would not wish to have the man put to death, but Broadwell had insisted that he would, had quoted the ninth chapter of Genesis again, shaken his head, puffed, and angrily turned away from Reder. One by one he had beaten down the wills of the other jurors. He was tenacious and stubborn, and he had conquered them all--all but old Reder, who paced the floor, his hands in the side pockets of his short jacket. His shaggy white brows were knit in a permanent scowl, and now and then he gathered portions of his gray beard into his mouth and chewed savagely. He was the one, of course, who had been voting for acquittal; his was the hand that had written in that Continental script those dissenting words, "Not guilty."

When this became known, the others had gathered round him, trying to beat him down, and finally, giving way to anger, had shaken their fists in his face, reviled him, and called him ugly names. But all the while he had shaken his head and shouted:

"No! no! no! no!"

For a while he had argued against Archie's guilt, then against the methods of the police, at last, had begged for mercy on the boy. But this last appeal only made them angry.

"Mercy!" they said. "Did he show that old woman any mercy?"

"He isn't being triedt for der old woman," said Reder. "Dot's what the chudge saidt."

"Well, then. Did he show Kouka any mercy?"

"Bah!" shouted Reder. "Did Kouka show him any?"

"But Kouka"--they insisted.

"_Ach_! To hell mit all o' you!" cried Reder, and began to stalk the floor.

"The Dutch dog!" said one.

"The stubborn brute!" grumbled another. "Keeping us all up here, and making us lose our sleep!"

"I tell you," said another, "the jury system ought to be changed, so's a majority would rule!"

"It's no use, it's no use," Reder said in a high petulant voice; "you only make me vorse; you only make me vorse!" He held his hands up and shook them loosely, his fingers vibrating with great rapidity.

Then it was still for a long while--but in the dark and empty court-room, where the bailiff slept on one of the seats, sharp, unnatural, cracking noises were heard now and then; and from it emanated the strange weird influence of the night and darkness. Through the window they looked on the court-house yard lying cold and white under the blaze of the electric lamps. The wind swept down the bleak deserted street. Once they heard a policeman's whistle. Osgood was snoring loudly.

"Great God!" shouted Duncan irritably. "Can't some of you make him stop that?"

Church got up and gave Osgood's chair a rude kick.

"Huh?" Osgood started up, staring about wildly. Then he came to his senses, looked around, understood, fell back and went to sleep again.

And Reder tramped up and down, and Broadwell sat and glared at him, and the others waited. Reder was thinking of that time of his boyhood in Germany when the old peasant had been tried for setting the wood afire. The whole scene had come back to him, and he found a fascination in recalling one by one every detail, until each stood out vividly and distinctly in his mind. He paced on, until, after a while, Broadwell spoke again.

"Mr. Reder," he said, "I don't see how you can assume the position you do."

"It's no use, I tol' you; no use!"

"But look here," Broadwell insisted, getting up and trying to stop Reder. He took him by the lapel of his coat, forced him to stand an instant, and when Reder yielded, and stood still, the other jurors looked up with some hope.

"Tell me why--"

"I don't _vant_ to have him killedt, I tol' you."

"But it isn't killing; it isn't the same."

"Bah! Nonsense!" roared Reder.

"It's the law."

"I don't gare for der law. We say he don't die--he don't die den, ain't it?"

"But it's the _law_!" protested Broadwell, thinking to add new stress to his argument by placing new stress on the word. "How can we do otherwise?"

"How? Chust by saying not guildy, dot's how."

"But how can we do that?"

"Chust _do_ it, dot's how!"

"But it's the law,--the _law_!"

"Damn der _law_!" roared Reder, resuming his walk. And Broadwell stood looking at him, in horror, as if he had blasphemed.

There was silence again, save for Osgood's snoring. Then suddenly, no one knew how, the argument broke out anew.

"How do we know?" some one was saying. It was Grey; his conviction was shaken again.

"Know?" said Church. "Don't we know?"

"How do we?"

"Well--I don't know, only--"

"Yes, only."

"You ain't going back on us now, I hope?",

"No, but--" Grey shook his head.

"Well, you heard what the judge said."

They could always appeal to what the judge had said, as if he spoke with some authority that was above all others.

"What'd he say?" asked Grey.

"Why--he said--what was that there word now?"

"What word?"

"That word he used--refer--no that wasn't it, let's see."

"Infer?" suggested Broadwell.

"Sure! That's it! Infer! He said infer."

"By God! I guess that's right! He did say that."

"Course," Church went on triumphantly. "Infer! He said infer, and that means we can infer it, don't it?"

Just at that minute a pain, sharp and piercing, shot through Reder's back. He winced, made a wry face, stopped, stooped to a senile posture and clapped his hand to his back. His heart suddenly sank--there it was again, his old trouble. That meant bad things for him; now, as likely as not, he'd be laid up all winter; probably he couldn't sit on the jury any more; surely not if that old trouble came back on him. And how would he and his old wife get through the winter? Instantly he forgot everything else. What time was it, he wondered? This being up all night; he could not stand that.

As from a distance he heard the argument going on. At first he felt no relation to it, but this question must be settled some way. The pain had ceased, but it would come back again. He straightened up slowly, gradually, with extreme care, his hand poised in readiness to clap to his back again; He turned about by minute degrees and said:

"What's dot you saidt?"

"Why," began Church, but just then Reder winced again; clapped his hand to his back, doubled up, his face was contorted. He was evidently suffering tortures, but he made no outcry. Church sprang toward him.

"Get him some water,--here!"

Chisholm punched young Menard; he got up, and pushed the big white porcelain water pitcher across the table. But Reder waved it aside.

"Nefer mind," he said. "What was dot you vas sayin' a minute back?"

"Why, Mr. Reder, we said the judge said we could infer. Don't you remember?"

Church looked into his face hopefully, and waited.

Broadwell got slowly to his feet, and moved toward the little group deliberately, importantly, as if he alone could explain.

"Here, have my chair, Mr. Reder," said Broadwell with intense politeness.

"No, nefer mind," said Reder, afraid to move.

"What the judge said," Broadwell began, "was simply this. He said that if it was to be inferred from all the facts and circumstances adduced in evidence--"

"Besides," Church broke in, "that old woman said he _was_ the fellow, down at the police station--it was in the paper, don't you remember?"

"Oh, but the judge said we wasn't to pay attention to anything like that," said Grey.

"Well, but he said we could infer, didn't he?"

"Just let me speak, please," insisted Broadwell, "His Honor went on to say--" he had just recalled that that was the proper way to speak of a judge, and then, the next instant, he remembered that it was also proper to call the judge "the Court," and he was anxious to use both of these phrases. "That is, the Court said--" And he explained the meaning of the word "infer."

Reder was listening attentively, his head bent, his hand resting on his hip. Broadwell talked on, in his low insinuating tone. Reder made no reply. After a while, Broadwell, his eyes narrowing, said softly, gently:

"Gentlemen, shall we not try another ballot?"

Menard got up wearily, his hat in readiness again. The jurors began rummaging among the scraps for ballots.

A street-car was just scraping around the curve at the corner, its wheels sending out a shrill, grinding noise.

"Great heavens!" exclaimed McCann, taking out his watch, "it's five thirty! Morning! We've been here all night!"

Outside the city was still wrapped in a soft thick darkness. Eades was sleeping soundly; his mother, when she kissed him good night, had patted his head, saying, "My dear, brave boy." Marriott had just sunk into a troubled doze. Glassford was snoring loudly in his warm chamber; Koerner and his wife were kneeling on their bed, their hands clasped, saying a prayer in German, and over in the jail, Archie was standing with his face pressed against the cold bars of his cell, looking out across the corridor, watching for the first streak of dawn.

XX

Marriott awoke with a start when the summons came. The jury had agreed; his heart leaped into his throat. What was the verdict? He had a confused sense of the time, the world outside was dark; he could have slept but a few minutes, surely it was not much later than midnight. He switched on the electric light, and looked at his watch. It was half-past six--morning. He dressed hurriedly, and went out.

The clammy air smote him coldly. The day was just breaking, a yellow haze above the roofs toward the east. He hurried along the damp pavement, an eager lonely figure in the silent streets; the light spread gradually, creeping as it were through the heavy air; a fog rolled over the pavements and the world was cold and gray. An early street-car went clanging past, filled with working-men. These working-men were happy; they smoked their pipes and joked--Marriott could hear them, and he thought it strange that men could be happy anywhere in the world that morning. But these fancies were not to be indulged with the leisurely sense in which he usually philosophized on that life of which he was so conscious; for the court-house loomed huge and portentous in the dawn. And suddenly the light that was slowly suffusing the ether seemed to pause; there was a hesitation almost perceptible to the eye in the descent of morning on the world; it was, to Marriott's imagination, exactly, as if the sun had suddenly concluded to shine no longer on the just and the unjust alike, but would await the issue then yeaning beneath that brooding dome, and see whether men would do justice in the world. Somewhere, Marriott knew, in that gray and smoky pile, the fate was waiting, biding its time. What would it be?

He had remained at the court-house the night before with Pennell and Lamborn, several of the court officials and attaches, and a dwindling group of the morbid and the curious. An immediate agreement had been expected, allowing, of course, for the delay necessary to a preservation of the decencies, but as the hours dragged by, Marriott's hopes had risen; each moment increased the chance of an acquittal, of a disagreement, or of some verdict not so tragic as the one the State had striven for. His heart had grown lighter. But by midnight he was wholly exhausted. Intelligence, which knows no walls, had somehow stolen out from the jury room; there was some eccentricity in this mighty machine of man, and no immediate agreement was to be expected. And then Marriott had left, trusting Pennell to remain and represent the defendant at the announcement of the verdict. It was about the only duty he felt he could trust to Pennell. And now, hurrying into the court-house, his hopes rose once more.

Something after all of the effect of custom was apparent in the atmosphere of the court-room, where the tribunal was convened thus so much earlier than its wonted hour. The room was strange and unreal, haunted in this early morning gloom by the ghosts of the protagonists who had stalked through it. Glassford was already on the bench, his eyes swollen, his cheeks puffed. Lamborn was there, in the same clothes he had worn the day before,--it was plain that he had not had them off at all. And there, already in the box, sat the jury, blear-eyed, unkempt, disheveled, demoralized, with traces yet of anger, hatred and the fury of their combat in their faces, a caricature of that majesty with which it is to be presumed this institution reaches the solemn conclusions of the law. And there, at the table, still strewn with the papers that were the debris of the conflict, sat Archie, the sorry subject over which men had been for days quarreling and haggling, harrying and worrying him like a hunted thing. He sat immobile, gazing through the eastern windows at the waiting and inscrutable dawn of a day swollen with such tragic possibilities for him.

Glassford looked sleepily at Marriott as he burst through the doors. His glance indicated relief; he was glad the conclusion had been reached at this early hour, even if it had haled him from his warm bed; he was glad to be able thus to trick the crowd and have the law discharge its solemn function before the crowd came to view it.

"Gentlemen of the jury," he said, "have you agreed upon a verdict?"

"We have, your Honor." Broadwell was rising in his place.

Glassford nodded to the clerk, who walked across the floor, his heels striking out sharp sounds. Marriott had paused at the little gate in the railing. He clutched at it, and supported himself in the weakness that suddenly overwhelmed him. It seemed to him that the clerk took a whole age in crossing that floor. He waited. Broadwell had handed the clerk a folded document. The clerk took it and opened it; it fluttered in his fingers. Now he hastily cast his eye over it, and Marriott thought: "There still is hope--hope in each infinitesimal portion of a second as he reads it--" for he was reading now:

"'We, the jury, impaneled and sworn well and truly to try and true deliverance make in the cause wherein the State is plaintiff and Archie Koerner is defendant, for verdict do find and say that we find the defendant--'" Marriott gasped. The clerk read on:

"'--guilty as charged in the indictment'."

"Gentlemen of the jury," said the clerk, folding the paper in his formal manner, "is this your verdict?"

"It is," said Broadwell.

"So say you all."

There was silence. After a while Marriott controlled himself and said:

"Your Honor, we demand a poll of the jury."

Slowly, one after another, the clerk called the names, and one after another the jurors rose.

"Is this your verdict?" asked the clerk.

"Perhaps," thought Marriott as each one rose, "perhaps even now, one will relent, one will change--one--"

"It is," each man answered.

Then Glassford was speaking again--the everlasting formalities, mocking the very sense of things, thanking the jury, congratulating them, discharging them.

And Archie Koerner sat there, never moving, looking through the eastern window--but now at the dawn no more, for the window was black to his eyes and the light had gone out of the world.

XXI

Archie sat by the trial table and looked out the window toward the east. The window from being black became gray again--gray clouds, a scumbled atmosphere of gray. When the jury came out of the box, after it was all over, a young clerk in the court-house rushed up to Menard and wrung his hand in enthusiastic, hysterical congratulation, as if Menard in the face of heavy opposition had done some brave and noble deed. And Archie wondered what he had ever done to this young clerk that he should so have it in for him. Then Marriott was at his side again, but he said nothing; he only took his hand.

"Well," thought Archie, "there is one man left in the world who hasn't got it in for me." And yet there actually seemed to be Danner. For Danner bent over and whispered:

"Whenever you're ready, Dutch, we'll go back. Of course--no particular hurry, but when you're ready."

Archie wondered what Danner was up to now; usually he ordered them about like brutes, with curses.

"You'll be wanting a bite of breakfast," Danner was saying.

Breakfast! The word was strange. Were people still eating breakfast in this world, just as if nothing had happened, just as if things were as they used to be--before--before--what? Before he shot Kouka? No, there was nothing unusual about that; he didn't care anything about Kouka. Before the penitentiary and the bull rings? Before the first time in the workhouse, when that break, that lapse, came into his life? But breakfast--they would be carrying the little pans about in the jail just now, and that brought the odor of coffee to his memory. Coffee would not be a bad thing.

"Any time," he said to Danner.

Then they got up and walked away, through the gray morning.

In the jail, Danner instantly unlocked the handcuffs, and as he jostled Archie a little in opening the door, he said:

"Oh, excuse me, Dutch."

What had got into Danner, anyway? Inside he wondered more. Danner said:

"You needn't lock this morning; you can stay in the corridor, and I'll have your breakfast sent in to you in a moment."

Then Danner put up his big hand and whispered in Archie's ear:

"I'll see the cook and get her to sneak in a little cream and sugar for your coffee."

Archie could not understand this, nor had he then time to wonder about it, for he was being turned into the prison, and there, he knew, his companions were waiting to know the news. Most of them were in their cells. Two of them, the English thief and Mosey--he could tell it was Mosey by the striped sweater--were standing in the far end of the corridor, but they did not even look. He caught a snatch of their conversation.

"What was the rap, the dip?"

"No, penny weightin'."

They appeared to be talking indifferently and were no more curious--so one would say--than they would have been if some dinge had been vagged. And yet Archie knew that every motion, every word, every gesture of his was important. He tried to walk just as he had always walked. They waited till Archie was at his cell door, and then some one called in a tone of suspense that could be withheld no longer:

"What's the word, Archie?"

"Touched off," he called, loud enough for them all to hear. He spoke the words carelessly, almost casually, with great nonchalance. There was silence, sinister and profound. Then gradually the conversation was resumed between cell and cell; they were all calling out to him, all straining to be cheerful and encouraging.

"That mouthpiece of yours 'll spring you yet," some one said, "down below."

Archie listened to their attempts to cheer him, all pathetic enough, until presently the English thief passed his door, and said in a low voice:

"Be gime, me boy."

That was it! Be game! From this on, that must be his ideal of conduct. He knew how they would inquire, how some day Mason and old Dillon, how Gibbs and all the guns and yeggs would ask about this, how the old gang would ask about it--he must be game. He had made, he thought, a fair beginning.

Danner brought the breakfast himself, and good as his word he had got the cook to put some cream and sugar in his coffee. Not only this, but the cook had boiled him two eggs--and he hadn't eaten eggs in months. The last time, he recalled, was when Curly had boiled some in a can--had Curly, over in another part of the prison, been told?

Archie thanked Danner and told him to thank the cook. And yet a wonder possessed him. He had never known kindness in a prison before, save among the prisoners themselves, and often they were cruel and mean to each other--like the rats and mission-stiffs who were always snitching and having them chalked and stood out. Here in this jail, he had never beheld any kindness, for notwithstanding the fact that nearly every one there was detained for a trial which was to establish his guilt or innocence, and the law had a theory that every one was to be presumed innocent until proved guilty, the sheriff and the jailers treated them all as if they were guilty, and as if it was their duty to assist in the punishment. But here was a man who had been declared guilty of a heinous crime, and was to receive the worst punishment man could bestow, and yet, suddenly, he was receiving every kindness, almost the first he had ever known, at least since he had grown up. Having done all they could to hurry him out of the world, men suddenly apologized by showering him with attention while he remained.

When he ate his breakfast Archie felt better,--Mr. Marriott would do something, he was sure; it was not possible that this thing could happen to him.

"Any of youse got the makin's?" he called.

Instantly, all down the corridor on both sides, the cells' voices rang:

"Here! Here! Archie! Here, have mine!"

"Mr. Marriott gave me a whole box yesterday, but I smoked 'em all up in the night!" he said.

XXII

Those persons in the community who called themselves the good were gratified by Archie's conviction, and there were at once editorials and even sermons to express this gratification. Lorenzo Edwards of the _Courier_, who hated Marriott because he had borrowed ten dollars of Marriott some years before and had never paid it back, wrote an unctuous and hypocritical editorial in which he condemned Marriott for carrying the case up, and deprecated the law's delay. The _Post_--although Archie had not talked to a reporter--printed interviews with him, and as a final stroke of enterprise, engaged Doctor Tyler Tilson, the specialist, to examine Archie for stigmata of degeneracy. Tilson went to jail, taking with him tape and calipers and other instruments, and after measuring Archie and percussing him, and lighting matches before his eyes, and having him walk blindfolded, and pricking him with pins, wrote a profound article for the _Post_ from the standpoint of criminology, in which he repeated many scientific phrases, and used the word "environment," many times, and concluded that Archie had the homicidal tendency strongly developed.

The Reverend Doctor Hole, who had his degree from a small college in Dakota, had taken lessons of an elocutionist, and advertised the sensational sermons in which he preached against those vices the refinements and wealth of his own congregation did not tempt them to commit, spoke on "Crime"; even Modderwell referred to it with complacency.

In all of these expressions, of course, Eades was flattered, and this produced in him a sensation of the greatest comfort and justification. He felt repaid for all he had suffered in trying the case. But Marriott felt that an injustice had been done, and, such is the quality of injustice, that one suspicion of it may tincture every thought until the complexion of the world is changed and everything appears unjust. As Marriott read these editorials, the reports of these sermons, and the conclusions of a heartless science that had thumped Archie as if he were but a piece of rock for the geologist's hammer, he was filled with anger, and resolved that Archie should not be put to death until he had had the advantage of every technicality of the law. He determined to carry the case up at his own expense. Though he could not afford to do this, and was staggered when he ran over in his mind the cost of the transcript of evidence, the transcript of the record, the printing of the briefs, the railroad and hotel bills, and all that,--he felt it would be a satisfaction to see one poor man, at least, receive in the courts all that a rich man may demand.

Within the three days provided by law, Marriott filed his motion for a new trial and then he was content to wait, and let the proceedings drag along. But Eades insisted on an immediate hearing.

When Glassford had announced his decision denying a new trial, he hesitated a moment and then, with an effect of gathering himself for an ordeal, he dropped his judicial manner, called Eades and Marriott to the bench, leaned over informally, whispered with them, and finally, as if justifying a decision he had just communicated to them, observed:

"We might as well do it now and have it over with."

Then he sent the sheriff for Archie, and the bailiff for a calendar.

There were few persons in the court-room besides the clerk and the bailiff, Marriott and Pennell, Eades and Lamborn. It was a bleak day; outside a mean wind that had been blowing for three days off the lake swept the streets bare of their refuse and swirled it everywhere in clouds of filth. The sky was gray, and the cold penetrated to the marrow; men hurried along with their heads huddled in the collars of their overcoats--if they had overcoats; they winced and screwed their faces in the stinging cold, longing for sunshine, for snow, for rain, for anything to break the monotony of this weather. Within the court-room the gloom was intensified by the doom that was about to be pronounced. While they waited, Eades and Lamborn sat at a table, uneasily moving now and then; Marriott walked up and down; no one spoke. Glassford was scowling over his calendar, pausing now and then, lifting his eyes and looking off, evidently making a calculation.

When Bentley and Danner came at last with Archie, and unshackled him, Glassford did not look up. He kept his head bowed over his docket; now and then he looked at his calendar, the leaves of which rattled and trembled as he turned them over. Then they waited, every one there, in silence. After a while, Glassford spoke. He spoke in a low voice, into which at first he did not succeed in putting much strength:

"Koerner, you may stand up."

Archie rose promptly, his heels clicked together, his hands dropped stiffly to his side; he held his head erect, as he came to the military attitude of attention. But Glassford did not look at him. He was gazing out of the window again toward that mysterious window across the street.

"Have you anything to say why the sentence of this court should not be passed upon you?" he asked presently.

"No, sir," said Archie. He was looking directly at Glassford, but Glassford did not look at him. Glassford waited, studying how he should begin. The reporters were poising their pencils nervously.

"Koerner," Glassford began, still looking away, "after a fair and impartial trial before a jury of twelve sworn men you have been found guilty of the crime of murder in the first degree. The trial was conducted carefully and deliberately; the jury was composed of honest and representative men, and you were defended, and all your rights conserved by able counsel. You have had the benefit of every immunity known to our law, and yet, after calm deliberation, as the court has said, you have been found guilty. We have, in addition to that, here to-day heard a motion for a new trial; we have very carefully reviewed the evidence and the law in this case, and the court is convinced that no errors were committed on the trial detrimental to your rights in the premises or prejudicial to your interests. It now becomes the duty of the court to pass sentence upon you."

Glassford paused, removed his glasses, put them on again; and looked out of the window as before.

"Fortunately--I say fortunately, for so I feel about it"--he nodded--"fortunately for me, I have no discretion as to what your punishment shall be. The law has fixed that; it leaves nothing to me but to announce its determination. My duty is clear; in a measure, simple."

Glassford paused again, sighed faintly, and settled in his chair with some relief, as if he had succeeded in detaching himself personally from the situation, and remained now only in his representative judicial capacity.

"Still," he went on, speaking in an apologetic tone that betokened a lingering of his personal identity, "that duty, while clear, is none the less painful. I would that it had not fallen to my lot." He paused again, still looking away. "It is a sad and melancholy spectacle--a young man of your strength and native ability, with your opportunities for living a good and useful life, standing here to hear the extreme penalty of the law pronounced upon you. You might have been an honorable, upright man; you seem, so far as I am able to ascertain, to have come from a good home, and to have had honest, frugal, industrious parents. You have had the opportunity of serving your country, you have had the benefit of the training and discipline of the regular army. You might have put to some good use the lessons you learned in those places. And yet, you seem to have wilfully abandoned yourself to a life of crime. You have shown an utter disregard for the sacred right of property; you have been ready to steal, to live on the usufruct of the labor of others; and now, as is inevitable"--Glassford shook his head emphatically as he pronounced the word "inevitable"--"you have gone on until nothing is sacred in your eyes--not even human life itself."

Glassford, who found it easy to talk in this moral strain, especially when reporters were present to take down his words, went on repeating phrases he employed on the occasions when he pronounced sentence, until, as it seemed to him, having worked himself up to the proper pitch, he said, with one last tone of regret:

"It is a painful duty," and then feeling there was no way out of the duty, unless he resigned his position, which, of course, was out of the question, he straightened in his seat, turned, looked up at the ceiling and said, speaking more rapidly, "and yet I can not shirk a duty because it is disagreeable."

He clasped the desk before him tightly with his hands; his lips were pale. Then he said:

"The sentence of the court is that you be taken by the sheriff to the penitentiary, and there delivered over into the custody of the warden of the said penitentiary, by him to be guarded and safely kept until the fourteenth day of May next ensuing, on which day the said warden of the said penitentiary shall cause a current of electricity to be passed through your body, and to cause the said current to continue to be passed through your body--until you are dead."

Glassford paused; no one in the court-room moved. Archie still kept his eyes on Glassford, and Glassford kept his eyes on the wall. Glassford had remembered that in olden days the judge, when he donned the black cap, at some such time as this used to pray that God would have mercy on the soul of the man for whom he himself could find no mercy; but Glassford did not like to say this; it seemed too old-fashioned and he would have felt silly and self-conscious in it. And yet, he felt that the proprieties demanded that something be said in the tone of piety, and, thinking a moment, he added:

"And I hope, Koerner, that you will employ the few remaining days of life left to you in preparing your soul to meet its Maker."

With an air of relief, Glassford turned, and wrote in his docket. On his broad, shining forehead drops of perspiration were glistening.

"The prisoner will be remanded," he said.

Archie faced about and held out his left wrist toward Danner. The handcuffs clicked, Marriott turned, glanced at Archie, but he could not bear to look in his white face. Then he heard Danner's feet and Archie's feet falling in unison as they passed out of the courtroom.

XXIII

Danny Gibbs, having recovered from the debauch into which Archie's fate had plunged him, sat in his back room reading the evening paper. His spree had lasted for a week, and the whole tenderloin had seethed with the excitement of his escapades. Now that it was all over and reason had returned, he had made new resolutions, and a certain moral rehabilitation was expressed in his solemn demeanor and in the utter neatness of his attire. He was clean-shaven, his skin glowed pink from Turkish baths, his gray hair was closely trimmed and soberly parted, his linen was scrupulously clean; he wore new clothes of gray, his shoes were polished and without a fleck of dust. His meditations that evening might have been profoundly pious, or they might have been dim, foggy recollections of the satisfaction he had felt in heaping scathing curses on the head of Quinn, whom he had met in Eva Clason's while on his rampage. He had cursed the detective as a representative of the entire race of policemen, whom he hated, and Quinn had apparently taken it in this impersonal sense, for he had stood quietly by without resenting Gibbs's profane denunciation. But whatever Gibbs's meditations, they were broken by the entrance of a woman.

She was dressed just as she had always been in the long years Gibbs had known her, soberly and in taste; she wore a dark tailor suit, the jacket of which disclosed at her full bosom a fresh white waist. She was gloved and carried a small hand-bag; the bow of black ribbon on her hat trembled with her agitation; she was not tall, but she was heavy, with the tendency to the corpulence of middle years. Her reddish hair was touched with gray here and there, and, as Gibbs looked at her, he could see in her flushed face traces of the beauty that had been the fatal fortune of the girlhood of Jane the Gun.

"Howdy, Dan," she said, holding out her gloved hand.

"Hello, Jane," he said. "When'd you come?"

"I got in last night," she said, laying her hand-bag on the table. "Give me a little whisky, Dan." She tugged at her gloves, which came from her moist hands reluctantly. Gibbs was looking at her hands,--they were as white, as soft and as beautiful as they had ever been. One thing in the world, he reflected in the saddened philosophy that had come to him with sobriety, had held unchanged, anyway.

"I said a little whisky, Dan!" she spoke with some of her old imperiousness.

"No," he said resolutely, "you don't need any. There's nothing in it." He was speaking out of his moral rehabilitation. She glanced at him angrily; he saw that her brown eyes, the brown eyes that went with her reddish hair and her warm complexion, were flaming and almost red. He remembered to have seen them flame that dangerous red before. Still, it would be best to mollify her.

"There ain't any more whisky in town," he said, "I've drunk it all up."

She laughed as the second glove came off with a final jerk.

"I heard you'd been hitting the pots. Isn't it a shame! The poor kid! I heard it's a kangaroo."

Gibbs made no comment.

"He was a raw one, too, wasn't he?"

"Well, he's a young Dutchman--he filled in with the mob several moons back."

"What was the rap?"

"He boosted a rod, and they settled him for that; he got a stretch. Then he was in when they knocked off the peter in that P. O. down in Indiana."

"That's what I couldn't get hip to; Mason wasn't--"

"No, not that time; they had him wrong; but you know what them elbows are."

"They must have rapped hard."

"Yes, they gave them a five spot. But the Dutch wasn't in on that Flanagan job, neither was Curly. That was rough work--the cat, I s'pose."

Jane, her chin in her hands, suddenly became intent, looking straight into Gibbs's eyes.

"Dan, that's what I want to get wise to."

Her cheeks flamed to her white temples, her breast rose tumultuously, and as she looked at Gibbs her eyes contracted, the wrinkles about them became deeper and older, and they wore the hard ugly look of jealous suspicion. But presently her lip quivered, then slowly along the lower lashes of her eyes the tears gathered.

"What's the matter, Jane?"

"You don't know what I've stood for that man!" she blazed out. "I could settle him. I could send him to the stir. I could have him touched off!" She had clenched her fist, and, at these last words, with their horrible possibility, she smote it down on the table. "But he knew I wouldn't be a copper!" She ended with this, and fumbling among a woman's trinkets in her hand-bag, she snatched out a handkerchief and hastily brushed away the tears. Gibbs, appealed to in all sorts of exigencies, was at a loss when a woman wept. She shook with weeping, until her hatred was lost in the pity she felt for herself.

"I never said a word when you flew me the kite to keep under cover that time he plugged Moon."

"No, you were good then."

"Yes," she said, looking up for approval, "I was, wasn't I? But this time--I won't stand for it!"

"I'm out o' this," said Gibbs.

"Well," she went on, "his mouthpiece wrote me not to show here. But I was on at once. Curly knew I was hip from the start"--her anger was rising again. "It was all framed up; he got that mouthpiece to hand me that bull con, and he's even got McFee to--"

"McFee!" said Gibbs, starting at the name of the inspector. "McFee! Have you been to him?"

"Yes, I've been to him!" she said, repeating his words with a satirical curl of the lip. "I've been to him; the mouthpiece sent me word to lay low till he sprung him; Curly sent me word that McFee said I wasn't to come to this town. Think I couldn't see through all that? I was wise in a minute and I just come, that's what I did, right away. I did the grand over here."

"What was it you thought they had framed up?" asked Gibbs innocently. "I can't follow you."

"Aw, now, Dan," she said, drawing away from the table with a sneer, "don't you try to whip-saw me."

"No, on the dead!"

"What was it? Why, some moll, of course; some tommy."

Gibbs leaned back and laughed; he laughed because he saw that this was simply woman's jealousy.

"Look here, Jane," he said, "you know I don't like to referee these domestic scraps--I know I'll be the fall guy if I do--but you're wrong, that's all; you've got it wrong."

She looked at him, intently trying to prove his sincerity, and anxious to be convinced that her suspicions were unfounded, and yet by habit and by her long life of crime she was so suspicious and so distrustful--like all thieves, she thought there were no honest people in the world--that her suspicions soon gained their usual mastery over her, and she broke out:

"You know I'm not wrong. I went to see McFee."

"What did he say?" asked Gibbs, with the interest in anything this lord that stood between him and the upper world might say.

"Why, he said he wouldn't say nothing."

"Did he say you could stay?"

"Well," she hesitated an instant, "he said he didn't want me doing any work in town; he said he wouldn't stand for it."

"No, you mustn't do any work here." Gibbs spoke now with his own authority, reinforcing that of the detective.

"Oh, sin not leery!" she sneered at him. "I'm covered all right, and strong. You're missing the number, that's all. I'm going to camp here, and when I see her, I'll clout her on the kurb; I'll slam a rod to her nut, if I croak for it!"

"Jane," said Gibbs, when he had looked his stupefaction at her, "you've certainly gone off your nut. Who in hell's this woman you're talking about?"

"As if you don't know! What do you want to string me for?"

Gibbs looked at her with a perfectly blank face.

"All right, have it your way."

"Well," she said presently, with some doubt in her mind, "if you don't know and just to prove to you that I _do_ know, it's the sister of that young Koerner!"

Gibbs looked at her a long time in a kind of silent contempt. Then he said in a tone that dismissed the subject as an absurdity:

"You've passed; the nut college for you."

Jane fingered the metal snake that made the handle of her bag; now and then she sighed, and after a while she was forced to speak--the silence oppressed her:

"Well, I'll stay and see, anyway."

"Jane, you're bug house," said Gibbs quietly.

Somehow, at the words, she bowed her head on her hands and wept; the black ribbon on her hat shook with her sobbing.

"Oh, Dan, I am bug house," she sobbed; "that's what I've been leery of. I haven't slept for a month; I've laid awake night after night; for four days now I've been going down the line--hunting her everywhere, and I can't find her!"

She gave way utterly and cried. And Gibbs waited with a certain aspect of stolid patience, but in reality with a distrust of himself; he was a sentimental man, who was moved by any suffering that revealed itself to him concretely, or any grief or hardship that lay before his own eyes, though he lacked the cultured imagination that could reveal the sorrows and the suffering that are hidden in the world beyond immediate vision. But she ceased her weeping as suddenly as she had begun it.

"Dan," she said, looking up, "you don't know what I've done for that man. I was getting along all right when I doubled with him; I was doing well--copping the cush right along. I was working under protection in Chi.; I gave it all up for him--"

She broke off suddenly and exclaimed irrelevantly:

"The tommy buster!"

Gibbs started.

"No," he protested, "not Curly!"

"Sure!" she sneered, turning away in disgust of his doubt.

"What made you stand for it?"

"Well," she temporized, forced to be just, "it was only once. I had rousted a goose for his poke--all alone too--" She spoke with the pride she had always had in her dexterity, and Gibbs suddenly recalled the fact that she had been the first person in all their traditions who could take a pocketbook from a man, "weed" and replace it without his being aware; the remembrance pleased him and his eyes lighted up.

"What's the matter?" she demanded suddenly.

"I was thinking of the time you turned the old trick, and at the come-back, when the bulls found the sucker's leather on him with the put-back, they booted him down the street; remember?"

Jane looked modest and smiled, but she was too full of her troubles now for compliments, though she had a woman's love for them.

"I saw the sucker was fanning and I--well, Curly comes up just then and he goes off his nut and he--gives me a beating--in the street."

She saw that the circumstances altered the case in Gibbs's eyes, and she rather repented having told.

"He said he didn't want me working; he said he could support me."

Gibbs plainly thought well of Curly's wish to be the sole head and support of his nomadic family, but he recognized certain disadvantages in Curly's attitude when he said:

"You could get more than he could."

"Course, that's what I told him, but he said no, he wouldn't let me, and, Dan, you know what I did? Why, I helped him; he used to bust tags on the rattlers, and he hoisted express-wagons--I knew where to dispose of the stuff--furs and that sort, and we did do pretty well. I used to fill out for him, and then I'd go with him to the plant at night and wait with the drag holding the horses--God! I've sat out in the jungle when it was freezing, sat out for hours; sometimes the plant had been sprung by the bulls or the hoosiers; it made no difference--that's how I spent my nights for two winters. I know every road and every field and every fence corner around that town. It gave me the rheumatism, and I hurt my back helping him load the swag. You see he didn't have a gager and didn't have to bit up with any one, but he never appreciated that! And now he's lammed, he's pigged, that's what he's done; he's thrown me down--but you bet I'll have my hunk!"

"That won't get you anything," Gibbs argued. "Anyway," he added, as if he had suddenly discovered a solution, "why don't you go back on the gun now?"

She was silent a moment, and, as she sat there, the tears that were constantly filling her eyes welled up again, and she said, though reluctantly and with a kind of self-consciousness:

"I don't want to, Dan. I'm getting old. To tell the truth, since I've been out of it, I'm sick of the business--I--I've got a notion to square it."

Gibbs was so used to this talk of reform that it passed him idly by, and he only laughed. She leaned her cheek against her hand; with the other hand she twisted and untwisted the metal snake. Presently she sighed unconsciously.

"What are you going to do now?" Gibbs asked presently.

"I'm going to stay here in town till I see this woman."

"But you can't do any work here."

"I don't want to do any work, I tell you."

"How'll you live?"

"Live!" she said scornfully. "I don't care how; I don't care if I have to carry the banner--I'll get a bowl of sky-blue once in a while--and I'll wash dishes--anything!" She struck the table, and Gibbs's eyes fastened on her white, plump little fist as it lay there; then he laughed, thinking of it in a dish-pan, where it had never been.

"Well, I'll do it!" she persisted, reading his thought and hastily withdrawing the fist. "I'm going to get him!" She looked at Gibbs for emphasis.

"Jane," he said quietly, "you want to cut that out. This is no place for you now--this town's getting on the bum; they've put it to the bad. It's time to rip it. This rapper--"

"Oh, yes, I've heard--what's this his name is now?"

"Eades."

"What kind is he?"

"Oh, he's a swell lobster."

"They tell me he's strong."

"He's the limit."

Her eyes lighted up suddenly and she sat upright.

"Then I'll go see him!"

"Jane!" Gibbs exclaimed with as much feeling as he ever showed. He saw by the flashes of her eyes that her mind was working rapidly, though he could not follow the quick and surprising turns her intentions would take. He had a sudden vision, however, of her sitting in Eades's office, talking to him, passing herself off, doubtless, for the respectable and devoted wife of Jackson; he knew how easily she could impose on Eades; he knew how Eades would be impressed by a woman who wore the good clothes Jane knew how to wear so well, and he felt, too, that in his utter ignorance of the world from which Jane came, in his utter ignorance of life in general, Eades would believe anything she told him; and becoming thus prejudiced in the very beginning, make untold work for him to do in order to save his friend.

"Jane," he said severely, "you let him alone; you hear?"

She had risen and was drawing on her gloves. She stood there an instant, smiling as if her new notion pleased her, while she pressed down the fingers of her glove on her left hand. Then she said pleasantly:

"Good-by, Dan. Give my love to Kate."

And she turned and was gone.

XXIV

Elizabeth had heard her father enter and she imagined him sitting in the library, musing by the fire, finding a tired man's comfort in that quiet little hour before dinner. Sensitive as ever to atmospheres, Elizabeth felt the coziness of the hour, and looked forward to dinner with pleasure. For days she had been under the gloom of Archie's conviction; she had never followed a murder case before, but she had special reason for an interest in this. She had helped Marriott all she could by wishing for his success; she had felt his failure as a blow, and this, with the thought of Gusta, had caused her inexpressible depression. But by an effort she had put these thoughts from her mind, and now in her youth, her health, her wholesomeness, the effect of so much sorrow and despair was leaving her. She had finished her toilet, which, answering her mood, was bright that evening, when she heard Dick enter. Half the time of late he had not come home at all, sometimes days went by without her seeing him. She glanced at the little watch on her dressing-table; it was not yet six and Dick was home in time for dinner; perhaps he would spend the evening at home. She hoped he had not come to dress for some engagement that would take him away. Her father, she knew, would be happy in the thought of the boy's spending an evening with him; almost pathetic in his happiness. Of late, more and more, as she noted, the father had yearned toward the son; the lightest word, a look, a smile from Dick was sufficient to make him glow with pleasure. It made Elizabeth sad to see it, and it made her angry to see how her mother fondled and caressed him, excusing him for, if not abetting him in, all his excesses. But these thoughts were interrupted just then by Dick's voice. He was in the hall outside, and he spoke her name:

"Bess!"

The tone of the voice struck her oddly. He had pushed open the door and hesitated on the threshold, peering in cautiously. Then he entered and carefully closed the door behind him. She scented the odor of Scotch whisky, of cigarettes, in short, the odor of the club man. His face, which she had thought ruddy with the health, the exuberance, the inexhaustible vitality of youth, she saw now to be really unhealthy, its ruddy tints but the flush of his dissipations. Now, his face went white suddenly, as if a mask had been snatched from it; she saw the weakness and sensuousness that marred it.

"Dick!" she said, for some reason speaking in a whisper. "What's the matter? Tell me!"

At first a great fear came to her, a fear that he was intoxicated. She knew by intuition that Dick must frequently have been intoxicated; but she had never seen him so, and she dreaded it; she could have borne anything better than that, she felt. He sank on to the edge of her bed and sat there, rocking miserably to and fro, his overcoat bundled about him, his hat toppling on the side of his head, a figure of utter demoralization.

"Dick!" she said, going to him, "what is it? Tell me!"

She took him by the shoulders and gave him a little shake. He continued to rock back and forth and to moan;

"Oh, my God!" he said presently. "What am I going to do!"

Elizabeth gathered herself for one of those ordeals which, in all families, there is one stronger than the rest to meet and deal with.

"Here, sit up." She shook him. "Sit up and tell me what ails you." The fear that he was intoxicated had left her, and there was relief in this. "And take off your hat." She seized the hat from his head and laid it on the little mahogany stand beside her bed. "If you knew how ridiculous you look!"

He sat up at this and weakly began drawing off his gloves. When he had them off, he drew them through his hand, slapped them in his palm, and then with a weary sigh, said:

"Well, I'm ruined!"

"Oh, don't be dramatic!" She was herself now. "Tell me what scrape you're in, and we'll see how to get you out of it." She was quite composed. She drew up a chair for him and one for herself. Some silly escapade, no doubt, she thought, which in his weakness he was half glad to make the most of. He had removed his overcoat and taken the chair she had placed for him. Then he raised his face, and when she saw the expression, she felt the blood leave her cheeks; she knew that the trouble was real. She struggled an instant against a sickness that assailed her, and then, calming herself, prepared to meet it.

"Well?" she said.

"Bess," he began fearfully, and his head dropped again. "Bess"--his voice was very strange--"it's--the--bank."

She shivered as if a dead cold blast had struck her. In the moment before there had swept through her mind a thousand possibilities, but never this one. She closed her eyes. There was a sharp pain in her heart, exactly as if she had suddenly crushed a finger.

"The bank!" she exclaimed in a whisper. "Oh, Dick!"

He hung his head and began to moan again, and to rock back and forth, and then suddenly he leaned over, seized his head in his two hands and began to weep violently, like a child. Strangely enough, to her own surprise, she found herself calmly and coolly watching him. She could see the convulsive movements of his back as he sobbed; she could see his fingers viciously tearing at the roots of his hair. She sat and watched him; how long she did not know. Then she said:

"Don't cry, Dick; they'll hear you down-stairs."

He made an effort to control himself, and Elizabeth suddenly remembered that he had told her nothing at all.

"What do you mean," she asked, "by the bank?"

"I mean," he said without uncovering his face, and his hands muffled his words, "that I'm--into it."

Ah, yes! This was the dim, unposited thought, the numb, aching dread, the half-formed, unnamed, unadmitted fear that had lurked beneath the thought of all these months--underneath the father's thought and hers; this was what they had meant when they exchanged glances, when now and then with dread they approached the subject in obscure, mystic words, meaningless of themselves, yet pregnant with a dreadful and terrible import. And now--it had come!

"How much?" she forced herself to ask.

He nodded.

"It's big. Several--"

"What?"

"Hundreds."

"Hundreds?"

He hesitated, and then,

"Thousands," he said, tearing the word from him.

"How many thousands?" she asked, when she could find the courage.

Again he cowered before the truth. She grew impatient.

"Tell me!" she commanded. "Don't be a coward." He winced. "Sit up and face this thing and tell me. How many thousands have you stolen?"

She said it in a hard, cold voice. He suddenly looked up, his eyes flashed an instant. He saw his sister sitting there, her hands held calmly in her lap, her head inclined a little, her chin thrust out, her lips tightly compressed, and he could not meet her; he collapsed again, and she heard him say pitifully, "Don't use that word." Then he began to weep, and as he sobbed, he repeated:

"Oh, they'll send me to the penitentiary--the penitentiary--the penitentiary!"

The word struck Elizabeth; her gray eyes began to fill.

"How much, Dick?" she asked gently.

"Five--a--"

"More?"

He nodded

"How much more?"

"Twice as much."

"Ten, then?"

He said nothing; he ceased sobbing. Then suddenly he looked up and met her glance.

"Bess," he said, "it's twenty-three thousand!"

She stared at him until her tears had dried. In the silence she could hear her little watch ticking away on the dressing-table. The lights in the room blazed with a fierce glare.

"Does Mr. Hunter know?"

"Yes."

"When did he find out?"

"This morning. He called me in this afternoon."

"Does any one else know?"

"Yes."

"Who?"

Dick hung his head and began to fumble his watch-chain.

"Who, Dick?"

"One other man."

"Who? Tell me."

"Eades."

She closed her eyes and leaned back; she dropped her arms to her sides and clutched her chair for support. For a long while they did not speak. It was Dick at last who spoke. He seemed to have regained his faculties and his command.

"Bess," he said, "Eades will have no mercy on me. You know that."

She admitted it with a slow nod of her head, her eyes still closed.

"Something must be done. Father--he must be told. Will--will you tell him?"

She sat a moment--it seemed a long moment--without moving, without opening her eyes; and Dick sat there and watched her. Some of the color had come to his face. His eyes were contracting; his face was lined with new scheming.

"Will you tell him, Bess?"

She moved, opened her eyes slowly, wearily, and sighed:

"Yes."

She got up.

"You're not going to tell him now?"

He stretched out a hand as if to detain her.

"Yes, now. Why not?" She rose with difficulty, paused, swayed a little and then went toward the door. Dick watched her without a word. His hand was in the pocket of his coat. He drew out a cigarette.

She went down the stairs holding the baluster tightly; her palm, moist from her nervousness, squeaked on the rail as she slid it along. She paused in the library door. Her father was lounging in his chair under the reading-lamp, his legs stretched toward the fire. She could just see the top of his head over the chair, the light falling on his gray hair.

"That you, Betsy?"

The cheer and warmth of his tone smote her; again her eyes closed in pain.

"Yes, it's I," she said, trying for a natural tone, and succeeding, at least, in putting into her voice a great love--and a great pity. She bent over the back of the chair, and laid her hands on his head, gazing into the fire. The touch of her hands sent a delicious thrill through Ward; he did not move or speak, wishing to prolong the sensation.

"Dear," she said, "I have something to tell you."

The delicious sensation left him instantly.

"Can you bear some bad news--some bad, bad news?"

His heart sank. He had expected something like this--the day would come, he knew, when she would leave him. But was it not unusual? Should not Eades have spoken--should not he have asked him first? Her arms were stealing about his neck.

"Some bad news--some evil news. Something very--"

She had slipped around beside him and leaned over as if to protect him from the blow she was about to deliver. Her voice suddenly grew unnatural, tragic, sending a shudder through him as she finished her sentence with the one word:

"Horrible!"

"What is it?" he whispered.

"Be strong, dear, and brave; it's going to hurt you."

"Tell me, Bess," he said, sitting up now, his man's armor on.

"It's about Dick."

"Dick!"

"Yes, Dick--and the bank!"

"Oh-h!" he groaned, and, in his knowledge of his own world, he knew it all.

XXV

"Ah, Mr. Ward, ah! Heh! Won't you sit down, sir, won't you sit down?"

Hunter had risen from his low hollow chair, and now stood bowing, or rather stooping automatically to a posture lower than was customary with him. The day before or that afternoon, Ward would have noticed Hunter's advancing senility. The old banker stood bent before his deep, well-worn green chair, its bottom sagging almost to the floor. He had on large, loose slippers and a long faded gown. The light glistened on his head, entirely bald, and fell in bright patches on the lean, yellow face that was wrinkled in a smile,--but a smile that expressed nothing, not even mirth. He stood there, uncertainly, almost apologetically, making some strange noise in his throat like a chuckle, or like a cough. His tongue moved restlessly along his thin lips. In his left hand he held a cigar, stuck on a toothpick.

"Won't you sit down, Mr. Ward, won't you sit down, sir?"

The old banker, after striving for this effect of hospitality, lowered himself carefully into his own deep chair. Ward seated himself across the hearth, and looked at the shabby figure, huddled in its shabby chair, in the midst of all the richness and luxury of that imposing library. About the walls were magnificent bookcases in mahogany, and behind their little leaded panes of glass were rows of morocco bindings. On the walls were paintings, and all about, in the furniture, the rugs, the bric-a-brac, was the display of wealth that had learned to refine itself. And yet, in the whole room nothing expressed the character of that aged and withered man, save the shabby green chair he sat in, the shabby gown and slippers he wore, and the economical toothpick to make his cigar last longer. Ward remembered to have heard Elizabeth and her mother--in some far removed and happy day before this thing had come upon him--speak of the difficulty Mrs. Hunter and Agnes Hunter had with the old man; he must have been intractable, he had resisted to the end and evidently come off victorious, for here he sat with the trophies of his victory, determined to have his own way. And yet Ward, who was not given to speculations of the mental kind, did not think of these things. At another time Hunter might have impressed him sadly as an old man; but not now; this night he was feeling very old himself.

"I presume, Mr. Hunter," Ward began, "that you imagined the object of my visit when I telephoned you an hour ago."

"Oh, yes, sir, yes, Mr. Ward. You came to see me about that boy of yours!"

"Exactly," said Ward, and he felt his cheek flush.

"Bad boy, that, Mr. Ward," said Hunter in his squeaking voice, grinning toothlessly.

"We needn't discuss that," said Ward, lifting his hand. "The situation is already sufficiently embarrassing. I came to talk the matter over as a simple business proposition."

"Yes?" squeaked Hunter with a rising inflection.

"What does the shortage amount to?" Ward leaned toward him.

"In round numbers?"

"No," Ward was abrupt. "In dollars and cents."

Hunter pursed his lips. Ward's last words seemed to stimulate his thought.

"Let us see," he said, "let us see. If I remember rightly"--and Ward knew that he remembered it to the last decimal point--"it amounts to twenty-four thousand, six hundred and seventy-eight dollars and twenty-nine cents."

Ward made no reply; he was leaning forward, his elbows on his knees, gazing into the fire. He did not move, and yet he knew that the old banker was shrewdly eying him.

"That, of course," said Hunter with the effect of an afterthought, "is the principal sum. The interest--"

"Yes, that's all right," said Ward. Hunter's last words, which at any other time would have infuriated him, in this instance made him happy; they reassured him, gave him hope. He knew now that the old banker was ready to compromise. Then suddenly he remembered that he had not smoked that evening, and he drew his cigar-case from his pocket.

"Do you mind, sir, if I smoke?"

"Not in the least, Mr. Ward, not in the least, sir; delighted to have you. Make yourself perfectly at home, sir."

He waved his long, thin, transparent hand grandly and hospitably at Ward, and smiled his toothless smile.

"Perhaps you'd smoke, Mr. Hunter."

Ward proffered him the case and reflected instantly with delight that the cigar was a large, strong Havana, rich and heavy, much heavier than the old man was accustomed to, for from its odor Ward knew that the cigar Hunter was consuming to the last whiff was of cheap domestic tobacco, if it was of tobacco at all.

"Thank you, sir," said Hunter, delighted, leaning out of his chair and selecting a cigar with care. "I usually limit myself to one cigar of an evening--but with you--"

"Yes," thought Ward, "I know why you limit yourself to one, and I hope this one will make you sick."

When Ward had smoked a moment, he said:

"Mr. Hunter, if I reimburse you, what assurance can I have that there will be no prosecution?"

"Heh, heh." The old man made that queer noise in his throat again. "Heh, heh. Well, Mr. Ward, you know you are already on your son's bond."

"For ten thousand, yes--not for twenty-four."

"Quite right!" said Hunter, taken somewhat aback. Then they were silent.

"What assurance can you give me, Mr. Hunter?" He took the cigar from his lips and looked directly at Hunter.

"Well, I'm afraid, Mr. Ward, that that has passed out of my hands. You see--"

"You told Eades; yes, I know!" Ward was angry, but he realized the necessity for holding his temper.

"Why did you do that, Mr. Hunter, if I may ask? What did you expect to gain?"

Hunter made the queer noise in his throat and then he stammered:

"Well, Mr. Ward, you must understand that--heh--our Trust Company is a state institution--and I felt it to be my duty, as a citizen, you know, to report any irregularities to the proper official. Merely my duty, as a citizen, Mr. Ward, you understand, as a citizen. Painful, to be sure, but my duty."

Ward might not have been able to conceal the disgust he felt for this old man if he had not, for the first time that evening, been reminded by Hunter's own words that the affair was not one to come within the federal statutes. What Hunter's motive had been in reporting the matter to Eades so promptly, he could not imagine. It would seem that he could have dealt better by keeping the situation in his own hands; that he could have held the threat of prosecution over his head as a weapon quite as menacing as this, and certainly one he could more easily control. But Hunter was mysterious; he waded in the water, and Ward could not follow his tracks. He was sure of but one thing, and that was that the reason Hunter had given was not the real reason.

"You might have waited, it seems to me, Mr. Hunter," he said. "You might have had some mercy on the boy."

Ward did not see the peculiar smile that played on Hunter's face.

"If I remember, Mr. Ward, you had a young man in your employ once, who--"

Ward could scarcely repress a groan.

"I know, I know," he hastened to confess.

"Yes, exactly," said Hunter, his chuckle now indicating a dry satisfaction. "You did it as a duty--as I did--our duties as citizens, Mr. Ward, our duties as citizens, and our duties to the others in our employ--we must make examples for them."

"Yes. Well, it's different when your own boy is selected to afford the example," Ward said this with a touch of his humor, but became serious and sober again as he added:

"And I hope, Mr. Hunter, that this affair will never cause you the sorrow and regret--yes, the remorse--that that has caused me."

Hunter looked at Ward furtively, as if he could not understand how such things could cause any one regret. Out of this want of understanding, however, he could but repeat his former observation:

"But our duty, Mr. Ward. We must do our duty--heh--heh--as citizens, remember."

He was examining the little gilt-and-red band on the cigar Ward had given him. He had left it on the cigar, and now picked at it with a long, corrugated finger-nail, as if he found a pleasure and a novelty in it. Ward was willing to let the subject drop. He knew that Hunter had been moved by no civic impulse in reporting the fact to Eades; he did not know what his motive had been; perhaps he never would know. It was enough now that the harm had been done, and in his practical way he was wondering what could be done next. He suddenly made a movement as if he would go, a movement that caused Hunter to glance at him in some concern.

"Well," said Ward, "of course, if it has gone that far, if it is really out of your hands, I presume the only thing is to let matters take their course. To be sure, I had hoped--"

"Keep your seat, Mr. Ward, keep your seat. It is a long time since I have had the pleasure of entertaining you in my home."

Entertaining! Ward could have seized the wizened pipe of the old man and throttled him there in his shabby green-baize chair.

"Have you anything to suggest?" asked Ward.

"Would not the suggestion better emanate from you?" The old banker waved a withered hand toward Ward with a gesture of invitation. Ward remembered that gesture and understood it. He knew that now they were getting down to business.

"I have no proposition," said Ward. "I am anxious to save my son--and my family." A shade of pain darkened his countenance. "I am willing to make good the--er--shortage." How all such words hurt and stung just now! "Provided, of course, the matter could be dropped there."

The old banker pondered.

"I should like to help you in your difficulty, Mr. Ward," he said. "I--"

Ward waited.

"I should be willing to recommend to Mr. Eades a discontinuance of any action. What his attitude would be, I am not, of course, able to say. You understand my position."

"Very well," said Ward in the brisk business way habitual with him. "You see Eades, have him agree to drop the whole thing, and I'll give you my check to cover the--deficiency."

The banker thought a moment and said finally:

"I shall have an interview with Mr. Eades in the morning, communicating the result to you at eleven o'clock."

Ward rose.

"Must you go?" asked Hunter in surprise, as if the visit had been but a social one. He rose tremblingly, and stood looking about him with his mirthless grin, and Ward departed without ceremony.

XXVI

All the way to the court-house Elizabeth's heart failed her more and more. She had often been in fear of Eades, but never had she so feared him as she did to-day; the fear became almost an acute terror. And, once in the big building, the fear increased. Though the court-house, doubtless, was meant for her as much as for any one, she felt that alien sense that women still must feel in public places. Curiosity and incredulity were shown in the glances the loafers of the corridors bestowed on this young woman, who, in her suit of dark green, with gray furs and muff, attracted such unusual attention. Elizabeth detected the looks that were exchanged, and, because of her sensitiveness, imagined them to be of more significance than they were. She saw the sign "Marriage Licenses" down one gloomy hallway; then in some way she thought of the divorce court; then she thought of the criminal court, with its shadow now creeping toward her own home, and when she reflected how much cause for this staring curiosity there might be if the curious ones but knew all she knew, her heart grew heavier. But she hurried along, found Eades's office, and, sending in her card, sat down in the outer room to wait.

She had chosen the most obscure corner and she sat there, hoping that no one would recognize her, filled with confusion whenever any one looked at her, or she suspected any one of looking at her, and imagining all the dreadful significances that might attach to her visit. While she waited, she had time to think over the last eighteen hours. They had found it necessary to tell her mother, and that lady had spent the whole morning in hysteria, alternately wondering what people would say when the disgrace became known, and caressing and leaning on Dick, who bravely remained at home and assumed the manly task of comforting and reassuring his mother. Elizabeth had awaited in suspense the conclusion of Hunter's visit to Eades, and she had gone down town to hear from her father the result of Hunter's effort. She was not surprised when her father told her that Hunter reported failure; neither of them had had much faith in Hunter and less in Eades. But when they had discussed it at the luncheon they had in a private room at the club, and after the discussion had proved so inconclusive, she broached the plan that had come to her in the wakeful night,--the plan she had been revolving in her mind all the morning.

"My lawyer?" her father had said. "He could do nothing--in a case like this."

"I suppose not," Elizabeth had said. "Besides, it would only place the facts in the possession of one more person."

"Yes."

"We might consult Gordon Marriott. He would sympathize--and help."

"Yes, that might do."

"But not yet," she had said, "Not till I've tried my plan."

"Your plan? What is it?"

"To see John Eades--for me to see John Eades."

She had hung her head--she could not help it, and her father had shown some indignation.

"Not for worlds!" he had said. "Not for worlds!"

"But I'm going."

"No! It wouldn't be fitting!"

"But I'm going."

"Then I'll go along."

"No, I'll go alone."

He had protested, of course, but his very next words showed that he was ready to give in.

"When shall you go?" he asked.

"Now. There isn't much time. The grand jury--what is it the grand jury does?"

"It sits next week, and Eades will lay the case before it then--unless--"

"Unless I can stop him."

There had been a little intense, dramatic moment when the waiter was out of the room and she had risen, buttoning her jacket and drawing on her gloves, and her father had stood before her.

"Bess," he said, "tell me, are you contemplating some--horrible sacrifice?" He had put his finger under her chin and elevated it, in the effort to make her look him in the eyes. She had paled slightly and then smiled--and kissed him.

"Never mind about me, papa."

And then she had hastened away--and here she was.

The tall door lettered "The Prosecuting Attorney" was closed, but she did not have to wait long before it opened and three men came out, evidently hurried away by Eades, who hastened to Elizabeth's side and said:

"Pardon me if I kept you waiting,"

They entered the private office, and, at her sign, he closed the door. She took the chair beside his desk, and he sat down and looked at her expectantly. He was plainly ill at ease, and this encouraged her. She was alive to the strangeness of this visit, to the strangeness of the place and the situation; her heart was in her throat; she feared she could not speak, but she made a great effort and plunged at once into the subject.

"You know what brings me here."

"I presume--"

"Yes," she said before he could finish. He inclined his head in an understanding that would spare painful explanation. His heart was going rapidly. He would have gloried in having her near him in any other place; but here in this place, on this subject! He must not forget his position; he must assume his official personality; the separation of his relations had become a veritable passion with him.

"I came," she said, "to ask a favor--a very great favor. Will you grant it?"

She leaned forward slightly, but with a latent intensity that showed all her eagerness and concern. He was deeply troubled.

"You know I would do anything in my power for you," he said. His heart was sincere and glowing--but his mind instantly noted the qualification implied in the words, "my power."

And Elizabeth, with her quick intelligence, caught the significance of those words. She closed her eyes an instant. How hard he made it! Still, he was certainly within his rights.

"I want you to let my brother go," she said,

He compressed his lips, and she noted how very thin, how resolute they were.

"It does not altogether rest with me."

"You evade," she said. "Don't treat me--as if I were some politician." She was surprised at her own temerity. With some little fear that he might mistake her meaning, she, nevertheless, kept her gray eyes fixed on him, and went on:

"I came to ask you not to lay his case before the grand jury. I believe that is the extent of your power. I really don't know about such things." Her eyes fell, and she gently stroked the soft gray fur of her muff, as she permitted herself this woman's privilege of pleading weakness. "No one need be the loser--my father will make good the--shortage. All will be as if it never had been--all save this horrible thing that has come to us--that must remain, of course, for ever."

Then she let the silence fall between them.

"You are asking me to do a great deal."

"It seems a very little thing to me, so far as you are concerned; to us--to me--of course, it is a great thing; it means our family, our name, my father, my mother, myself--leaving Dick out of it altogether."

Eades turned away in pain. It was evident that she had said her all, and that he must speak.

"You forget one other thing," he said presently.

"What?"

"The rights of society." He was conscious of a certain inadequacy in his words; they sounded to him weak, and not at all as it seemed they should have sounded. She did not reply at once, but he knew that she was looking at him. Was that look of hers a look of scorn?

"I do not care one bit for the rights of society," she said. He knew that she spoke with all her spirit. But she softened almost instantly and added, "I do care, of course, for its opinion."

Eades was not introspective enough to realize his own superlative regard for society's opinion; it was easier to cover this regard with words about its rights.

"But society has rights," he said, "and society has placed me here to see those rights conserved."

"What rights?" she asked.

"To have the wrong-doer punished."

"And the innocent as well? You would punish my mother, my father and _me_, although, of course, we already have our punishment." She waited a moment and then the cry was torn from her.

"Can't you see that merely having to come here on such an errand is punishment enough for me?"

She was bending forward, and her eyes blinked back the tears. He had never loved her so; he could not bear to look at her sitting there in such anguish.

"My God, yes!" he exclaimed. He got up hastily, plunging his hands in his pockets, and walking away to his window, looked out a moment, then turned; and as he spoke his voice vibrated:

"Don't you know how this makes me suffer? Don't you know that nothing I ever had to face troubles me as this does?"

She did not reply.

"If you don't," he added, coming near and speaking in a low, guarded tone, "you don't know how--I love you."

She raised her hand to protest, but she did not look up. He checked himself. She lowered her gloved hand, and he wondered in a second of great agitation if that gesture meant the withdrawal of the protest.

"Then--then," she said very deliberately, "do this for me."

She raised her muff to hide the face that flamed scarlet. He took one step toward her, paused, struggled for mastery of himself. He remembered now that the principle--the principle that had guided him in the conduct of his office, required that he must make his decisions slowly, calmly, impersonally, with the cold deliberation of the law he was there to impersonate. And here was the woman he loved, the woman whom he had longed to make his wife, the wife who could crown his success--here, at last, ready to say the word she had so long refused to say--the word he had so long wished to hear.

"Elizabeth," he said simply, "you know how I have loved you, how I love you now. This may not be the time or the place for that--I do not wish to take an advantage of you--but you do not know some other things. I have never felt at all worthy of you. I do not now, but I have felt that I could at least offer you a clean hand and a clean heart. I have tried in this office, with all its responsibilities, to do my duty without fear or favor; thus far I have done so. It has been my pride that nothing has swerved me from the path of that plain duty. I have consoled myself ever since I knew I loved you--and that was long before I dared to tell you--that I could at least go to you with that record. And now you ask me to stultify myself, to give all that up! It is hard--too hard!" He turned away. "I don't suppose I make it clear. Perhaps it seems a little thing to you. To me it is a big thing; it is all I have."

Elizabeth was conscious for an instant of nothing but a gratitude to him for turning away. She pressed her muff against her face; the soft fur, a little cold, was comforting to her hot cheeks. She felt a humiliation now that she feared she never could survive; she felt a regret, too, that she had ever let the situation take this personal and intimate turn. For an instant she was disposed to blame Eades, but she was too just for that; she knew that she alone was to blame; she remembered that it was this very appeal she had come to make, and she contemned herself--despised herself. And then in a desperate effort to regain her self-respect, she tried to change the trend of the argument, to restore it to the academic, the impersonal, to struggle back to the other plane with him, and she said:

"If it could do any good! If I could see what good it does!"

"What!" he exclaimed, turning to her. "What good? What good does any of my work do?"

"I'm sure I don't know." As she said this, she looked up at him, met his eye with a boldness she despised in herself. Down in her heart she was conscious of a self-abasement that was almost complete; she realized the histrionic in her attitude, and in this feeling, determined now to brave it out; she added bitterly: "None, I should say."

"None!" He repeated the word, aghast. "None! Do you say that all this work I have been doing for the betterment, the purification of society does no good?"

"No good," she said; "it does no good; it only makes more suffering in the world." And she thought of all she was just then suffering.

"Where--" he could not catch his breath--"where did you get that idea?"

"In the night--in the long, horrible night." Though she was alive to the dramatic import of her words and this scene, she was speaking with sincerity, and she shuddered.

Eades stood and looked at her. He could do nothing else; he could say nothing, think nothing.

In Elizabeth's heart there was now but one desire, and that was to get away, to bring this horror to an end. She had come to save her brother; now she was conscious that she must save herself; she felt that she had hopelessly involved the situation; it was beyond remedy now, and she must get away. She rose.

"I have come here, I have humiliated myself to ask you to do a favor for me," she said. "You are not ready to do it, I see." She was glad; she felt now the dreadful anxiety of one who is about to escape an awful dilemma. "To me it seems a very simple little thing, but--"

She was going.

"Elizabeth!" he said, "let me think it over. I can not think straight just now. You know how I want to help you. You know I would do anything--anything for you!"

"Anything but this," she said. "This little thing that hurts no one, a thing that can bring nothing but happiness to the world, that can save my father and my mother and me--a thing, perhaps the only thing that can save my poor, weak, erring brother--who knows?"

"Let me think it over," he pleaded. "I'll think it over to-night--I'll send you word in the morning."

She turned then and went away.

XXVII

Elizabeth let the note fall in her lap. A new happiness suddenly enveloped her. She felt the relief of an escape. The note ran:

DEAR ELIZABETH:

I have thought it all over. I did not sleep all night, thinking of it, and of you. But--I can not do what you ask; I could not love you as I do if I were false to my duty. You know how hard it is for me to come to this conclusion, how hard it is for me to write thus. It sounds harsh and brutal and cold, I know. It is not meant to be. I know how you have suffered; I wish you could know how I have suffered and how I shall suffer. I can promise you one thing, however: that I shall do only my duty, my plain, simple duty, as lightly as I can, and nothing now can give me such joy as to find the outcome one perhaps I ought not to wish--one which in any other case would be considered a defeat for me. But I ask you to think of me, whatever may come to pass, as

Your sincere JOHN EADES.

She leaned back in her chair, and closed her eyes; a sense of rest and comfort came to her. She was content for a while simply to realize that rest and comfort. She opened her eyes and looked out of the window over the little triangular park with its bare trees; the sky was solid gray; there was a gray tone in the atmosphere, and the soft light was grateful and restful to her eyes, tired and sensitive as they were from the loss of so much sleep. She felt that she could lie back then and sleep profoundly. Yet she did not wish to sleep--she wished to be awake and enjoy this sensation of relief, of escape. After that night and that day and this last night of suspense, it was like a reprieve--she started and her face darkened,--the thought of reprieve made her somehow think of Archie Koerner. This event had quite driven him out of her mind, coming as it had just at the climax. She had not thought of him for--how long? And Gusta! It brought the thought of her, too. Suddenly she remembered, with a dim sense of confusion that, at some time long ago, she and Gusta had talked of Archie's first trouble. Had they mentioned Dick? No, but she had thought of him! How strange! And then her thoughts returned to Eades, and she lifted the note, and glanced at it. She recalled the night at the Fords', and his proposal, her hesitation and his waiting. She let the note fall again and sighed audibly--a sigh that expressed her content. Then suddenly she started up! She had forgotten Dick--the trouble--her father!

Marriott knew what she had to say almost before the first sentence had fallen from her lips.

"I'll not pretend to be surprised, Elizabeth," he said. "I haven't expected it, but now I can see that it was inevitable."

He looked away from her.

"Poor boy!" he said. "How I pity him! He has done nothing more than to adopt the common standard; he has accepted the common ideal. He has believed them when they told him by word and deed that possession--money--could bring happiness and that nothing else can! Well--it's too bad."

Elizabeth's head was drooping and the tears were streaming down her cheeks. He pretended not to see.

"Poor boy!" he went on. "Well, we must save him, that's all."

She looked up at him, her gray eyes wide and their lashes drenched in their tears.

"How, Gordon?"

"Well, I don't know, but some way." He studied a moment. "Eades--well, of course, he's hopeless."

She could never tell him of her visit to Eades; she had told him merely of Hunter's interview with the prosecutor. But she was surprised to see how Marriott, instantly, could tell just what Eades would do.

"Eades is just a prosecutor, that's all," Marriott went on. "Heavens! How the business has hardened him! How it does pull character to shreds! And yet--he's like Dick--he's pursuing another ideal that's very popular. They'll elect Eades congressman or governor or something for his severity. But let's not waste time on him. Let's think." He sat there, his brows knit, and Elizabeth watched him.

"I wish I could fathom old Hunter. He had some motive in reporting it to Eades so soon. Of course, if it wasn't for that it would be easy. Hm--" He thought. "We'll have to work through Hunter. He's our only chance. I must find out all there is to know about Hunter. Now, Elizabeth, I'll have to shut myself up and do some thinking. The grand jury doesn't meet for ten days--we have time--"

"They won't arrest Dick?"

"Oh, it's not likely now. Tell him to stay close at home--don't let him skip out, whatever he does. That would be fatal. And one thing more--let me do the worrying." He smiled.

Marriott had hoped, when the murder trial was over, that he could rest; he had set in motion the machinery that was to take the case up on error; he had ordered his transcripts and prepared the petition in error and the motions, and he was going to have them all ready and file them at the last moment, so that he might be sure of delay. Archie had been taken to the penitentiary, and Marriott was glad of that, for it relieved him of the necessity of going to the jail so often; that was always an ordeal. He had but one more visit to make there,--Curly had sent for him; but Curly never demanded much. But now--here was a task more difficult than ever. It provoked him almost to anger; he resented it. It was always so, he told himself; everything comes at once--and then he thought of Elizabeth. It was for her!

He thought of nothing else all that day. He inquired about Hunter of every one he met. He went to his friends, trying to learn all he could. He picked up much, of course, for there was much to be told of such a wealthy and prominent man as Amos Hunter, especially one with such striking personal characteristics. But he found no clue, no hint that he felt was promising. Then he suddenly remembered Curly.

He found him in another part of the jail, where he had been immured away from Archie in order that they might not communicate with each other. With his wide knowledge and deeper nature Curly was a more interesting personality than Archie. He took his predicament with that philosophy Marriott had observed and was beginning to admire in these fellows; he had no complaints to make.

"I'm not worried," he said. "I'll come out all right. Eades has nothing on me, and he knows it. They're holding me for a bluff. They'll keep me, of course, until they get Archie out of the way, then they'll put me on the street. It wouldn't do to drop my case now. They'll just stall along with it until then. Of course--there's one danger--" he looked up and smiled curiously, and to the question in Marriott's eyes, he answered:

"You see they can't settle me for this; but they might dig up something somewhere else and put me away on that. You see the danger."

Marriott nodded, not knowing just what to say.

"But we must take the bitter with the sweet, as Eddie Dean used to say." Curly spoke as if the observation were original with Dean. "But, Mr. Marriott, there's one or two things I want you to attend to for me."

"Well," consented Marriott helplessly, already overburdened with others' cares.

"I don't like to trouble you, but there's no one I like to trust, and they won't let me see any one."

He hesitated a moment.

"It's this way," he presently went on. "I've got a woman--Jane, they call her. She's a good woman, you see, though she has some bad tricks. She's sore now, and hanging around here, and I want her to leave. She's even threatened to see Eades, but she wouldn't do that; she's too square. But she has a stand-in with McFee, and while he's all right in his way, still he's a copper, and you can't be sure of a copper. She can't help me any here, and she might queer me; the flatties might pry something out of her that could hurt me--they'll do anything. If you'll see Danny Gibbs and have him ship her, I'll be much obliged. And say, Mr. Marriott, when you're seeing him, tell him to get that thing fixed up and send me my bit. He'll understand. I don't mind telling you, at that. There's a man here, a swell guy, a banker, who does business with Dan. He's handled some of our paper--and that sort of thing, you know, and I've got a draw coming there. It ain't much, about twenty-five case, I guess, but it'd come in handy. Tell Dan to give the woman a piece of it and send the rest to me here. I can use it just now buying tobacco and milk and some little things I need. Dan'll understand all about it."

"Who is this swell guy you speak of--this banker?"

Curly looked at Marriott with the suspicion that was necessarily habitual with him, but his glance softened and he said:

"I don't know him myself. I never saw him--his name's Hunt, no, Hunter, or some such thing. Know him?"

Marriott's heart leaped; he struggled to control himself.

"Course, you understand, Mr. Marriott," said Curly, fearing he had been indiscreet, "this is all between ourselves."

"Oh, of course, you can depend on me."

He was anxious now to get away; he could scarcely observe the few decencies of decorum that the place demanded. And when he was once out of the prison, he called a cab and drove with all speed to Gibbs's place. On the way his mind worked rapidly, splendidly, under its concentration. When he reached the well-known quiet little saloon in Kentucky Street, Gibbs took him into the back room, and there, where Gibbs had been told of the desperate plights of so many men, Marriott told him of the plight of Dick Ward. When he had done, he leaned across the table and said:

"And you'll help me, Dan?"

Gibbs made no reply, but instead smoked and blinked at Marriott curiously. Just as Marriott's hopes were falling, Gibbs broke the silence:

"It's the girl you're interested in," he said gruffly, "not the kid." He looked at Marriott shrewdly, and when Marriott saw that he looked not at all unkindly or in any sense with that cynical contempt of the sentimental that might have been expected of such a man, Marriott smiled.

"Well, yes, you're right. I am interested in her."

Gibbs threw him one look and then tilted back, gazed upward to the ceiling, puffed meditatively at his cigar, and presently said, as if throwing out a mere tentative suggestion:

"I wonder if it wouldn't do that old geezer good to take a sea-voyage?"

Marriott's heart came into his throat with a little impulse of fear. He felt uneasy--this was dangerous ground for a lawyer who respected the ethics of his profession, and here he was, plotting with this go-between of criminals. Criminals--and yet who were the criminals he went between? These relations, after all, seemed to have a high as well as a low range--was there any so-called class of society whom Gibbs could not, at times, serve?

"Let's see," Gibbs was saying, "where is this now? Canada used to do, but that's been put on the bum. Mexico ain't so bad, they say, and some of them South American countries does pretty well, though they complain of the eatin', and there's nothing doing anyway. A couple of friends of mine down in New York went to a place somewhere called--let's see--called Algiers, ain't it?"

Marriott did not like to speak, but he nodded.

"Is that a warm country?"

"Yes."

"Where is it?"

"It's on the shores of the Mediterranean."

"Now that don't tell me any more than I knew before," said Gibbs, "but if the climate's good for old guys with the coin, that's about all we want. It'll make the front all right, especially at this time o' year."

Marriott nodded again.

"All right, that'll do. An old banker goes there for his health--just as if it was Hot Springs."

Gibbs thought a moment longer.

"Now, of course, the kid's father'll make it good, won't he? He'll put up?"

"Yes," said Marriott. He was rather faint and sick about it all--and yet it was working beautifully, and it must be done. Even then Ward was pacing the floor somewhere--and Elizabeth, she was waiting and depending on him. "Shall I bring you his check?"

"Hell, no!" exclaimed Gibbs. "We'll want the cash. I'll get it of him. The fewer hands, the better."

Marriott was wild to get away; he could scarcely wait, but he remembered suddenly Curly's commissions, and he must attend to them, of course. He felt a great gratitude just now to Curly.

When Marriott told Gibbs of Curly's request, Gibbs shook his head decidedly and said:

"No, I draw the line at refereeing domestic scraps. If Curly wants to go frame in with a moll, it's his business; I can't do anything." And then he dryly added: "Nobody can, with Jane; she's hell!"

XXVIII

One morning, a week later, as they sat at breakfast, Ward handed his newspaper across to Elizabeth, indicating an item in the social column, and Elizabeth read:

"Mr. Amos Hunter, accompanied by his daughter, Miss Agnes Hunter, sailed from New York yesterday on the steamer _King Emanuel_ for Naples. Mr. Hunter goes abroad for his health, and will spend the winter in Italy."

Elizabeth looked up.

"That means--?"

"That it's settled," Ward replied.

She grew suddenly weak, in the sense of relief that seemed to dissolve her.

"Unless," Ward added, and Elizabeth caught herself and looked at her father fearfully, "Hunter should come back."

"But will he?"

"Some time, doubtless."

"Oh, dear! Then the suspense isn't over at all!"

"Well, it's over for the present, anyway. Eades can do nothing, so Marriott says, as long as Hunter is away, and even if he were to return, the fact that Hunter accepted the money and credited it on his books--in some fashion--would make it exceedingly difficult to prove anything, and of course, under any circumstances, Hunter wouldn't dare--now."

Elizabeth sat a moment idly playing with a fork, and her father studied the varying expressions of her face as the shades came and went in her sensitive countenance. Her brow clouded in some little perplexity, then cleared again, and at last she sighed.

"I feel a hundred years old," she said. "Hasn't it been horrible?"

"I feel like a criminal myself," said Ward.

"We are criminals--all of us," she said, dealing bluntly, cruelly with herself. "We ought all of us to be in the penitentiary, if anybody ought."

"Yes," he acquiesced.

"Only," she said, "nobody ought. I've learned that, anyway."

"What would you do with them?" he asked, in the comfort of entering the realm of the abstract.

"With us?"

"Well--with the criminals."

"Send us to the penitentiary, I suppose."

"You are delightfully illogical, Betsy," he said, trying to laugh.

"That's all we can be," she said. "It's the only logical way."

Then they were silent, for the maid entered.

"Have we really committed a crime?" she asked, when the door swung on the maid, who came and went so unconsciously in the midst of these tragic currents. "Don't tell me--if we have."

"I don't know," said Ward. "I presume I'd rather not know. I know I've gone through enough to make me miserable the rest of my life. I know that we have settled nothing--that we have escaped nothing--except what people will say."

"Yes, mama, after all, was the only one wise enough to understand and appreciate the real significance."

"Well, there's nothing more we can do now," he replied.

"No, we must go on living some way." She got up, went around the table and kissed him on the forehead. "We'll just lock our little skeleton in the family closet, papa, and once in a while go and take a peep at him. There may be some good in that--he'll keep us from growing proud, anyway."

Ward and Marriott had decided to say as little to Elizabeth as possible of their transaction. Ward had gone through a week of agony. In a day or two he had raised the little fortune, and kept it ready, and he had been surprised and a bit perturbed when Gibbs had come and in quite a matter-of-fact way asked for the amount in cash. Ward had helplessly turned it over to him with many doubts and suspicions; but he knew no other way. Afterward, when Gibbs returned and gave him Hunter's receipt, he had felt ashamed of these doubts and had hoped Gibbs had not noticed them, but Gibbs had gone away without a word, save a gruff:

"Well, that's fixed, Mr. Ward."

And yet Elizabeth had wondered about it all. Her conscience troubled her acutely, so acutely that when Marriott came over that evening for the praise he could not forego, and perhaps for a little spiritual corroboration and comfort, she said:

"Gordon, you have done wonders. I can't thank you."

"Don't try," he said. "It's nothing."

She looked troubled. Her brows darkened, and then, unable to resist the impulse any longer, she asked:

"But, Gordon, was it right?"

"What?" he asked, quite needlessly, as they both knew.

"What you--what we--did?"

"Yes, it was right."

"Was it legal?"

"N-no."

"Ah!" She was silent a moment. "What is it called?"

"What?"

"You know very well--our crime. I _must_ know the worst. I must know just how bad I am."

"You wish to have it labeled, classified, as Doctor Tilson would have it?"

"Yes, tell me."

"I believe," said Marriott looking away and biting his upper lip, "that it's called compounding a felony, or something of that sort."

He was silent and she was silent. Then he spoke again.

"They disbarred poor old Billy Gale for less than that."

She looked at him, her gray eyes winking rapidly as they did when she was interested and her mind concentrated on some absorbing problem. Then she impulsively clasped her white hands in her lap, and, leaning over, she asked out of the psychological interest the situation must soon or late have for her:

"Tell me, Gordon, just how you felt when you were--"

"Committing it?"

She nodded her head rapidly, almost impatiently.

"Well," he said with a far-away expression, "I experienced, especially when I was in Danny Gibbs's saloon, that pleasant feeling of going to hell."

"You just _won't_ reassure me," she said, relaxing into a hopeless attitude.

"Oh, yes, I will," he replied. "Don't you remember what Emerson says?" He looked up at the portrait of the beautiful, spiritual face above the mantel.

She looked up in her vivid literary interest.

"No; tell me. He said everything."

"Yes, everything there is to say. He said, 'Good men must not obey the laws too well.'"

XXIX

When Eades read the announcement of Hunter's departure for Italy he was first surprised, then indignant, then relieved. Hunter had reported Dick's crime in anger, the state of mind in which most criminal prosecutions are begun. The old man had trembled until Eades feared for him; as he sat there with pallid lips relating the circumstances, he was not at all the contained, mild and shrewd old financier Eades so long had known.

"We must be protected, Mr. Eades,"--he could hear the shrill cry for days--"we must be protected from these thieves! They are the worst of all, sir; the worst of all! I want this young scoundrel arrested and sent to the penitentiary right away, sir, right away!"

Eades had seen that the old man was in fear, and that in his fear he had turned to him as toward that ancient corner-stone of society, the criminal statute. And now he had fled!

Eades knew, of course, that some one had tampered with him; and, of course, the defalcation had been made good, and now Hunter would be an impossible witness. Even Eades could imagine Hunter on the stand, not as he had been in his office that day, angry, frightened, keenly conscious of his wrong and recalling minutely all the details; but senile, a little deaf, leaning forward with a hand behind his ear, a grin on his withered face, remembering nothing, not cognizant of the details of his bookkeeping--sitting there, with his money safe in his pocket, while the case collapsed, Dick was acquitted in triumph--and he, John Eades, made ridiculous.

But what was he to do? After all, in the eye of the law, Hunter was not a witness; and, besides, it was possible that, technically, the felony might not have been compounded. At any rate, if it had been he could not prove it, and as for proceeding now against Ward, that was too much to expect, too much even for him to exact of himself. When a definite case was laid before him with the evidence to support it, his duty was plain, but he was not required to go tilting after wind-mills, to investigate mere suspicions. It was a relief to resign himself to this conclusion. Now he could only wait for Hunter's return, and have him brought in when he came, but probably, in the end, it would come to nothing. Yes, it was a relief, and he could think hopefully once more of Elizabeth.

The fourteenth of May--the date for the execution of the sentence of death against Archie--was almost on him before Marriott filed his petition in error in the Appellate Court and a motion for suspension of sentence. He had calculated nicely. As the court could not hear and determine the case before the day of execution, the motion was granted, and the execution postponed. Marriott's relief was exquisite; he hastened to send a telegram to Archie, and was happy, so happy that he could laugh at the editorial which Edwards printed the next morning, calling for reforms in the criminal code which would prevent "such travesties as were evidently to be expected in the Koerner case."

Marriott could laugh, because he knew how hypocritical Edwards was, but Edwards's editorials had influence in other quarters, and Marriott more and more regretted his simple little act of kindness--or of weakness--in loaning Edwards the ten dollars. If the newspapers would desist, he felt sure that in time, when public sentiment had undergone its inevitable reaction, he might secure a commutation of Archie's sentence; but if Edwards, in order to vent his spleen, continued to keep alive the spirit of the mob, then there was little hope.

"If he could only be sent to prison for life!" said Elizabeth, as they discussed this aspect of the case. "No,"--she hastened to correct herself--"for twenty years; that would do."

"It would be the same thing," said Marriott.

"What do you mean?" Elizabeth leaned forward with a puzzled expression in her gray eyes.

"All sentences to the penitentiary are sentences for life. We pretend they're not, but if a man lives to get out--do we treat him as if he had paid the debt? No, he's a convict still. Look at Archie, for instance."

"Look at Harry Graves! Oh, Gordon,"--Elizabeth suddenly sat up and made an impatient gesture--"I can't forget him! And Gusta! And those men I saw as they were taken from the jail!"

"You mustn't worry about it; you can't help it."

"Oh, that's what they all tell me! 'Don't worry about it--you can't help it!' No! But you worried about Archie--and about"--she closed her eyes, and he watched their white lids droop in pain--"and about Dick."

"I knew them."

"Yes," she said, nodding her head, "you knew them--that explains it all. We don't know the others, and so we don't care. Some one knows them, of course, or did, once, in the beginning. It makes me so unhappy! Don't, please, ever any more tell me not to worry, or that I can't help it. Try to think out some way in which I can help it, won't you?"

Meanwhile, Edwards's editorials were doing their work. They had an effect on Eades, of course, because the _Courier_ was the organ of his party, to which he had to look for renomination. And they produced their effect on the judges of the Appellate Court, who also belonged to that party, but, not knowing Edwards, thought his anonymous utterances the voice of the people, which, at times, in the ears of politicians sounds like the voice of God. The court heard the case early in June; in two weeks it was decided. When Marriott entered the court-room on the morning the decision was to be rendered, his heart sank. On the left of the bench were piled some law-books, and behind them, peeping surreptitiously, he recognized the transcript in the Koerner case. It was much like other transcripts, to be sure, but to Marriott it was as familiar as the features of a friend with whom one has gone through trouble. The transcript lay on the desk before Judge Gardner's empty chair and therefore he knew that the decision was to be delivered by Gardner, and he feared that it was adverse, for Gardner had been severe with him and had asked him questions during the argument.

The bailiff had stood up, rapped on his desk, and Marriott, Eades and the other lawyers in the courtroom rose to simulate a respect for the court entertained only by those who felt that they were likely to win their cases. The three judges paced solemnly in, and when they were seated and the presiding judge had made a few announcements, Gardner leaned forward, pulled the transcript toward him, balanced his gold glasses on his nose, cleared his throat, and in a deep bass voice and in a manner somewhat strained, began to announce the decision. Before he had uttered half a dozen sentences, Marriott knew that he had lost again. The decision of the lower court was affirmed in what was inevitably called by the newspapers an able opinion, and the day of Archie's death was once more fixed--this time for the twenty-first of October.

A few weeks later, Marriott saw Archie at the penitentiary. He had gone to the state capital to argue to the Supreme Court old man Koerner's case against the railroad company. Several weeks before he had tried the case in the Appellate Court, and had won, the court affirming the judgment. This case seemed now to be the only hope of the family, and Marriott was anxious to have it heard by the Supreme Court before the learned justices knew of Archie's case, lest the relation of the old man and the boy prejudice them. He felt somehow that if he failed in Archie's case, a victory in the father's case would go far to dress the balance of the scales of justice and preserve the equilibrium of things. It was noon when Marriott was at the penitentiary, and he was glad that the men who were waiting to be killed were then taking their exercise, for he was spared the depression of the death-chamber. He met Archie under the blackened locust tree in the quadrangle. Archie was hopeful that day.

"I feel lucky," said Archie. "I'll not have to punish,--think so, Mr. Marriott?"

"We've got lots of time," Marriott replied, not knowing what else to say, "the Supreme Court doesn't sit till fall."

Pritchard, the poisoner, laid his slender white hand on Archie's shoulder.

"Good boy you've got here, Mr. Marriott," he said jokingly, "but a trifle wild."

Marriott laughed, and wondered how he could laugh.

Just then a whistle blew, and the convicts in close-formed ranks filed by on their way to dinner. As they went by, one of them glanced at him with a smile of recognition; a smile which, as Marriott saw, the man at once repressed, as the convict is compelled to repress all signs of human feeling. Marriott stared, then suddenly remembered; it was a man named Brill, whom he had known years before. And he, like the rest of the world, had forgotten Brill! He had not even cast him a glance of sympathy! He felt like running after the company--but it was too late; Brill must go without the one little kindness that might have made one day, at least, happier, or if not that, shorter for him.

The last gray-garbed company marched by, the guard with his club at his shoulder. The rear of this company was brought up by a convict, plainly of the fourth grade, for he was in stripes and his head was shaved. He walked painfully, with the aid of a crooked cane, lifting one foot after the other, flinging it before him and then slapping it down uncertainly with a disagreeable sound to the pavement.

"What's the matter with that man?" asked Marriott.

"They say he has locomotor ataxia," said Beck, the death-watch, "but he's only shamming. He's no good."

XXX

Archie had lived in the death-chamber at the penitentiary for nine months. Three times had the day of his death been fixed; the first time, by Glassford for the fourteenth of May, the second time by the Appellate Court for the twenty-first of October. Then, the third time the seven justices of the Supreme Court, sitting in their black and solemn gowns, sustained the lower court, and set the day anew, this time for the twenty-third of November. Then came the race to the Pardon Board; where Marriott and Eades again fought over Archie's life. The Pardon Board refused to recommend clemency. But one hope remained--the governor. It was now the twenty-second of November--one day more. Archie waited that long afternoon in the death-chamber, while Marriott at the state house pleaded with the governor for a commutation of his sentence to imprisonment for life.

Already the prison authorities had begun the arrangements. That afternoon Archie had heard them testing the electric chair; he had listened to the thrumming of its current; twice, thrice, half a dozen times, they had turned it on. Then Jimmy Ball had come in, peered an instant, without a word, then shambled away, his stick hooked over his arm. It was very still in the death-chamber that afternoon. The eight other men confined there, like Archie, spent their days in reviving hope within their breasts; like him, they had experienced the sensation of having the day of their death fixed, and then lived to see it postponed, changed, postponed and fixed again. They had known the long suspense, the alternate rise and fall of hope, as in the courts the state had wrangled with their lawyers for their lives. Not once had Burns, the negro, twanged his guitar. Lowrie, who was writing a history of his wasted life, had allowed his labor to languish, and sat now moodily gazing at the pieces of paper he had covered with his illiterate writing. Old man Stewart, who had strangled his young wife in a jealous rage, lay on his iron cot, his long white beard spread on his breast, strangely suggestive of the appearance he soon would present in death. Kulaski, the Slav, who had slain a saloon-keeper for selling beer to his son, and never repented, was moody and morose; Belden and Waller had consented to an intermission of their quarrelsome argument about religion. The intermission had the effect of a deference to Archie; the argument was not to be resumed until after Archie's death, when he might, indeed, be supposed to have solved the problem they constantly debated, and to have no further interest in it. Pritchard, the poisoner, a quiet fellow, and Muller had ceased their interminable game of cribbage, the cards lay scattered on the table, the little pins stuck in the board where they had left them, to resume their count another time. The gloom of Archie's nearing fate hung over these men, yet none of them was thinking of Archie; each was thinking of an evening which would be to him as this evening was to Archie, unless--there was always that word "unless"; it made their hearts leap painfully.

Just outside the iron grating which separated from the antechamber the great apartment where they existed in the hope of living again, Beck, the guard, sat in his well-worn splint-bottomed chair. He had tilted it against the wall, and, with his head thrown back, seemed to slumber. His coarse mouth was open, his purple nose, thrown thus into prominence, was grotesque, his filthy waistcoat rose and stretched and fell as his flabby paunch inflated with his breathing. Beside the hot stove, just where the last shaft of the sun, falling through the barred window, could fall on her, a black cat, fat and sleek, that haunted the chamber with her uncanny feline presence, stretched herself, and yawned, curling her delicate tongue.

When Archie entered the death-chamber, there had been eleven men in it. But the number had decreased. He could remember distinctly each separate exit. One by one they had gone out, never to return. There was Mike Thomas; he would remember the horror of that to the end of his life, as, with the human habit, he expressed it to Marriott, insensible of the grim irony of the phrase in that place of deliberate death, where, after all, life persisted on its own terms and with its common phrases and symbols. The newspapers had called it a harrowing scene; the inmates of the death-chamber had whispered about it, calling it a bungle, and the affair had magnified and distorted itself to their imaginations, and they had dwelt on it with a covert morbidity. The newspapers next day were denied them, but they knew that it had required three shocks--they could count them by the thrumming of the currents, each time the prison had shaken with the howl of the awakened convicts in the cell-house. Bill Arnold, the negro who had killed a real estate agent, had been the most concerned; his day was but a week after Thomas's. The strain had been too much for Arnold; he had collapsed, raved like a maniac, then sobbed, fallen on his knees and yammered a prayer to Jimmy Ball, as if the deputy warden were a god. They had dragged him out, still on his knees, moaning "God be merciful; God be merciful."

They had missed Arnold. He was a jolly negro, who could sing and tell stories, and do buck-and-wing dancing, and, when Ball was away, and the guard's back turned, give perfect imitations of them both. They missed him out of their life in that chamber, or rather out of their death. It seemed strange to think that one minute he was among them, full of warm pulsing life and strength--and that the next, he should be dead. They missed him, as men miss a fellow with whom they have eaten and slept for months.

These men in the state shambles were there, the law had said, for murder. But this was only in a sense true. One was there, for instance, because his lawyer had made a mistake; he had not kept accurate account of his peremptory challenges; he thought he had exhausted but fifteen, whereas he had exhausted sixteen; that is, all of them, and so had been unable to remove from the jury a man whom he had irritated and offended by his persistent questioning; he had been quite sarcastic, intending to challenge the man peremptorily in a few moments. Another man was there because the judge before whom he was tried, having quarreled with his wife one morning, was out of humor all that day, and had ridiculed his lawyer, not in words, but by sneers and curlings of his lip, which could not be preserved in the record. Another--Pritchard, to be exact--was there, first, because he had been a chemist; secondly, because he, like the judge, had had a quarrel with his wife; thirdly, because his wife had died suddenly, and traces of cyanide of potassium had been found in her stomach--at least three of the four doctors who had conducted the post-mortem examination had said the traces were of cyanide of potassium--and fourthly, because a small vial was discovered in the room in which were also traces of cyanide of potassium; at least, three chemists declared the traces were those of cyanide of potassium. And all of them were there for some such reason as this, and all of them, with the possible exception of Pritchard, had taken human life. And yet each one had felt, and still felt, that the circumstances under which he had killed were such as to warrant killing; such, indeed, as to make it at the moment seem imperative and necessary, just as the State felt that in killing these men, circumstances had arisen which made it justifiable, imperative and necessary to kill.

Though Archie waited in suspense, the afternoon was short, short even beyond the shortness of November, and at five o'clock Marriott came. He lingered just outside the entrance to the chamber in the little room that was fitted up somehow like a chapel, the room in which the death chair was placed. The guard brought Archie out, and he leaned carelessly against the rail that surrounded the chair, mysterious and sinister under its draping of black oil-cloth. The rail railed off the little platform on which the chair was placed just as a chancel-rail rails off an altar, possibly because so many people regarded the chair in the same sacred light that they regarded an altar, and spoke of it as if its rite were quite as saving and sacerdotal. But Archie leaned against the rail calmly, negligently, and it made Marriott's flesh creep to see him thus unmoved and practical. He did not speak, but he looked his last question out of his blue eyes.

"The governor hasn't decided yet," Marriott said. "I've spent the afternoon with him. I've labored with him--God!" he suddenly paused and sighed in utter weariness at the recollection of the long hours in which he had clung to the governor--"I'm to see him again at eight o'clock at the executive mansion. He's to give me a final answer then."

"At eight o'clock?" The words slipped from Archie's lips as softly as his breath.

"This evening," said Marriott, dreading now the thought of fixity of time. He looked at Archie; and it was almost more than he could endure. Archie's eyes were fastened on him; his gaze seemed to cling to him in final desperation.

"Oh, in the name of God," Archie suddenly whispered, leaning toward him, his face directly in his, "do something, Mr. Marriott! _something_! _something_! I can't, I can't die to-night! If it's only a little more time--just another day--but not to-night! Not to-night! Do something, Mr. Marriott; _something_!"

Marriott seized Archie's hand. It was cold and wet. He wrung it as hard as he could. There were no words for such a moment as this. Words but mocked.

He saw Archie's chest heave, and the cords tighten in his swelling neck. Marriott could only look at him--this boy, for whom he had come to have an affection--so young, so strong, with the great gloom of death prematurely, unnecessarily, in his face!

But the face cleared suddenly,--Archie still could think, and he remembered--he remembered Curly, and Mason and old Dillon, and Gibbs, he recalled the only ideals he knew--like all of us, he could live up only to such ideals as he had--he remembered that he must be game. He straightened, Marriott saw the fine and supple play of the muscles of his chest, its white skin revealed through his open shirt.

"So long, Mr. Marriott," said Archie, and then turned and went back into the death-chamber.

Outside, in the twilight that was filling the quadrangle, Marriott passed along, the gloom of the place he had left filling his soul. The trusty who had conducted him to the death-chamber paced in silence by his side. He passed the great tree, gaunt and bare and black now, the tree under which he had seen that summer day these doomed men take their exercise, with the Sunday-school scholars standing by and gazing on with curious covert glances and perverted thoughts. He wished that time had paused on that day--he had had hope then; this thing as to Archie, it then had seemed, simply could not be; it might, he had felt, very well be as to those other doomed men; indeed, it seemed certain and irrevocable; but as to Archie, no, it could not be. And yet, here it was, the night before the day--and but one more hope between them and the end. He hastened on, anxious to get out of the place. Any moment the whistle might blow and he would have to wait until the men had come from their work; the gates could not be unlocked at that time, or until the men were locked again in their cells. They were passing the chapel, and suddenly he heard music--the playing of a piano. He stopped and listened. He heard the deep bass notes of Grieg's _Ode to the Spring_, played now with a pathos he had never known before.

"What's that?" he asked the trusty.

"That playing? That's young Ernsthauser. He's a swell piano player."

"May we look in?"

"Sure."

They entered, and stood just inside the door. A young German, in the gray convict garb, was seated at a piano, his delicate hands straying over the keys. One gas-jet burned in the wall above the piano, shedding its faint circle of light around the pianist, glistening on the dark panels of the instrument, lighting the pale face of the boy--he was but a boy--and then losing itself in the great darkness that hung thick and soft and heavy in the vast auditorium. Marriott looked and listened in silence; tears came to his eyes, a vast pity welled within him, and he knew that never again would he hear the _Ode_ without experiencing the pity and the pain of this day. He wished, indeed, that he had not heard it. The musician played on, rapt and alone, unconscious of their presence.

"Tell me about that fellow," said Marriott, as they stole away.

"Oh, he was a musician outside. The warden lets him play. The warden likes music. I've seen him cry when Ernsthauser plays. He plays for visitors, and he picks up, they say, a good bit of money every day. The visitors, except the Sunday-schools, give him tips."

"How long is he in for?"

"Life."

The word fell like a blow on Marriott. Life! What paradoxes were in this place! What perverted meanings--if there were any meanings left in the world. This one word life, in one part of the prison meant life indeed; now it meant death. Was there any difference in the words, after all--life and death? Life in death; death in life? With Archie it was death in life, with this musician, life in death--no, it was the other way. But was it? Marriott could not decide. The words meant nothing, after all.

The delay in the chapel kept Marriott in the prison for half an hour. He would not watch the convicts march again to their cells; he did not wish to hear the clanging of the gong nor the thud of the bolts that locked them in for the night.

The warden, a ruddy and rotund man, spoke pleasantly to him and asked him into his office. The warden sat in a big swivel chair before his roll-top desk, and, while Marriott waited, locked in now like the rest, they chatted. It was incomprehensible to Marriott that this man could chat casually and even laugh, when he knew that he must stay up that night to do such a deed as the law required of him. The consciousness, indeed, must have lain on the warden, try as he might not to show it, for, presently, the warden himself, as if he could not help it, referred to the event.

"How's Archie taking it?" he asked.

Marriott might have replied conventionally, or politely, that he was taking it well, but he somehow resented this man's casual and contained manner. And so, looking him in the eyes, and meaning to punish him, he said:

"He's trying to _appear_ game, but he's taking it hard."

"Hard, eh?"

"Yes, hard." Marriott looked at him sternly. "Tell me," he emboldened himself to ask, "how can you do it?"

The warden's face became suddenly hard.

"Do it? Bah! I could switch it into all of them fellows in there--like that!" He snapped his fat fingers in the air with a startling, suggestive electric sound. And for a moment afterward his upper lip curled with a cruelty that appalled Marriott. He looked at this man, this executioner, who seemed to be encompassed all at once with a kind of subtle, evil fascination. Marriott looked at his face--then in some way at the finger and thumb which, a moment before, had snapped their indifference in the air. And he started, for suddenly he recalled that Doctor Tyler Tilson had declared, in the profound scientific treatise he had written for the _Post_, that Archie had the spatulate finger-tips and the stubbed finger-nails that were among the stigmata of the homicide, and Marriott saw that the fingers of the warden were spatulate, their nails were broad and stubbed, imbedded in the flesh. And this man liked music--cried when the life-man played!

"Won't you stop and have dinner with me?" the warden asked. "You can stay for the execution, too, if you wish."

"No, thank you," said Marriott hurriedly. The thought of sitting down to dine with this man on this evening was abhorrent, loathsome to him. He might have sat down and eaten with Archie and his companions, or with those convicts whose distant shuffling feet he heard; he could have eaten their bread, wet and salt with their tears, but he could not eat with this man. And yet, sensitively, he could not let this man detect his loathing.

"No," he said, "I must get back to my hotel--" and the thought of the hotel, with its light and its life, filled him with instant longing. "I have another appointment with the governor this evening."

"Oh, he won't do anything," said the warden.

The words depressed Marriott, and he hurried away with them persistently ringing in his ears, glad at least to get away from the great pile that hid so much sorrow and misery and shame from the world, and now sat black against the gathering night, under the shadow of a mighty wing.

At eight o'clock that evening Archie was sitting on the edge of his cot, smoking one of the Russian cigarettes Marriott had brought him in the afternoon. The pungent and unusual odor filled the death-chamber, and the other waiting men (who nevertheless did not have to die that night) sniffed, some suspiciously, some with the air of connoisseurs.

"Ha!" said Pritchard, turning his pale face slowly about, "imported, eh?"

Then Archie passed them around, though somewhat reluctantly. Marriott had brought him several boxes of these cigarettes, and Archie knew they were the kind Marriott smoked himself. He was generous enough; this brotherhood of doomed men held all things in common, like the early Christians, sharing their little luxuries, but Archie felt that it was useless to waste such cigarettes on men who would be alive to-morrow; especially when it was doubtful if there would be enough for himself.

The warden had sent him a supper which was borne in with the effect of being the last and highest excellence to which the culinary art could attain. If there was anything, Ball reported the warden as having said, that was then in market, and was not there he'd like to know what it was. The generosity of the warden had not been limited to Archie; the others were treated to a like repast; there was turkey for all. Archie had not eaten much; he had made an effort and smiled and thanked the warden when he strolled in afterward for his meed of praise. Archie found the cigarettes sufficient. He sat there almost without moving, smoking them one after another, end to end, lighting a fresh one from the cork-tipped stub of the one he was about to fling away. He sat and smoked, his eyes blinked in his white face, and his brows contracted as he tried to think. He was not, of course, at any time, capable of sustained or logical thought, and now his thoughts were merely a muddle of impressions, a curiosity as to whether he would win or lose, as if he were gambling, and all this in the midst of a mighty wonder, vast, immeasurable, profound, that was expanding slowly in his soul.

How many times had he waited as he was waiting now, for word from Marriott? May fourteenth, October twenty-first, November twenty-third. What day was this? Oh, yes, the twenty-second. What time was it now? ... Kouka?--Kouka was dead; yes, dead. That was good ... And he himself must die ... Die? What was that? ... May fourteenth, October twenty-first, November twenty-third. He had already died three times. No, he had died many more times than that; during the trial he had died again and again, by day, by night. Here in the death-chamber he had died; here on this very cot. Sometimes during the day, when they were all strangely merry, when Bill Arnold was doing a song and dance, when they had all forgotten, suddenly, in an instant, it would come over him, and he would die--die there, amidst them all, with the sun streaming in the window--die with a smile and a joke, perhaps while speaking to one of them; they would not know he was dying. And in the night he died often, nearly every night, suddenly he would find himself awake, staring into the darkness; then he would remember it all, and he would die, live over that death again, as it were. All about him the others would be snoring, or groaning, muttering or cursing, like drunkards in their sleep. Perhaps they were dying, too. Now, he must die again. And he had already died a thousand deaths. Kouka had died, too, but only once....

What was that? Marriott? His heart stopped. But, no, it was not Marriott. There was still hope; there was always hope so long as Marriott did not come. It was only the old Lutheran preacher, Mr. Hoerr. He came to pray with him? This was strange, thought Archie. Why should he pray now? What difference could that make? Prayers could not save him; he had tried that, sometimes at night, as well as he could, imploring, pleading, holding on with his whole soul, until he was exhausted; but it did no good; no one, or nothing heard. The only thing that could do any good now was the governor.... Still, he was glad it was not Marriott. He had, suddenly, begun to dread the coming of Marriott.... But this preacher? Well, he could pray if he wanted to, it seemed to please him, to be a part somehow of the whole ceremony they were going through. Yet he might pray if it gave him any pleasure. He had read of their praying, always; but Mr. Hoerr must not expect him to stop smoking cigarettes while he prayed. Archie lighted a fresh cigarette hurriedly, inhaled the smoke, filling his lungs in every cell.... The preacher had asked him if he was reconciled, if he were ready to meet his God. Archie did not reply. He stared at the preacher, the smoke streaming from his lips, from his nostrils. Ready to meet his God? What a strange thing to ask! He was not ready, no; he had not asked to meet his God, yet. There was no use in asking such a question; if they were uncertain about it, or had any question, or feared any danger they could settle it by just a word--a word from the governor. Then he would not have to meet his God.... Where was his God anyhow? He had no God.... These sky-pilots were strange fellows! He never knew what to say to them.... "The blood of Jesus." ... Oh, yes, he had heard that, too.... Was he being game? What would the papers say? Would the old Market Place gang talk about it? And Mason, and Dillon, and Gibbs? And Curly, too? They might as well; doubtless they would. They settled whomever they pleased.... Out at Nussbaum's saloon in the old days.... His mother, and Jakie and little Katie playing in the back yard, their yellow heads bobbing in the sunshine.... And Gusta! Poor Gusta! Whatever became of that chump of a Peltzer? He ought to have fixed him.... The old man's rheumatic leg.... And that case of his against the railroad.... John O'Brien--rattler.... What was the word for leg? Oh, yes, gimp.... Well, he had made a mess of it.... If they would only hang him, instead.... Why couldn't they? That would be so much easier. He was used to thinking of that; so many men had gone through that. But this new way, there was so much fuss about it.... Bill Arnold.... What if? ... Ugh.... How cold it was! Had some one opened the window?...

Yes, he was the fall guy, all right, all right.... A black, intolerable gloom, dread wastes like a desert. Thirst raged in his throat.... It was dry and sanded.... How rank the cigarette tasted! ... Why did the others huddle there in the back of the cage, their faces black, ugly, brutal? Were they plotting? They might slip up on him, from behind. He turned quickly.... Well, they would get theirs, too.... One day in the wilderness of Samar when their company had been detailed to--the flag--how green the woods were; the rushes--

His father hated him, too, yes, ever since.... Eades--Eades had done this. God! What a cold proposition Eades was! ... One day when he was a little kid, just as they came from school in the afternoon.... The rifle range, and the captain smiling as he pinned his sharp-shooter's medal on.... Where was his medal now? He meant to ask the warden to have it pinned on his breast after--He must attend to that, and not forget it. He had spoken to Beck about it and Beck had promised, but Beck never did anything he said he would.... If, now, those bars were not there, he could choke Beck, take his gun--

His mind suddenly became clear. With a yearning that was ineffable, intolerable, he longed for some power to stay this thing--if he could only try it all over again, he would do better now! His mind had become clear, incandescent; he had a swift flashing conception of purity, faith, virtue--but before he could grasp the conception it had gone. He was crying, his mother, he remembered--but now he could not see her face, he could see the shape of her head, her hair, her throat, but not her face. He could, however, see her hands quite distinctly. They were large, and brown, and wrinkled, and the fingers were curved so that they were almost always closed.... But this was not being game; he needn't say dying game just yet.

Was that Marriott? No, the warden. He had brought him something. He was thrusting it through the bars. A bottle! Archie seized it, pressed it to his lips. Whisky! He drank long and long. Ah! That was better! That did him good! That beat prayers, or tears, or solitaire, or even wishing on the black cat. That made him warm, comfortable. There was hope now. Marriott would bring that governor around! Marriott was a hell of a smart fellow, even if he had lost his case. Perhaps, if he had had Frisby,--Frisby was smart, too, and had a pull. He drank again. That was better yet. What would it matter if the governor refused? It wouldn't matter at all; it was all right. This stuff made him feel game. How much was there in the bottle? ... Ah, the cigarettes tasted better, too, now...

Marriott? No, not this time. Well, that was good. It was the barber come to "top" him.

The barber shaved bare a little round spot on Archie's head, exposing a bluish-white disk of scalp in the midst of his yellow locks. And then, kneeling with his scissors, he slit each leg of Archie's trousers to the knee. Then the warden drew a paper out of his pocket and began to read.

Archie could not hear what he read. After the barber began shaving his head, he fell into a stupor, and sat there, his eyes staring straight before him, his mouth agape, a cigarette clinging to his lower lip and dangling toward his chin. He looked like a young tonsured priest suddenly become imbecile.

When they finished, he still sat there. Some one was taking off his shoes. Then there was a step. He looked up, as one returning from a dream. He saw some one standing just within the door of the antechamber. Marriott? No, it was not Marriott. It was the governor's messenger.

Without in the cell-house the long corridors had been laid deep in yellow sawdust, so that the fall of the feet of the midnight guests might not awaken the convicts who slept so heavily, on the narrow bunks in their cells, after their dreadful day of toil.

XXXI

"All ready, Archie."

Jimmy Ball touched him on the shoulder. The grated door was open, and Beck stood just inside it, his revolver drawn. He kept his eye on the others, huddled there behind him.

"Come, my boy."

He made an effort, and stood up. He glanced toward the open grated door, thence across the flagging to the other door, and tried to take a step. Out there he could see one or two faces thrust forward suddenly; they peered in, then hastily withdrew. He tried again to take a step, but one leg had gone to sleep, it prickled, and as he bore his weight upon it, it seemed to swell suddenly to elephantine proportions. And he seemed to have no knees at all; if he stood up he would collapse. How was he ever to walk that distance?

"Here!" said Ball. "Get on that other side of him, Warden."

Then they started. The Reverend Mr. Hoerr, waiting by the door, had begun to read something in a strange, unnatural voice, out of a little red book he held at his breast in both his hands.

"Good-by, Archie!" they called from behind, and he turned, swayed a little, and looked back over his shoulder.

"Good-by, boys," he said. He had a glimpse of their faces; they looked gray and ugly, worse even than they had that evening--or was it that evening when with sudden fear he had seen them crouching there behind him?

Perhaps just at the last minute the governor would change his mind. They were walking the long way to the door, six yards off. The flagging was cold to his bare feet; his slit trouser-legs flapped miserably, revealing his white calves. Walking had suddenly become laborious; he had to lift each leg separately and manage it; he walked much as that man in the rear rank of Company 21 walked. He would have liked to stop and rest an instant, but Ball and the warden walked beside him, urged him resistlessly along, each gripping him at the wrist and upper arm.

In the room outside, Archie recognized the reporters standing in the sawdust. What they were to write that night would be in the newspapers the next morning, but he would not read it. He heard Beck lock the door of the death-chamber, locking it hurriedly, so that he could be in time to look on. Archie had no friend in the group of men that waited in silence, glancing curiously at him, their faces white as the whitewashed wall. The doctors held their watches in their hands. And there before him was the chair, its oil-cloth cover now removed, its cane bottom exposed. But he would have to step up on the little platform to get to it.

"No--yes, there you are, Archie, my boy!" whispered Ball. "There!"

He was in it, at last. He leaned back; then, as his back touched the back of the chair, started violently. But there were hands on his shoulders pressing him down, until he could feel his back touch the chair from his shoulders down to the very end of his spine. Some one had seized his legs, turned back the slit trousers from his calves.

"Be quick!" he heard the warden say in a scared voice. He was at his right side where the switch and the indicator were.

There were hands, too, at his head, at his arms--hands all over him. He took one last look. Had the governor--? Then the leather mask was strapped over his eyes and it was dark. He could only feel and hear now--feel the cold metal on his legs, feel the moist sponge on the top of his head where the barber had shaved him, feel the leather straps binding his legs and arms to the legs and the arms of the chair, binding them tightly, so that they gave him pain, and he could not move. Helpless he lay there, and waited. He heard the loud ticking of a watch; then on the other side of him the loud ticking of another watch; fingers were at his wrists. There was no sound but the mumble of Mr. Hoerr's voice. Then some one said:

"All ready."

He waited a second, or an age, then, suddenly, it seemed as if he must leap from the chair, his body was swelling to some monstrous, impossible, unhuman shape; his muscles were stretched, millions of hot and dreadful needles were piercing and pricking him, a stupendous roaring was in his ears, then a million colors, colors he had never seen or imagined before, colors no one had ever seen or imagined, colors beyond the range of the spectra, new, undiscovered, summoned by some mysterious agency from distant corners of the universe, played before his eyes. Suddenly they were shattered by a terrific explosion in his brain--then darkness.

But no, there was still sensation; a dull purple color slowly spread before him, gradually grew lighter, expanded, and with a mighty pain he struggled, groping his way in torture and torment over fearful obstacles from some far distance, remote as black stars in the cold abyss of the universe; he struggled back to life--then an appalling confusion, a grasp at consciousness; he heard the ticking of the two watches--then, through his brain there slowly trickled a thread of thought that squirmed and glowed like a white-hot wire...

A faint groan escaped the pale lips below the black leather mask, a tremor ran through the form in the chair, then it relaxed and was still.

"It's all over." The doctor, lifting his fingers from Archie's wrist, tried to smile, and wiped the perspiration from his face with a handkerchief.

Some one flung up a window, and a draught of cool air sucked through the room. On the draught was borne from the death-chamber the stale odor of Russian cigarettes. And then a demoniacal roar shook the cell-house. The convicts had been awake.

XXXII

Late in the winter the cable brought the news that Amos Hunter had died at Capri. Though the conventionalities were observed, it was doubtful if the event caused even a passing regret in the city where Hunter had been one of the wealthiest citizens. The extinction of this cold and selfish personality was noted, of course, by the closing of his bank for a day; the Chamber of Commerce, the Board of Trade, and the Stock Exchange adopted the usual resolutions, and the newspapers printed editorials in which the old canting, hypocritical phrases were paraded. To his widow, beyond the shock that came with the breaking of the habit of years, there was a mild regret, and the daughter, who was with him when he died, after the American consul had come to her assistance and arranged to send the body home, experienced a stealthy pleasure in her homeward journey she had not known on the outward voyage.

But to the Wards the news came as a distinct relief, for now the danger, if it ever was a danger, that had hung over them for months was definitely removed. They had grown so accustomed to its presence, however, the suspense and uncertainty had become so much a part of their lives that they did not recognize its reality until they found it removed altogether. Ward and Elizabeth had now and then talked about it and speculated on its possibilities of trouble in a world where there was so much trouble; and Mrs. Ward had been haunted by the fear of what her world might say. Now that this danger was passed, she could look on it as a thing that was as if it never had been, and she fondled and caressed her full-grown son more than ever. Ward was glad, but he was not happy. He saw that Dick's character had been marked definitely. The boy had escaped the artificial law that man had made, but he had not evaded the natural law, and Ward realized, though perhaps not so clearly as Elizabeth realized, that Dick must go on paying the penalty in his character year after year--perhaps to the end of his days.

If it made any real difference to Dick, he did not show it. Very early in the experience he seemed to be fully reassured, and Ward and Elizabeth and Marriott saw plainly that he was not wise enough to find the good that always is concealed somewhere in the bad. Dick took up his old life, and, so far as his restricted opportunities now permitted, sought his old sensations. Elizabeth sadly observed the continued disintegration of his character, expressed to her by such coarse physical manifestations as his excessive eating and drinking and smoking. And she saw that there was nothing she or any one could now do; that no one could help him but himself, and that, like the story of the prodigal of old, which suddenly revealed its hidden meaning to her in this personal contact with a similar experience, he must continue to feed on husks until he came to himself. How few, she thought, had come to themselves! Elizabeth had been near to boasting that her own eyes had been opened, and they had, indeed, been washed by tears, but now she humbly wondered if she had come to herself as yet. She had long ago given up the fictions of society which her mother yet revered; she had abandoned her formal charities, finding them absurd and inadequate. Meanwhile, she waited patiently, hoping that some day she might find the way to life.

She saw nothing of Eades, though she was constantly hearing of his success. His conviction of Archie had given him prestige. He considered the case against Curly Jackson, but finding it impossible to convict him, feeling a lack of public sentiment, he was forced to nolle the indictment against him and reluctantly let him go. In fact, Eades was having his trouble in common with the rest of humanity. Though he had been applauded and praised, all at once, for some mysterious reason he could not understand but could only feel in its effect, he discovered an eccentricity in the institution he revered. For a while it was difficult to convict any one; verdict after verdict of not guilty was rendered in the criminal court; there seemed to be a reaction against punishment.

When Amos Hunter died, Eades began to think again of Elizabeth Ward. He assured himself that after this lapse of time, now that the danger was removed, Elizabeth would respect him for his high-minded impartiality and devotion to duty, and, indeed, understand what a sacrifice it had been to him to decide as he had. And he resolved that at the first opportunity he would speak to her again. He did not have to wait long for the opportunity. A new musician had come to town, and, with his interest in all artistic endeavors, Braxton Parrish had taken up this frail youth who could play the violin, and had arranged a recital at his home.

Elizabeth went because Parrish had asked her especially and because her mother had urged it on her, "out of respect to me," as Mrs. Ward put it. When she got there, she told herself she was glad she had come because she could now realize how foreign all this artificial life had become to her; she was glad to have the opportunity to correct her reckoning, to see how far she had progressed. She found, however, no profit in it, though the boy, whose playing she liked, interested her. He stood in the music-room under the mellow light, and his slender figure bending gracefully to his violin, and his sensitive, fragile, poetic face, had their various impressions for her; but she sat apart and after a while, when the supper was served, she found a little nook on a low divan behind some palms. But Eades discovered her in her retreat.

"I have been wondering whether my fate was settled--after that last time we met," he said, after the awkward moment in which they exchanged banalities.

The wonder was in his words alone; she could not detect the uncertainty she felt would have become him.

"Is it settled?"

"Yes, it is settled."

He was taken aback, but he was determined, always determined. He could not suppose that, in the end, she would actually refuse him.

"Of course," he began again, "I could realize that for a time you would naturally feel resentful--though that isn't the word--but now--that the necessity is passed--that I am in a sense free--I had let myself begin to hope again."

"You don't understand," she said, almost sick at heart. "You didn't understand that day."

"Why, I thought I did. You wanted me--to let him go."

"Yes."

"And because I loved you, to prove that I loved you--"

"Exactly."

"Well, then, didn't I understand you?"

"No."

"Well, I confess," he leaned back helplessly, "you baffle me."

"Oh, but it wasn't a _bargain_," she said. Her gray eyes looked calmly into his as she told him what she knew was not accurately the truth, and she was glad of the moment because it gave her the opportunity to declare false what had so long been true to her, and, just as she had feared, true to him. She felt restored, rehabilitated in her old self-esteem, and she relished his perplexity.

"It seems inconsistent," he said.

"Does it? How strange!" She said it coldly, and slowly she took her eyes from him. They were silent for a while.

"Then my fate is settled--irrevocably?" he asked at length.

"Yes, irrevocably."

"I wish," he complained, "that I understood."

"I wish you did," she replied.

"Can't you tell me?"

"Don't force me to."

"Very well," he said, drawing himself up. "I beg your pardon." These words, however, meant that the apology should have been hers.

As they drove home, her mother said to her:

"What were you and John Eades talking about back there in that corner?"

"An old subject."

"Was he--" Mrs. Ward was burning with a curiosity she did not, however, like to put into words.

Elizabeth laughed.

"Yes," she said, "he _was_. But I settled him."

"I hope you were not--"

"Brutal?"

"Well, perhaps not that--you, of course, could not be that."

"Don't be too sure."

They discussed Eades as the carriage rolled along, but their points of view could never be the same.

"And yet, after all, dear," Mrs. Ward was saying, "we must be just. I don't see--"

"No," Elizabeth interrupted her mother. "You don't see. None of you can see. It wasn't because he wouldn't let Dick go. It was because that one act of his revealed his true nature, his real self; showed me that he isn't a man, but a machine; not a human being, but a prosecutor; he's an institution, and one can't marry an _institution_, you know," she concluded oddly.

"Elizabeth!" said Mrs. Ward. "That doesn't sound quite ladylike or nice!"

Elizabeth laughed lightly now, in the content that came with the new happiness that was glowing within her.

XXXIII

Curly Jackson was hurrying along Race Street, glad of his old friend, the darkness, that in February had begun to gather at five o'clock. He passed a factory, a tall, ugly building of brick, and in the light of the incandescent lamps he could see the faces of the machinists bent over the glistening machines. Curly looked at these workmen, thought of their toil, of the homes they would go to presently, of the wives that would be waiting, and the children--suddenly a whistle blew, the roar of machinery subsided, whirred, hummed and died away; a glad, spontaneous shout went up from the factory, and, in another minute, a regiment of men in overalls and caps, begrimed and greasy, burst into the street and went trooping off in the twilight. The scene moved Curly profoundly; he longed for some touch of this humanity, for the fellowship of these working-men, for some one to slap his back, and, in mere animal spirits and joy at release, sprint a race for half a block with him.

Curly felt that these workmen were like him, at least, in one respect, they were as glad to be released from the factory as he had been half an hour before to be released from the jail. He had left the jail, but he was not free. Inside the jail he had the sympathy and understanding of his fellows; here he had nothing but hatred and suspicion. Even these men trooping along beside him and, to his joy, brushing against him now and then, would have scorned and avoided him had they known he was just released from prison. There was no work for him among them, and his only freedom lay still in the fields, the woods, and along the highways of gravel and of iron.

"Well," he thought, grinding his teeth bitterly, "they'll have to pay toll now!"

He found Gibbs in his back room, alone, and evidently in a gloomy mood. Gibbs stretched his hand across the table.

"Well, Curly, I'm glad to see some one in luck."

"You're right, Dan, my luck's good. I'm no hoodoo. To be in the way I was and have your pal topped, to make a clear lamas--that looks like good luck to me."

"Oh, well, they never had anything on you."

"They didn't have anything on Dutch neither--but in the frame-up I didn't know but they'd put a sinker on me, too. What made me sore was having that Flanagan rap against me--why, great God! a job like that--that some fink, some gay cat done after he'd got scared!" Jackson could not find the words to express his disgust, his sense of injury, the stain, as it were, on his professional reputation.

"It was that they put Dutch away on."

"Sure, I know that, Dan, and everybody knows that. It was just like a mob of hoosiers after you with pitchforks; like that time old Dillon and Mason and me gave 'em battle in the jungle in Illinois. Well, that's the way these people was. They was howlin' around that court-house and that pogey--God! to think of it! To think of a fellow's getting a lump like that handed to him--all for croakin' a copper!" Curly shook his head a moment in his inability to understand this situation, and he held his hands out in appeal to Gibbs, and said in his high, shrill voice, emphasizing certain words:

"What in hell do you make of it, Dan?"

"What's the use wasting time over that?" Gibbs asked. "That's all over, ain't it? Then cut it out. Course,"--it seemed, however, that Gibbs had some final comment of his own to make--"you might say the kid ought to've had a medal for croaking a gendie. I wisht when he pushed his barker he'd wiped out a few more bulls. He was a good shot."

Gibbs said this with an air of closing the discussion, and of having paid his tribute to Archie.

"Well, Dan," Curly began, "you'll have to put me on the nut until I can get to work. I haven't even got pad money. I gave my bit to Jane; she says graft's on the fritz. She twisted a super, but it was an old canister--has she been in to-day?"

Gibbs shook his head gloomily.

"She didn't expect 'em to turn me out to-day." Curly mused in a moment's silence. "Ain't she the limit? One day she was goin' to bash that sister of poor Dutch, the next she's doubled with her, holdin' her up. She had me scared when she landed in; I was 'fraid she'd tip off the lay somehow--course"--he hastened to do her justice--"I knew she wouldn't throw me down, but the main bull-- What's wrong, Dan?" Curly, seeing that Gibbs was not interested, stopped suddenly.

"Oh, everything's wrong. Dean's been here--now he's pinched!"

"No! What for?"

"You'd never guess."

"The big mitt?"

"No, short change! He came in drunk--he's been at it for a month; of course, if he hadn't, he wouldn't have done anything so foolish. Did you know a moll buzzer named McGlynn? Well, he got home the other day from doin' a stretch, and Ed gets sorry for him and promises to take him out. So they go down to the spill and turned a sucker--Ed flopped him for a ten!" Gibbs's tone expressed the greatest contempt. "He'll be doing a heel or a stick-up next, or go shark hunting. Think of Ed Dean's being in for a thing like that!"

"Is he down at the boob?"

"No, we sprung him on paper. He's all broke up--you heard about McDougall?"

"What about him?"

"Dead; didn't you know? Died in Baltimore--some one shot him in a saloon. He wouldn't tell who; he was game--died saying it was all right, that the guy wasn't to blame. And then," Gibbs went on, "that ain't all. Dempsey was settled."

"Yes, I read it in the paper."

"That was a kangaroo, too."

"I judged so; they settled him for the dip. How did it come off?"

"Oh, it was them farmers down at Bayport. Dempsey had a privilege at the fair last fall; he took a hieronymous--hanky-panky, chuck-a-luck."

"Yes, I know," said Curly impatiently, "the old army game."

"Well, he skinned the shellapers, and they squealed this year to get even. They had him pinched for the dip. Why, old Dempsey couldn't even stall--he couldn't put his back up to go to the front!"

"Who did it?"

"Oh, a little Chicago gun. You don't know him."

"Well," said Curly, "you have had a run of bad luck."

"Do you know what does it?" Gibbs leaned over confidentially, a superstitious gleam in his eye. "It's that Koerner thing. There's a hoodoo over that family. That girl's been in here once or twice--with Jane. You tell Jane not to tow her round here any more. If I was you, I'd cut her loose--she'll queer you. You won't have any luck as long as you're filled in with her."

"I thought the old man had some damages coming to him for the loss of his gimp," said Curly.

"Well, he has; but it's in the courts. They'll job him, too, I suppose. He can't win against that hoodoo. The courts have been taking their time."

The courts, indeed, had been taking their time with Koerner's case. Months had gone by and still no hint of a decision. The truth was, the judges of the Supreme Court were divided. They had discussed the case many times and had had heated arguments over it, but they could not agree as to what had been the proximate cause of Koerner's injury, whether it was the unblocked frog in which he had caught his foot, or the ice on which he had slipped. If it was the unblocked frog, then it was the railroad company's fault; if it was the snow and ice, then it was what is known as the act of God. Dixon, McGee and Bundy, justices, all thought the unblocked frog was the proximate cause; they argued that if the frog had been blocked, Koerner could not have caught his foot in it. They were supported in their opinion by Sharlow, of the _nisi prius_ court, and by Gardner, Dawson and Kirkpatrick, of the Appellate Court; so that of all the judges who were to pass on Koerner's case, he had seven on his side. On the other hand, Funk, Hambaugh and Ficklin thought it was God's fault and not the railroad company's; they argued it was the ice causing him to slip that made Koerner fall and catch his foot.

It resulted, therefore, that with all the elaborate machinery of the law, one man, after all, was to decide this case, and that man was Buckmaster, the chief justice. Buckmaster had the printed transcript of the record and the printed briefs of counsel, but, like most of his colleagues, he disliked to read records and merely skimmed the briefs. Besides, Buckmaster could not fix his mind on anything just then, for, like Archie, he, too, was under sentence of death. His doctor, some time before this, had told him he had Bright's disease, and Buckmaster had now reached the stage where he had almost convinced himself that his doctor was wrong, and he felt that if he could take a trip south, he would come back well again. Buckmaster would have preferred to lay the blame of Koerner's accident on God rather than on the railroad company. He had thought more about the railroads and the laws they had made than he had about God and the laws He had made, for he had been a railroad attorney before he became a judge; indeed, the railroad companies had had his party nominate him for judge of the Supreme Court. Buckmaster knew how much the railroads lost in damages every year, and how the unscrupulous personal-injury lawyers mulcted them; and just now, when he was needing this trip south, and the manager of the railroad had placed his own private car at his disposal, Buckmaster felt more than ever inclined toward the railroad's side of these cases. Therefore, after getting some ideas from Hambaugh, he announced to his colleagues that he had concluded, after careful consideration, that Funk and Hambaugh and Ficklin were right; and Hambaugh was designated to write the profound opinion in which the decision of the court below was reversed.

Marriott had the news of the reversal in a telegram from the clerk of the Supreme Court, and he sat a long time at his desk, gazing out over the hideous roofs and chimneys with their plumes of white steam.... Well, he must tell old Koerner. He never dreaded anything more in his life, yet it must be done. But he could wait until morning. Bad news would keep.

But Marriott was spared the pain of bearing the news of this final defeat to Koerner. It would seem that the law itself would forego none of its privileges as to this family with which it so long had sported. The news, in fact, was borne to Koerner by a deputy sheriff.

Packard, the lawyer for the Building and Loan Company which held the mortgage on Koerner's house, had been waiting, at Marriott's request, for the determination of Koerner's suit against the railroad company. That morning Packard had read of the reversal in the _Legal Bulletin_, a journal that spun out daily through its short and formal columns, the threads of misery and woe and sin that men tangle into that inextricable snarl called "jurisprudence." And Packard immediately, that very morning, began his suit in foreclosure, and before noon the papers were served.

When Marriott knocked at the little door in Bolt Street, where he had stood so often and in so many varying moods of hope and despair,--though all of these moods, as he was perhaps in his egoism glad to feel, had owed their origin to the altruistic spirit,--he felt that surely he must be standing there now for the last time. He glanced at the front of the little home; it had been so neat when he first saw it; now it was weather-beaten and worn; the front door was scratched, the paint had cracked and come off in flakes.

The door was opened by the old man himself, and he almost frightened Marriott by the fierce expression of his haggard face. His shirt was open, revealing his red and wrinkled throat; his white hair stood up straight, his lean jaws were covered with a short, white beard, and his thick white eyebrows beetled fearfully. When he saw Marriott his lips trembled in anger, and his eyes flashed from their caverns.

"So!" he cried, not opening wide the door, not inviting Marriott in, "you gom', huh?"

"Yes, Mr. Koerner," said Marriott, "I came--to--"

"You lost, yah, I know dot! You lose all your cases, huh, pretty much, aindt it so?"

Marriott flamed hotly.

"No, it isn't so," he retorted, stepping back a little. "I have been unfortunate, I know, in your case, and in Archie's, but I did--"

"Ho!" scoffed Koerner in his tremendous voice. "Vell! Maybe you like to lose anudder case. _Hier_! I gif you von!"

With a sudden and elaborate flourish of the arm he stretched over his crutch, he delivered a document to Marriott, and Marriott saw that it was the summons in the foreclosure suit.

"I s'pose we lose dot case, too, aindt it?"

"Yes," said Marriott thoughtfully and sadly, tapping his hand with the paper, "we'll lose this. When did you get it?"

"Dis morning. A deputy sheriff, he brought 'im--"

"And he told you--"

"'Bout de oder von? Yah, dot's so."

They were silent a moment and Marriott, unconsciously, and with something of the habit of the family solicitor, put the summons into his pocket.

"Vell, I bet dere be no delays in dis case, huh?" Koerner asked.

Marriott wondered if it were possible to make this old man understand.

"You see, Mr. Koerner," he began, "the law--"

The old German reared before him in mighty rage, and he roared out from his tremendous throat:

"Oh, go to hell mit your Gott-tamned law!"

And he slammed the door in Marriott's face.

Koerner was right; there were no delays now, no questions of proximate cause, no more, indeed, than there had been in Archie's case. The law worked unerringly, remorselessly and swiftly; the _Legal Bulletin_ marked the steps day by day, judgment by default--decree--order of sale. There came a day when the sheriff's deputies--there were two of them now, knowing old man Koerner--went to the little cottage in Bolt Street. Standing on the little stoop, one of them, holding a paper in his hand, rapped on the door. There was no answer, and he rapped again. Still no answer. He beat with his gloved knuckles; he kicked lightly with his boot; still no answer. The deputies went about the house trying to peep in at the windows. The blinds were down; they tried both doors, front and back; they were locked.

In a neighbor's yard a little girl looked on with the crude curiosity of a child. After the man had tried the house all about, and rightly imagining from all that was said of the Koerners in the neighborhood that the law was about to indulge in some new and sensational ribaldry with them, she called out in a shrill, important voice:

"They're in there, Mister!"

"Are you sure?"

"Oh, honest!" said the officious little girl, drawing her chin in affectedly. "Cross my heart, it's so."

Then the deputy put his shoulder to the door; presently it gave.

In the front room, on the plush lounge, lay the two children, Jakie and Katie, their throats cut from ear to ear. In the dining-room, where there had been a struggle, lay the body of Mrs. Koerner, her throat likewise cut from ear to ear. And from four huge nails driven closely together into the lintel of the kitchen door, hung the body of old man Koerner, with its one long leg just off the floor, and from his long yellow face hung the old man's tongue, as if it were his last impotent effort to express his scorn of the law, whose emissaries he expected to find him there.

XXXIV

The series of dark events that had so curiously interwrought themselves into the life of Elizabeth Ward seemed, as far as the mind of mortals could determine, to find its close in the tragedy which the despairing Koerner contrived in his household. The effects of all these related circumstances on those who, however remotely, were concerned in them, could not, of course, be estimated; but the horror they produced in Elizabeth made the end of that winter a season of depression that left a permanent impress on her life and character. For weeks she was bewildered and afraid, but as the days went by those events began to assume in her retrospective vision their proper relations in a world that speedily forgot them in its contemplation of other events exactly like them, and she tried to pass them in review; the Koerners all were dead, save Gusta, and she was worse than dead; Kouka and Hunter were dead; Dick was still astray; Graves and all that horde of poor and criminal, whose faces for an instant had been turned up in appeal to her, had sunk into the black abyss again. What did it all mean?

She sought an answer to the questions, but could find none. No one could help her; few, indeed, could understand what it was she wished to know. Her father thought the market quotations important; her mother was absorbed in the way in which certain persons dressed, or served their meals, or arranged their entertainments; as for the church, where once she might have gone for help, it was not interested in her question.

The philosophers and the poets that had been her favorites had now for her new meanings, it is true, but they had been writing of the poor and the imprisoned for ages, and yet that very morning in that very city, not far away, there were countless poor and criminal, and as fast as these died or disappeared or were put to prison or to death, others appeared to take their places; the courts ground on, the prisons were promptly filled, the scenes she had witnessed in the slums and at the prisons were daily reenacted with ever-increasing numbers to take the places of those who went down in the process. And men continued to talk learnedly and solemnly of law and justice.

She thought of Marriott's efforts to save Archie; she thought of her own efforts; the Organized Charities squabbling as to whether it would open its meetings with prayer or not, whether it would hold an entertainment in a theater or some other building; she remembered the tedious statistics and the talk about the industrious and the idle, the frugal and the wasteful, the worthy and the unworthy. When, she wondered, had the young curate ever worked? who had declared him worthy? When, indeed, had she herself ever worked? who had declared her worthy?

But this was not all: there were other distinctions; besides the rich and the poor, the worthy and the unworthy, there were the "good" and the "bad." She indeed, herself, had once thought that mankind was thus divided, one class being rich, worthy and good, and the other class poor, unworthy and bad. But now, while she could distinguish between the rich and poor, she could no longer draw a line between the good and the bad, or the worthy and the unworthy, though it did not seem difficult to some people,--Eades, for instance, who, with his little stated formula of life, thought he could make the world good by locking up all the bad people in one place. Surely, she thought, Eades could not do this; he could lock up only the poor people. And a new question troubled Elizabeth: was the one crime, then, in being poor? But gradually these questions resolved themselves into one question that included all the others. "What," she asked herself, "does life mean to me? What attitude am I to adopt toward it? In a word, what am I, a girl, having all my life been carefully sheltered from these things and having led an idle existence, with none but purely artificial duties to perform--what am I to do?"

The first thing, she told herself, was to look at the world in a new light: a light that would reveal, distinctly, all the poor, all the criminal in the great, haggard, cruel city, not as beings of another nature, of another kind or of another class, different from herself, and from whom she must separate herself, but as human beings, no matter how wretched or miserable, exactly like herself, bound to her by ties that nothing could break. They might, indeed, be denied everything else, but they could not be denied this kinship; they claimed it by right of a common humanity and a common divinity. And, beginning to look on them in this new light, she found she was looking on them in a new pity, a new sympathy, yes, a new love. And suddenly she found the peace and the happiness of a new life, like that which came with the great awakening of the spring.

For spring had come again. All that morning a warm rain had fallen and the green sward eagerly soaked it up. The young leaves of the trees were glistening wet, the raindrops clung in little rows, like strings of jewels, to the slender, shining twigs; they danced on the swimming pavement, and in the gutters there poured along a yellow stream with great white bubbles floating gaily on its surface. The day was still; now and then she could hear the hoof-beats of the horses that trotted nervously over the slippery asphalt. It rained softly, patiently, as if it had always rained, as if it always would rain; the day was gray, but in the yard a robin chirped.

Yes, thought Elizabeth, as she faced life in her new attitude, the Koerners' tragedies are not the only ones. For all about her she saw people who, though they moved and ate and talked and bustled to and fro, were yet dead; the very souls within them were atrophied and dead; that is, dead to all that is real and vital in existence. They who could so complacently deny life to others were at the same time denying life to themselves. The tragedy had not been Koerner's alone; it had been Ford's as well; Eades could not punish Archie without punishing himself; Modderwell, in excluding Gusta, must exclude himself; and Dick might cause others to suffer, but he must suffer more. He paid the penalty just as all those in her narrow little world paid the penalty and kept on paying the penalty until they were bankrupts in soul and spirit. The things they considered important and counted on to give them happiness, gave them no happiness; they were the most unhappy of all, and far more desperate because they did not realize why they were unhappy. The poor were not more poor, more unhappy, more hungry, or more squalid. There was no hunger so gnawing as that infinite hunger of the soul, no poverty so squalid as the poverty of mere possession. And there were crimes that printed statutes did not define, and laws that were not accidents, but harmoniously acting and reacting in the moral world, revisited this cruelty, this savagery, this brutality with increasing force upon those who had inflicted it on others. And as she thought of all the evil deeds of that host of mankind known as criminals, and of that other host that punished them, she saw that both crime and punishment emanated from the same ignorant spirit of cruelty and fear. Would they ever learn of the great equity and tolerance, the simple love in nature? They had but to look at the falling rain, or at the sun when it shone again, to read the simple and sufficient lesson. No, she would not disown these people, any of them. She must live among them, she must feast or starve, laugh or cry, despair or triumph with them; she must bear their burdens or lay her own upon them, and so be brought close to them in the great bond of human sympathy and love, for only by love, she saw, shall the world be redeemed.

Meanwhile, everything went on as before. The peculiar spiritual experience through which Elizabeth was passing she kept largely to herself: she could not discuss it with any one; somehow, she would have found it impossible, because she realized that all those about her, except perhaps Marriott, would consider it all ridiculous and look at her in a queer, disconcerting way. She saw few persons outside of her own family; people spoke of her as having settled down, and began to forget her. But she saw much of Marriott; their old friendly relations, resumed at the time the trouble of Gusta and Archie and Dick had brought them together, had grown more intimate. Of Eades she saw nothing at all, and perhaps because both she and Marriott were conscious of a certain restraint with respect to him, his name was never mentioned between them. But at last an event occurred that broke even this restraint: it was announced that Eades was to be married. He was to marry an eastern girl who had visited in the city the winter before and now had come back again. She had been the object of much social attention, partly because she was considered beautiful, but more, perhaps, because she was in her own right very wealthy. She had, in truth, a pretty, though vain and selfish little face; she dressed exquisitely, and she had magnificent auburn, that is, red hair. People were divided as to what color it really was, though all spoke of it as "artistic." And now it was announced that she had been won by John Eades; the wedding was to occur in the autumn. The news had interested Marriott, of course, and he could not keep from imparting it to Elizabeth; indeed, he could not avoid a certain tone of triumph when he told her. He had seen Eades that very morning in the court-house; he seemed to Marriott to have grown heavier, which may have been the effect of a new coat he wore, or of the prosperousness and success that were surely coming to him. He was one of those men whom the whole community would admire; he would always do the thing appropriate to the occasion; it would, somehow, be considered in bad form to criticize him.

The newspapers had the habit of praising him; he was popular--precisely that, for while he had few friends and no intimates, everybody in the city approved him. He was just then being mentioned for Congress, and even for the governorship.

Yes, thought Marriott, Eades is a man plainly marked for success; everything will come his way. Eades had stopped long enough--and just long enough--to take Marriott's hand, to smile, to ask him the proper questions, to tell him he was looking well, that he must drop in and see him, and then he had hastened away. Marriott had felt a new quality in Eades's manner, but he could not isolate or specify it. Was Eades changing? He was changing physically, to be sure, he was growing stouter, but he was at the age for that; the youthful lines were being erased from his figure, just as the lines of maturity were being drawn in his face. Marriott thought it over, a question in his mind. Was success spoiling Eades?

But when Marriott told Elizabeth the news, she did not appear to be surprised; she did not even appear to be interested. The summer had come early that year; within a week it had burst upon them suddenly. The night was so warm that they had gone out on the veranda. Marriott watched Elizabeth narrowly, there in the soft darkness, to note the effect. But apparently there was no effect. She sat quite still and said nothing. The noise of the city had died away into a harmony, and the air throbbed with the shrill, tiny sounds of hidden infinitesimal life. There came to them the fragrance of the lilacs, just blooming in the big yard of the Wards, and the fragrance of the lilacs brought to them memories. To Marriott, the fragrance brought memories of that night at Hazel Ford's wedding; he thought of it a long time, wondering. After a while they left the veranda and strolled into the yard under the trees.

"Do you know," said Marriott, "I thought you would be surprised to hear of John Eades's engagement."

"Why?" she asked.

"Well, I don't know; no one had noticed that he was paying her any attention--" Suddenly he became embarrassed. He was still thinking of the evening at Hazel Ford's wedding, and he was wondering if Elizabeth were thinking of it, too, and this confused him.

"Oh," Elizabeth said, as if she had not noticed his hesitation, "I'm very glad--it's an appropriate match."

Then she was silent; she seemed to be thinking; and Marriott wondered what significance there was in the remark she had just made; did it have a tribute for Eades, or for the girl, or exactly the reverse?

"I was thinking," she began, as if in answer to his thought, and then suddenly she stopped and gave a little laugh. "Gordon," she went on, "can't you see them? Can't you see just what a life they will live--how correct, and proper, and successful--and empty, and hollow, and deadly it will be--going on year after year, year after year? Can't you see them with their conception of life, or rather, their lack of conception of it?" She had begun her sentence with a laugh, but she ended it in deep seriousness. And for some reason they stopped where they were; and suddenly, they knew that, at last, the moment had come. Just why they knew this they could not have told, either of them, but they knew that the moment had come, the moment toward which they had been moving for a long time. They felt it, that was all. And neither was surprised. Words, indeed, were unnecessary. They had been talking, for the first time in months, of Eades, yet neither was thinking at all of the life Eades and his fashionable wife would lead, nor caring in the least about it. Marriott knew that in another instant he would tell Elizabeth what long had been in his heart, what he should have told her months ago, what he had come there that very night to tell her; he knew that everything he had said that night had been intended, in some way, to lead up to it; he was certain of it, and he thought quite calmly, and yet when he spoke and heard his own voice, its tone, though low, showed his excitement; and he heard himself saying:

"I am thinking--do you know of what? Well, of that night--"

And then, suddenly, he took her hands and poured out the unnecessary words.

"Elizabeth, do you know--I've always felt--well, that little incident that night at Hazel Ford's wedding; do you remember? I was so stupid, so bungling, so inept. I thought that Eades--that there was--something; I thought so for a long time. I wish I could explain--it was only because--I loved you!"

He could see her eyes glow in the darkness; he heard her catch her breath, and then he took her in his arms.

"Oh, Elizabeth, dearest, how I loved you! I had loved you for a long, long time, but that night for the first time I fully realized, and I thought then, in that moment, that I was too late, that there never had been--"

He drew her close to him, and bent his head and kissed her lips, her eyes, her hair.

"Oh, Gordon!" she whispered, lifting her face from his shoulder. "How very blind you were that night!"

Long after Marriott had gone, Elizabeth sat by her window and looked out into the night; above the trees the stars glowed in a purple sky. She was too happy for sleep, too happy for words. She sat there and dreamed of this love that had come to her, and tears filled her eyes. Because of this love, this love of Gordon Marriott, this love of all things, she need ask no more questions for a while. Love, that was the great law of life, would one day, in the end, explain and make all things clear. Not to her, necessarily, but to some one, to humanity, when, perhaps, through long ages of joy and sorrow, of conflict and sin, and in hope and faith, it had purified and perfected itself. And now by this love and by the new light within her, at last she was to live, to enter into life--life like that which had awakened in the world this brooding tropical night, with its soft glowing stars, its moist air, laden with the odor of lilacs and of the first blossoms of the fruit trees, and with the smell of the warm, rich, fecund earth.

THE END