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.. meta::
   :PG.Id: 40398
   :PG.Title: The Turn of the Balance
   :PG.Released: 2013-02-19
   :PG.Rights: Public Domain
   :PG.Producer: Al Haines
   :DC.Creator: Brand Whitlock
   :MARCREL.ill: Jay Hambidge
   :DC.Title: The Turn of the Balance
   :DC.Language: en
   :DC.Created: 1907
   :coverpage: images/img-cover.jpg

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THE TURN OF THE BALANCE
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   .. _`Cover`:

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      Cover

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   .. _`Gordon Marriott`:

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      :alt: Gordon Marriott  *Page 38*

      Gordon Marriott  Page `38`_

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      THE TURN OF THE BALANCE

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      By

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      BRAND WHITLOCK

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      Author of The Happy Average
      Her Infinite Variety
      The 13th District

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      With Illustrations by
      JAY HAMBIDGE

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      INDIANAPOLIS
      THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
      PUBLISHERS 

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      COPYRIGHT 1907
      THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY

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      MARCH

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      TO THE MEMORY OF
      SAMUEL M. JONES
      Died July 12, 1904

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On the other hand, a boy was bound to defend
them against anything that he thought slighting or
insulting; and you did not have to verify the fact
that anything had been said or done; you merely
had to hear that it had.  It once fell to my boy to
avenge such a reported wrong from a boy who had
not many friends in school, a timid creature whom
the mere accusation frightened half out of his wits,
and who wildly protested his innocence.  He ran,
and my boy followed with the other boys after him,
till they overtook the culprit and brought him to
bay against a high board fence; and there my boy
struck him in his imploring face.  He tried to feel
like a righteous champion, but he felt like a brutal
ruffian.  He long had the sight of that terrified,
weeping face, and with shame and sickness of heart
he cowered before it.  It was pretty nearly the
last of his fighting; and though he came off victor,
he felt that he would rather be beaten himself
than do another such act of justice.  In fact, it
seems best to be very careful how we try to do
justice in this world, and mostly to leave
retribution of all kinds to God, who really knows about
things; and content ourselves as much as possible
with mercy, whose mistakes are not so irreparable.

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*From* "A BOY'S TOWN"
    *By* WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS

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.. _`BOOK I`:
.. _`I`:

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   THE TURN OF THE BALANCE

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   BOOK I

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   THE TURN OF THE BALANCE

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   I

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As Elizabeth Ward stood that morning before the
wide hearth in the dining-room, she was glad that she
still could find, in this first snow of the season, the
simple wonder and delight of that childhood she had
left not so very far behind.  Her last glimpse of the
world the night before had been of trees lashed by a
cold rain, of arc-lamps with globes of fog, of wet
asphalt pavements reflecting the lights of Claybourne
Avenue.  But now, everywhere, there was snow, heaped
in exquisite drifts about the trees, and clinging in soft
masses to the rough bark of their trunks.  The iron
fence about the great yard was half buried in it, the
houses along the avenue seemed far away and strange
in the white transfiguration, and the roofs lost their
familiar outlines against the low gray sky that hung
over them.

"Hurry, Gusta!" said Elizabeth.  "This is splendid!
I must go right out!"

The maid who was laying the breakfast smiled; "It
was a regular blizzard, Miss Elizabeth."

"Was it?"  Elizabeth lifted her skirt a little, and
rested the toe of her slipper on the low brass fender.
The wood was crackling cheerfully.  "Has mama gone
out?"

"Oh, yes, Miss Elizabeth, an hour ago."

"Of course," Elizabeth said, glancing at the little
clock on the mantelpiece, ticking in its refined way.  Its
hands pointed to half-past ten.  "I quite forgot the
dinner."  Her brow clouded.  "What a bore!" she thought.
Then she said aloud: "Didn't mama leave any word?"

"She said not to disturb you, Miss Elizabeth."

Gusta had served the breakfast, and now, surveying
her work with an expression of pleasure, poured the
coffee.

Beside Elizabeth's plate lay the mail and a morning
newspaper.  The newspaper had evidently been read
at some earlier breakfast, and because it was rumpled
Elizabeth pushed it aside.  She read her letters while
she ate her breakfast, and then, when she laid her
napkin aside, she looked out of the windows again.

"I must go out for a long walk," she said, speaking
as much to herself as to the maid, though not in the
same eager tone she had found for her resolution a
while before.  "It must have snowed very hard.  It
wasn't snowing when I came home."

"It began at midnight, Miss Elizabeth," said Gusta,
"and it snowed so hard I had an awful time getting
here this morning.  I could hardly find my way, it fell
so thick and fast."

Elizabeth did not reply, and Gusta went on: "I
stayed home last night--my brother just got back
yesterday; I stayed to see him."

"Your brother?"

"Yes; Archie.  He's been in the army.  He got home
yesterday from the Phil'pines."

"How interesting!" said Elizabeth indifferently.

"Yes, he's been there three years; his time was out
and he came home.  Oh, you should see him, Miss
Elizabeth.  He looks so fine!"

"Does he look as fine as you, Gusta?"

Elizabeth smiled affectionately, and Gusta's fair
German skin flushed to her yellow hair.

"Now, Miss Elizabeth," she said in an embarrassment
that could not hide her pleasure, "Archie's really
handsome--he put on his soldier clothes and let us see
him.  He's a fine soldier, Miss Elizabeth.  He was the
best shooter in his regiment; he has a medal.  He said
it was a sharp-shooter's medal."

"Oh, indeed!" said Elizabeth, her already slight
interest flagging.  "Then he must be a fine shot."

Though Elizabeth in a flash of imagination had the
scene in Gusta's home the night before--the brother
displaying himself in his uniform, his old German
father and mother glowing with pride, the children
gathered around in awe and wonder--she was really
thinking of the snow, and speculating as to what new
pleasure it would bring, and with this she rose from
the table and went into the drawing-room.  There she
stood in the deep window a moment, and looked out.
The Maceys' man, clearing the walk over the way, had
paused in his labor to lean with a discouraged air on
his wooden shovel.  A man was trudging by, his coat
collar turned up, his shoulders hunched disconsolately,
the snow clinging tenaciously to his feet as he plowed
his way along.  At the sight, Elizabeth shrugged her
shoulders, gave a little sympathetic shiver, turned
from her contemplation of the avenue that stretched
away white and still, and went to the library.  Here she
got down a book and curled herself up on a divan
near the fireplace.  Far away she heard the tinkle of
some solitary sleigh-bell.

When the maid came into the adjoining room a few
moments later, Elizabeth said: "Gusta, please hand me
that box of candy."

Elizabeth arranged herself in still greater comfort,
put a bit of the chocolate in her mouth, and opened her
book.  "Gusta, you're a comfort," she said.  "Catch me
going out on a day like this!"

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Mrs. Ward came home at noon, and when she
learned that Elizabeth had spent the morning in the
library, she took on an air of such superiority as was
justified only in one who had not allowed even a
blizzard to interfere with the serious duties of life.  She
had learned several new signals at the whist club and,
as she told Elizabeth with a reproach for her neglect
of the game, she had mastered at last Elwood's new
system.  But Elizabeth, when she had had her luncheon,
returned to the library and her book.  She stayed there
an hour, then suddenly startled her mother by
flinging the volume to the floor in disgust and running
from the room and up the stairs.  She came down
presently dressed for the street.

"Don't be put long, dear; remember the dinner,"
Mrs. Ward called after her.

As she turned in between the high banks of snow
piled along either side of the walk, Elizabeth felt the
fine quality of the air that sparkled with a cold vitality,
as pure as the snow that seemed to exhale it.  She
tossed her head as if to rid it of all the disordered
fancies she had gathered in the unreal world of the
romance with which she had spent the day.  Then for the
first time she realized how gigantic the storm had been.
Long processions of men armed with shovels, happy
in the temporary prosperity this chance for work had
brought, had cleared the sidewalks.  On the avenue
the snow had been beaten into a hard yellow track by
the horses and sleighs that coursed so gaily over it.
The cross-town trolley-cars glided along between the
windrows of the snow the big plow had whirled from
the tracks.  Little children, in bright caps and leggings,
were playing in the yards, testing new sleds, tumbling
about in the white drifts, flinging snowballs at one
another, their laughter and screams harmonizing with the
bells.  Claybourne Avenue was alive; the solitary bell
that Elizabeth had heard jingling in the still air that
morning had been joined by countless strings of other
bells, until now the air vibrated with their musical
clamor.  Great Russian sledges with scarlet plumes
shaking at their high-curved dashboards swept by, and
the cutters sped along in their impromptu races, the
happy faces of their occupants ruddy in their furs, the
bells on the excited horses chiming in the keen air.  At
the corner of Twenty-fifth Street, a park policeman,
sitting his magnificent bay horse, reviewed the swiftly
passing parade.  The pedestrians along the sidewalk
shouted the racers on; as the cutters, side by side, rose
and fell over the street-crossing a party of school-boys
assailed them with a shower of snowballs.

Elizabeth knew many of the people in the passing
sleighs; she knew all of those in the more imposing
turnouts.  She bowed to her acquaintances with a smile
that came from the exhilaration of the sharp winter
air, more than from any joy she had in the recognition.
But from one of the cutters Gordon Marriott waved his
whip at her, and she returned his salute with a little
shake of her big muff.  Her gray eyes sparkled and her
cheeks against her furs were pink.  Every one was
nervously exalted by the snow-storm that afternoon,
and Elizabeth, full of health and youthful spirit, tingled
with the joy the snow seemed to have brought to the
world.





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   II

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His house was all illumined; the light streaming
from its windows glistened on the polished crust of the
frozen snow, and as Stephen Ward drove up that
evening, he sighed, remembering the dinner.  He sprang
out, slammed the door of his brougham and dashed
indoors, the wheels of his retreating carriage giving out
again their frosty falsetto.  The breath of cold air Ward
inhaled as he ran into the house was grateful to him,
and he would have liked more of it; it would have
refreshed and calmed him after his hard day on the
Board.

As he entered the wide hall, Elizabeth was just
descending the stairs.  She came fresh from her toilet,
clothed in a dinner gown of white, her round arms bare
to the elbow, her young throat just revealed, her
dark hair done low on her neck, and the smile that
lighted her gray eyes pleased Ward.

As she went for her father's kiss Elizabeth noted the
cool outdoor atmosphere, and the odor of cigar smoke
and Russia leather that always hung about his person.

"You are refreshing!" she said.  "The frost clings to you."

He smiled as she helped him with his overcoat, and
then he backed up to the great fire, and stood there
shrugging his shoulders and rubbing his hands in the
warmth.  His face was fresh and ruddy, his white hair
was rumpled, his stubbed mustache, which ordinarily
gave an effect of saving his youth in his middle years,
seemed to bristle aggressively, and his eyes still burned
from the excitement of the day.

"What have you been doing all day?" Elizabeth
asked, standing before him, her hands on his shoulders.
"Battling hard for life in the wheat pit?"  Her eyes
sparkled with good humor.

Ward took Elizabeth's face between his palms as he
said jubilantly:

"No, but I've been making old Macey battle for his
life--and I've won."

His gray eyes flashed with the sense of victory, he
drew himself erect, tilted back on his heels.  He did not
often speak of his business affairs at home, and when
he did, no one understood him.  During the weeks
indeed, in which the soft moist weather and constant
rains had prevented the rise in the wheat market on
which he had so confidently gambled, he had resolutely
and unselfishly kept his fear and his suspense to
himself, and now even though at last he could indulge his
exultation, he drew a long, deep breath.

"By Jove!" he exclaimed.  "The snow came just in
the nick of time for me!"

"Well, you march right up-stairs and get your clothes
on," said Elizabeth as she took her father by the arm,
gathering up the train of her white gown, heavy with
its sequins and gracefully impeding her progress, and
led him to the stairs.  She smiled up into his face as
she did so, and, as he turned the corner of the wide
staircase, he bent and kissed her again.

Though the guests whom Mrs. Ward had asked to
her dinner that night all came in closed carriages,
bundled in warm and elegant furs, and though they stepped
from their own doors into their carriages and then
alighted from them at the door of the Wards', they all,
when they arrived, talked excitedly of the storm and
adjured one another to confess that they had never
known such cold.  The women, who came down from
the dressing-room in bare arms and bare shoulders,
seemed to think less of the cold than the men, who
were, doubtless, not so inured to exposure; but they
were more excited over it and looked on the phenomenon
in its romantic light, and began to celebrate the
poetic aspects of the winter scene.  But the men
laughed at this.

"There isn't much poetry about it down town," said
Dick Ward.  "No poet would have called that snow
beautiful if he'd seen it piled so high as to blockade the
street-cars and interrupt business generally."  He spoke
with the young pride he was finding in himself as a
business man, though it would have been hard to tell
just what his business was.

"Oh, but Dick," said Miss Bonnell, her dark face
lighting with a fine smile, "the poet wouldn't have
thought of business!"

"No, I suppose not," admitted Dick with the
contempt a business man should feel for a poet.

"He might have found a theme in the immense
damage the storm has done--telegraph wires all down,
trains all late, the whole country in the grip of the
blizzard, and a cold wave sweeping down from Medicine
Hat."

The slender young man who spoke was Gordon
Marriott, and he made his observation in a way that was
almost too serious to be conventional or even desirable
in a society where seriousness was not encouraged.  He
looked dreamily into the fire, as if he had merely
spoken a thought aloud rather than addressed any one;
but the company standing about the fireplace, trying
to make the talk last for the few moments before
dinner was announced, looked up suddenly, and seemed to
be puzzled by the expression on his smooth-shaven
delicate face.

"Oh, a theme for an epic!" exclaimed Mrs. Modderwell,
the wife of the rector.  Her pale face was
glowing with unusual color, and her great dark eyes were
lighting with enthusiasm.  As she spoke, she glanced
at her husband, and seemed to shrink in her black gown.

"But we have no poet to do it," said Elizabeth.

"Oh, I say," interrupted Modderwell, speaking in
the upper key he employed in addressing women, and
then, quickly changing to the deep, almost gruff tone
which, with his affected English accent, he used when
he spoke to men, "our friend Marriott here could do
it; he's dreamer enough for it--eh, Marriott?"  He
gave his words the effect of a joke, and Marriott
smiled at them, while the rest laughed in their
readiness to laugh at anything.

"No," said Marriott, "I couldn't do it, though I
wish I could.  Walt Whitman might have done it; he
could have begun with the cattle on the plains,
freezing, with their tails to the wind, and catalogued
everything on the way till he came to the stock quotations
and--"

"The people sleighing on Claybourne Avenue," said
Elizabeth, remembering her walk of the afternoon.
"And he would have gone on tracing the more subtle
and sinister effects--perhaps suggesting something
tragic."

"Well, now, really, when I was in Canada, you
know--" began Modderwell.  Though he had been
born in Canada and had lived most of his life there, he
always referred to the experience as if it had been a
mere visit; he wished every one to consider him an
Englishman.  And nearly every one did, except
Marriott, who looked at Modderwell in his most innocent
manner and began:

"Oh, you Canadians--"

But just then dinner was announced, and though
Elizabeth smiled at Marriott with sympathy, she was
glad to have him interrupted in his philosophizing, or
poetizing, or whatever it was, to take her out to the
dining-room, where the great round table, with its mound
of scarlet roses and tiny glasses of sherry glowing
ruddy in the soft light of the shaded candelabra,
awaited them.  And there they passed through the long
courses, at first talking lightly, but excitedly, of the
snow, mentioning the pleasure and the new sensations
it would afford them; then of their acquaintances; of a
new burlesque that had run for a year in a New York
theater; then of a new romance in which a great many
people were killed and imprisoned, though not in a
disagreeable manner, and, in short, talked of a great
many unimportant things, but talked of them as if
they were, in reality, of the utmost importance.

The butler had taken off the salad; they were waiting
for the dessert.  Suddenly from the direction of the
kitchen came a piercing scream, evidently a woman's
scream; all the swinging doors between the dining-room
and the distant kitchen could not muffle it.  Mrs. Modderwell
started nervously, then, at a look from her
husband, composed herself and hung her head with
embarrassment.  The others at the table started,
though not so visibly, and then tried to appear as if
they had not done so.  Mrs. Ward looked up in alarm,
first at Ward, who hastily gulped some wine, and then
at Elizabeth.  Wonder and curiosity were in all the
faces about the board--wonder and curiosity that no
sophistication could conceal.  They waited; the time
grew long; Mrs. Ward, who always suffered through
her dinners, suffered more than ever now.  Her guests
tried bravely to sit as if nothing were wrong, but at
last their little attempts at conversation failed, and they
sat in painful silence.  The moments passed; Ward and
his wife exchanged glances; Elizabeth looked at her
mother sympathetically.  At last the door swung and
the butler entered; the guests could not help glancing
at him.  But in his face there was a blank and tutored
passivity that was admirable, almost heroic.

When the women were in the drawing-room, Mrs. Ward
excused herself for a moment and went to the
kitchen.  She returned presently, and Elizabeth voiced
the question the others were too polite to ask.

"What on earth's the matter?"

"Matter!" exclaimed Mrs. Ward.  "Gusta's going,
that's all."  She said it with the feeling such a calamity
merited.

"When?"

"Now."

"But the scream--what was it?"

"Well, word came about her father; he's been hurt,
or killed, or something, in the railroad yards."

"Oh, how dreadful!" the women politely chorused.

"Yes, I should think so," said Mrs. Ward.  "To be
left like this without a moment's warning!  And then
that awful *contretemps* at dinner!"  Mrs. Ward looked
all the anguish and shame she felt.

"But Gusta couldn't help that," said Elizabeth.

"No," said Mrs. Ward, lapsing from her mood of
exaggeration, "I know that, of course.  The poor girl
is quite broken up.  I hope it is nothing really serious.
And yet," she went on, her mind turning again to her
own domestic misfortunes, "people of her class seem to
have the most unerring faculty for calamity.  They're
always getting hurt, or sick, or dying, or something.
The servants in my house suffer more bereavement in
the course of a month than all the rest of my
acquaintance in a lifetime."

And then the ladies took up the servant-girl
problem, and canvassed it hopelessly until the men were
heard entering the library.





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   III

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While Mrs. Ward was discussing her maid with her
guests, Gusta was hurrying homeward alone, the prey
of fears, omens and forebodings.  There was the shock
of this sudden news from home, and her horror of
what awaited her there; besides she had a strange
feeling about leaving the Wards in this way.  The night
had grown bitterly cold.  The frozen snow crunched
with a whining noise under her heels as she passed
swiftly along.  In the light of the arc-lamps that swung
at the street crossings, the trees along the curb cast
their long shadows before her, falling obliquely across
the sidewalk and stretching off into the yard; as she
passed on, they wheeled, lost themselves in gloom, then
appeared again, stretching the other way.  The shadows
confused and frightened her.  She thought of Elizabeth
and all her kindness; when would she see Elizabeth
again?  With this horrible thing at home all had
changed; her mother would need her now.  She thought
of the hard work, with the children crying about, and
the ugly kitchen, with none of the things there were
at the Wards' to make the work easy.  She would have
to lug the water in from the cistern; the pump would
be frozen, and the water would splash on her hands
and make them red and raw and sore; they could
never be white and soft like Elizabeth's.  She would
have to shovel the snow, and make paths, and split
kindlings, and carry wood and coal, and make fires.
And then the house would never be warm like the
Wards'; they would eat in the kitchen and sit there all
day long.  The storm, which had made no change at all
at the Wards', would make it all so much harder at
home.  Her father would be sick a long time; and, of
course, he would lose his job; the house would be
gloomy and sad; it would be worse than the winter he
had been on strike.

The keen wind that was blowing from the northwest
stung Gusta's face; she felt the tears in her eyes, and
when they ran on to her cheeks they froze at once and
made her miserable.  She shuddered with the cold, her
fingers were numb, her feet seemed to be bare on the
snow, her ears were burning.  The wind blew against
her forehead and seemed as if it would cut the top of
her head off as with a cold blade.  She tried to pull
her little jacket about her; the jacket was one
Elizabeth had given her, and she had always been proud of
it and thought that it made her look like Elizabeth,
but it could not keep her warm now.  She ran a few
steps, partly to get warm, partly to make swifter
progress homeward, partly for no reason at all.  She
thought of her comfortable room at the Wards' and the
little colored pictures Elizabeth had given her to hang
about the walls.  An hour before she had expected to
go to that room and rest there,--and now she was
going home to sickness and sorrow and ugly work.  She
gave a little sob and tried to brush away her tears, but
they were frozen to her eye-lashes, and it gave her a
sharp pain above her eyes when she put her hand up to
her face.

Gusta had now reached the poorer quarter of the
town, which was not far from Claybourne Avenue,
though hidden from it.  The houses were huddled
closely together, and their little window-panes were
frosty against the light that shone through the holes in
their shades.  There were many saloons, as many as
three on a corner; the ice was frozen about their
entrances, but she could see the light behind the screens.
They seemed to be warm--the only places in that
neighborhood that were warm.  She passed one of them just
as the latch clicked and the door opened, and three
young men came out, laughing loud, rough, brutal
laughs.  Gusta shrank to the edge of the sidewalk;
when she got into the black shadow of the low frame
building, she ran, and as she ran she could hear the
young men laughing loudly behind her.  She plunged
on into the shadows that lay so thick and black ahead.

But as she drew near her home, all of Gusta's other
thoughts were swallowed up in the thought of her
father.  She forgot how cold she was; her fingers were
numb, but they no longer ached; a kind of physical
insensibility stole through her, but she was more than
ever alive mentally to the anguish that was on her.  She
thought of her father, and she remembered a thousand
little things about him,--all his ways, all his sayings,
little incidents of her childhood; and the tears blinded
her, because now he probably would never speak to her
again, never open his eyes to look on her again.  She
pictured him lying on his bed, broken and maimed,
probably covered with blood, gasping his few last
breaths.  She broke into a little run, the clumsy trot
of a woman, her skirts beating heavily and with dull
noises against her legs, her shoes crunching, crunching,
on the frozen snow.  At last she turned another corner,
and entered a street that was even narrower and darker
than the others.  Its surface, though hidden by the
snow, was billowy where the ash piles lay; there was no
light, but the snow seemed to give a gray effect to the
darkness.  This was Bolt Street, in which Gusta's
family, the Koerners, lived.

The thin crackled shade was down at the front
window, but the light shone behind it.  Gusta pushed open
the front door and rushed in.  She took in the front
room at a glance, seeking the evidence of change; but
all was unchanged, familiar--the strips of rag carpet
on the floor, the cheap oak furniture upholstered in
green and red plush, the rough, coarse-grained surface
of the wood varnished highly; the photograph of
herself in the white dress and veil she had worn to her
first communion, the picture of Archie sent from the
Presidio, the colored prints of Bismarck and the battle
of Sedan--all were there.  The room was just as it had
always been, clean, orderly, unused--save that some
trinkets Archie had brought from Manila were on the
center-table beside the lamp, which, with its round
globe painted with brown flowers, gave the room its light.

Gusta had taken all this in with a little shock of
surprise, and in the same instant the children, Katie
and little Jakie, sprang forth to meet her.  They stood
now, clutching at her skirts; they held up their little
red, chapped faces, all dirty and streaked with tears;
their lips quivered, and they began to whimper.  But
Gusta, with her wild eyes staring above their little
flaxen heads, pressed on in, and the children, hanging
on to her and impeding her progress, began to cry
peevishly.

Gusta saw her mother sitting in the kitchen.  Two
women of the neighborhood sat near her, dull, silent,
stupid, their chins on their huge breasts, as if in
melancholia.  Though the room was stiflingly warm with the
heat from the kitchen stove, the women kept their
shawls over their heads, like peasants.  Mrs. Koerner
sat in a rocking-chair in the middle of her clean white
kitchen floor.  As she lifted her dry eyes and saw Gusta,
her brows contracted under her thin, carefully-parted
hair, and she lifted her brawny arms, bare to the
elbows, and rocked backward, her feet swinging heavily
off the floor.

"Where's father?" Gusta demanded, starting toward
her mother.

Mrs. Koerner's lips opened and she drew a long
breath, then exhaled it in a heavy sigh.

"Where is he?" Gusta demanded again.  She spoke
so fiercely that the children suddenly became silent,
their pale blue eyes wide.  One of the neighbors looked
up, unwrapped her bare arms from her gingham apron
and began to poke the kitchen fire.  Mrs. Koerner
suddenly bent forward, her elbows on her knees, her chin
in her hands, and began to cry, and to mumble in
German.  At this, the two neighbor women began to speak
to each other in German.  It always irritated Gusta to
have her mother speak in German.  She had learned the
language in her infancy, but she grew ashamed of it
when she was sent to the public schools, and never
spoke it when she could help it.  And now in her
resentment of the whole tragic situation, she flew into a
rage.  Her mother threw her apron over her face, and
rocked back and forth.

"Aw, quit, ma!" cried Gusta; "quit, now, can't you?"

Mrs. Koerner took her apron from her face and
looked at Gusta.  Her expression was one of mute
appealing pain.  Gusta, softened, put her hand on her
mother's head.

"Tell me, ma," she said softly, "where is he?"

Mrs. Koerner rocked again, back and forth, flinging
up her arms and shaking her head from side to side.
A fear seized Gusta.

"Where is he?" she demanded.

"He goes on der hospital," said one of the women.
"He's bad hurt."

The word "hospital" seemed to have a profound and
sinister meaning for Mrs. Koerner, and she began to
wail aloud.  Gusta feared to ask more.  The children
were still clinging to her.  They hung to her skirts,
tried to grasp her legs, almost toppling her over.

"Want our supper!" Jakie cried; "want our supper!"

"Gusta," said Katie, "did the pretty lady send me
something good?"

Gusta still stood there; her cheeks were glowing red
from their exposure to the wind that howled outside
and rattled the loose sash in the window.  But about
her bluish lips the skin was white, her blue eyes were
tired and frightened.  She dropped a hand to each of
the children, her knees trembled, and she gave little
lurches from side to side as she stood there, with the
children tugging at her, in their fear and hunger.

"Where's Archie?" she asked.

"He's gone for his beer," said one of the neighbors,
the one who had not spoken.  As she spoke she revealed
her loose teeth, standing wide apart in her gums.
"Maybe he goes on der hospital yet."

Every time they spoke the word "hospital,"
Mrs. Koerner flung up her arms, and Gusta herself winced.
But she saw that neither her mother nor these women
who had come in to sit with her could tell her anything;
to learn the details she would have to wait until Archie
came.  She had been drawing off her gloves as she
stood there, and now she laid aside her hat and her
jacket, and tied on one of her mother's aprons.  Then
silently she went to work, opened the stove door, shook
the ashes down, threw in coal, and got out a skillet.
The table spread with its red cloth stood against the
window-sill, bearing cream pitcher and sugar bowl,
and a cheap glass urn filled with metal spoons.  She
went to the pantry, brought out a crock of butter and
put it on the table, then cut pieces of side-meat and
put them in a skillet, where they began to swim about
and sizzle in the sputtering grease.  Then she set the
coffee to boil, cut some bread, and, finding some cold
potatoes left over from dinner, she set these on the
table for the supper.  It grew still, quiet, commonplace.
Gusta bustled about, her mother sat there quietly, the
neighbors looked on stolidly, the children snuffled now
and then.  The tragedy seemed remote and unreal.

Gusta took a pail and whisked out of the kitchen
door; the wind rushed in, icy cold; she was back in a
moment, her golden hair blowing.  She poured some of
the water into a pan, and called the children to her.
They stood as stolidly as the women sat, their hands
rigid by their sides, their chins elevated, gasping now
and then as Gusta washed their dirty faces with the
rag she had wrung out in the icy water.  The odor of
frying pork was now filling the room, and the children's
red, burnished faces were gleaming with smiles, and
their blue eyes danced as they stood looking at the hot
stove.  When the pork was fried, Gusta, using her
apron to protect her hand, seized the skillet from the
stove, scraped the spluttering contents into a dish and
set it on the table.  Then the children climbed into
chairs, side by side, clutching the edge of the table
with their little fingers.  Mrs. Koerner let Gusta draw
up her rocking-chair, leaned over, resting her fat
forearms on the table, holding her fork in her fist, and ate,
using her elbow as a fulcrum.

When the meal was done, Mrs. Koerner began to
rock again, the children stood about and watched Gusta
pile the dishes on the table and cover them with the red
cloth, and then, when she told them they must go to
bed, they protested, crying that father had not come
home yet.  Their eyes were heavy and their flaxen heads
were nodding, and Gusta dragged them into a room
that opened off the kitchen, and out of the dark could
be heard their small voices, protesting sleepily that
they were not sleepy.

After a while a quick, regular step was heard
outside, some one stamped the snow from his boots, the
door opened, and Archie entered.  His face was drawn
and flaming from the cold, and there was shrinking in
his broad military shoulders; a shiver ran through his
well-set-up figure; he wore no overcoat; he keenly felt
the exposure to weather he was so unused to.  He flung
aside his gray felt soldier's hat--the same he had worn
in the Philippines--strode across the room, bent over
the stove and warmed his red fingers.

"It's a long hike over to the hospital this cold night,"
he said, turning to Gusta and smiling.  His white teeth
showed in his smile, and the skin of his face was red
and parched.  He flung a chair before the stove, sat
down, hooked one heel on its rung, and taking some
little slips of rice paper from his pocket, and a bag of
tobacco, began rolling himself a cigarette.  He rolled
the cigarette swiftly and deftly, lighted it, and inhaled
the smoke eagerly.  Gusta, meanwhile, sat looking at
him in a sort of suppressed impatience.  Then, the
smoke stealing from his mouth with each word he
uttered, he said:

"Well, they've cut the old man's leg off."

Gusta and the neighbor women looked at Archie in
silence.  Mrs. Koerner seemed unable to grasp the full
meaning of what he had said.

"*Was sagst du?*" she asked, leaning forward anxiously.

"*Sie haben sein Bein amputiert*," replied Archie.

"*Sein Bein--was?*" inquired Mrs. Koerner.

"What the devil's 'cut off'?" asked Archie, turning
to Gusta.

She thought a moment.

"Why," she said, "let's see.  *Abgeschnitten*, I guess."

"Je's," said Archie impatiently, "I wish she'd cut
out the Dutch!"

Then he turned toward his mother and speaking
loudly, as if she were deaf, as one always speaks who
tries to make himself understood in a strange tongue:

"*Sie haben sein Bein abgeschnitten--die Doctoren
im Hospital.*"

Mrs. Koerner stared at her son, and Archie and
Gusta and the two women sat and stared at her, then
suddenly Mrs. Koerner's expression became set,
meaningless and blank, her eyes slowly closed and her body
slid off the chair to the floor.  Archie sprang toward
her and tried to lift her.  She was heavy even for his
strong arms, and he straightened an instant, and
shouted out commands:

"Open the door, you!  Gusta, get some water!"

One of the women lumbered across the kitchen and
flung wide the door, Gusta got a dipper of water and
splashed it in her mother's face.  The cold air rushing
into the overheated kitchen and the cool water revived
the prostrate woman; she opened her eyes and looked
up, sick and appealing.  Archie helped her to her chair
and stood leaning over her.  Gusta, too, bent above her,
and the two women pressed close.

"Stand back!" shouted Archie peremptorily.  "Give
her some air, can't you?"

The two women slunk back--not without glances of
reproach at Archie.  He stood looking at his mother a
moment, his hands resting on his hips.  He was still
smoking his cigarette, tilting back his head and
squinting his eyes to escape the smoke.  Gusta was fanning
her mother.

"Do you feel better?" she asked solicitously.

"*Ja*," said Mrs. Koerner, but she began to shake her
head.

"Oh, it's all right, ma," Archie assured her.  "It's
the best place for him.  Why, they'll give him good
care there.  I was in the hospital a month already in
Luzon."

The old woman was unconvinced and shook her
head.  Then Archie stepped close to her side.

"Poor old mother!" he said, and he touched her
brow lightly, caressingly.  She looked at him an instant,
then turned her head against him and cried.  The tears
began to roll down Gusta's cheeks, and Archie
squinted his eyes more and more.

"We'd better get her to bed," he said softly, and
glanced at the two women with a look of dismissal.
They still sat looking on at this effect of the disaster,
not altogether curiously nor without sympathy, yet
claiming all the sensation they could get out of the
situation.  When Archie and Gusta led Mrs. Koerner
to her bed, the two women began talking rapidly to
each other in German, criticizing Archie and the
action of the authorities in taking Koerner to the hospital.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`IV`:

.. class:: center large

   IV

.. vspace:: 2

Gusta cherished a hope of going back to the Wards',
but as the days went by this hope declined.  Mrs. Koerner
was mentally prostrated and Gusta was needed now
at home, and there she took up her duties, attending
the children, getting the meals, caring for the house,
filling her mother's place.  After a few days she
reluctantly decided to go back for her clothes.  The
weather had moderated, the snow still lay on the
ground, but grimy, soft and disintegrating.  The sky
was gray and cold, the mean east wind was blowing in
from the lake, and yet Gusta liked its cool touch on her
face, and was glad to be out again after all those days
she had been shut in the little home.  It was good to
feel herself among other people, to get back to normal
life, and though Gusta did not analyze her sensations
thus closely, or, for that matter, analyze them at all,
she was all the more happy.

Before Nussbaum's saloon she saw the long beer
wagon; its splendid Norman horses tossing their heads
playfully, the stout driver in his leathern apron
lugging in the kegs of beer.  The sight pleased her; and
when Nussbaum, in white shirt-sleeves and apron,
stepped to the door for his breath of morning air, she
smiled and nodded to him.  His round ruddy face
beamed pleasantly.

"Hello, Gustie," he called.  "How are you this
morning?  How's your father?"

"Oh, he's better, thank you, Mr. Nussbaum," replied
Gusta, and she hastened on.  As she went, she heard
the driver of the brewery wagon ask:

"Who's that?"

And Nussbaum replied:

"Reinhold Koerner's girl, what got hurt on the railroad
the other day."

"She's a good-looker, hain't she?" said the driver.

And Gusta colored and felt proud and happier than
before.

She was not long in reaching Claybourne Avenue,
and it was good to see the big houses again, and the
sleighs coursing by, and the carriages, and the drivers
and footmen, some of whom she knew, sitting so stiffly
in their liveries on the boxes.  At sight of the familiar
roof and chimneys of the Wards' house, her heart
leaped; she felt now as if she were getting back home.

It was Gusta's notion that as soon as she had greeted
her old friend Mollie, the cook, she would rush on into
the dining-room; but no sooner was she in the kitchen
than she felt a constraint, and sank down weakly on a
chair.  Molly was busy with luncheon; things were
going on in the Ward household, going on just as well
without her as with her, just as the car shops were
going on without her father, the whistle blowing night
and morning.  It gave Gusta a little pang.  This feeling
was intensified when, a little later, a girl entered the
kitchen, a thin girl, with black hair and blue eyes with
long Irish lashes.  She would have been called pretty
by anybody but Gusta, and Gusta herself must have
allowed her prettiness in any moment less sharp than this.
The new maid inspected Gusta coldly, but none of the
glances from her eyes could hurt Gusta half as much as
her presence there hurt her; and the hurt was so deep
that she felt no personal resentment; she regarded the
maid merely as a situation, an unconscious and
irresponsible symbol of certain untoward events.

"Want to see Mrs. Ward?" the maid inquired.

"Yes, and Miss Elizabeth, too," said Gusta.

"Mrs. Ward's out and Miss Ward's busy just now."

Mollie, whose broad back was bent over her table,
knew how the words hurt Gusta, and, without turning,
she said:

"You go tell her Gusta's here, Nora; she'll want to
see her."

"Oh, sure," said Nora, yielding to a superior.  "I'll
tell her."

Almost before Nora could return, Elizabeth stood
in the swinging door, beaming her surprise and
pleasure.  And Gusta burst into tears.

"Why Gusta," exclaimed Elizabeth, "come right in here!"

She held the door, and Gusta, with a glance at Nora,
went in.  Seated by the window in the old familiar
dining-room, with Elizabeth before her, Gusta glanced
about, the pain came back, and the tears rolled down
her cheeks.

"You mustn't cry, Gusta," said Elizabeth.

Gusta sat twisting her fingers together, in and out,
while the tears fell.  She could not speak for a
moment, and then she looked up and tried to smile.

"You mustn't cry," Elizabeth repeated.  "You aren't
half so pretty when you cry."

Gusta's wet lashes were winking rapidly, and she
took out her handkerchief and wiped her face and her
eyes, and Elizabeth looked at her intently.

"Poor child!" she said presently.  "What a time
you've had!"

"Oh, Miss Elizabeth!" said Gusta, the tears starting
afresh at this expression of sympathy, "we've had a
dreadful time!"

"And we've missed you awfully," said Elizabeth.
"When are you coming back to us?"

Gusta looked up gratefully.  "I don't know, Miss
Elizabeth; I wish I did.  But you see my mother is sick
ever since father--"

"And how is your father?  We saw in the newspaper
how badly he had been hurt."

"Was it in the paper?" said Gusta eagerly, leaning
forward a little.

"Yes, didn't you see it?  It was just a little item; it
gave few of the details, and it must have misspelled--"  But
Elizabeth stopped.

"I didn't see it," said Gusta.  "He was hurt dreadfully,
Miss Elizabeth; they cut his leg off at the hospital."

"Oh, Gusta!  And he's there still, of course?"

"Yes, and we don't know how long he'll have to
stay.  Maybe he'll have to go under another operation."

"Oh, I hope not!" said Elizabeth.  "Tell me how he
was hurt."

"Well, Miss Elizabeth, we don't just know--not just
exactly.  He had knocked off work and left the shops
and was coming across the yards--he always comes
home that way, you know--but it was dark, and the
snow was all over everything, and the ice, and somehow
he slipped and caught his foot in a frog, and just then
a switch-engine came along and ran over his leg."

"Oh, horrible!" Elizabeth's brows contracted in pain.

"The ambulance took him right away to the Hospital.
Ma felt awful bad 'cause they wouldn't let him be
fetched home.  She didn't want him taken to the hospital."

"But that was the best place for him, Gusta; the
very best place in the world."

"That's what Archie says," said Gusta, "but ma
doesn't like it; she can't get used to it, and she says--"
Gusta hesitated,--"she says we can't afford to keep him
there."

"But the railroad will pay for that, won't it?"

"Oh, do you think it will, Miss Elizabeth?  It had
ought to, hadn't it?  He's worked there thirty-seven
years."

"Why, surely it will," said Elizabeth.  "I wouldn't
worry about that a minute if I were you.  You must
make the best of it.  And is there anything I can do
for you, Gusta?"

"No, thank you, Miss Elizabeth.  I just came around
to see you,"--she looked up with a fond smile,--"and
to get my clothes.  Then I must go.  I want to go see
father before I go back home.  I guess I'll pack my
things now, and then Archie'll come for my trunk this
afternoon."

"Oh, I'll have Barker haul it over; he can just as
well as not.  And, Gusta,"--Elizabeth rose on the
impulse--"I'll drive you to the hospital.  I was just
going out.  You wait here till I get my things."

Gusta's face flushed with pleasure; she poured out
her thanks, and then she waited while Elizabeth rang
for the carriage, and ran out to prepare for the street,
just as she used to.

It was a fine thing for Gusta to ride with Elizabeth
in her brougham.  She had often imagined how it
would be, sitting there in the exclusion of the
brougham's upholstered interior, with the little clock,
and the mirror and the bottle of salts before her, and
the woven silk tube through which Elizabeth spoke
to Barker when she wished to give him directions.
The drive to the hospital was all too short for Gusta,
even though Elizabeth prolonged it by another impulse
which led her to drive out of their way to get some
fruit and some flowers.

In the street before the hospital, and along the
driveway that led to the suggestively wide side door,
carriages were being slowly driven up and down,
denoting that the social leaders who were patronesses of
the hospital were now inside, patronizing the superintendent
and the head nurse.  Besides these there were
the high, hooded phaetons of the fashionable physicians.
It was the busy hour at the hospital.  The nurses
had done their morning work, made their entries on
their charts, and were now standing in little groups
about the hall, waiting for their "cases" to come back
from the operating-rooms.  There was the odor of
anesthetics in the air, and the atmosphere of the place,
professional and institutional though it was, was
surcharged with a heavy human suspense--the suspense
that hung over the silent, heavily breathing, anesthetized
human forms that were stretched on glass tables
in the hot operating-rooms up-stairs, some of them
doomed to die, others to live and prolong existence yet
a while.  The wide slow elevators were waiting at the
top floor; at the doors of the operating-rooms stood
the white-padded rubber-tired carts, the orderlies
sitting on them swinging their legs off the floor, and
gossiping about the world outside, where life did not
hover, but throbbed on, intent, preoccupied.  In private
rooms, in vacant rooms, in the office down-stairs, men
and women, the relatives of those on the glass tables
above, waited with white, haggard, frightened faces.

As Elizabeth and Gusta entered the hospital they
shuddered, and drew close to each other like sisters.
Koerner was in the marine ward, and Gusta dreaded
the place.  On her previous visits there, the nurses had
been sharp and severe with her, but this morning,
when the nurses saw Elizabeth bearing her basket of
fruit and her flowers--which she would not let Gusta
carry, feeling that would rob her offering of the
personal quality she wished it to assume--they ran
forward, their starched, striped blue skirts rustling, and
greeted her with smiles.

"Why, Miss Ward!" they cried.

"Good morning," said Elizabeth, "we've come to see
Mr. Koerner."

"Oh, yes," said Koerner's nurse, a tall, spare young
woman with a large nose, eye-glasses, and a flat chest.
"He's so much better this morning."  She said this
with a patronizing glance aside at Gusta, who tried
to smile; the nurse had not spoken so pleasantly to her
before.

The nurse led the girls into the ward, and they
passed down between the rows of white cots.  Some of
the cots were empty, their white sheets folded severely,
back, awaiting the return of their occupants from the
rooms up-stairs.  In the others men sprawled, with
pallid, haggard faces, and watched the young women
as they passed along, following them with large,
brilliant, sick eyes.  But Elizabeth and Gusta did not look
at them; they kept their eyes before them.  One bed
had a white screen about it; candles glowed through
the screen, silhouetting the bending forms of a priest,
a doctor and a nurse.

Koerner was at the end of the ward.  His great,
gaunt, heavy figure was supine on the bed; the
bandaged stump of his leg made a heavy bulk under the
counterpane; his broad shoulders mashed down the
pillow; his enormous hands, still showing in their
cracks and crevices and around the cuticle of his
broken nails the grime that all the antiseptic
scrubbings of a hospital could not remove, lay outside the
coverlid, idle for the first time in half a century.  His
white hair was combed, its ragged edges showing
more obviously, and his gaunt cheeks were covered by
a stubble of frosty beard.  His blue eyes were
unnaturally bright.

Elizabeth fell back a little that Gusta might greet
him first, and the strong, lusty, healthy girl bent over
her father and laid one hand on his.

"Well, pa, how're you feeling to-day?"

"Hullo, Gustie," said the old man, "you gom' again,
huh?  Vell, der oldt man's pretty bad, I tel' you."

"Why, the nurse said you were better."

"Why, yes," said the nurse, stepping forward with
a professional smile, "he's lots better this morning;
he just won't admit it, that's all.  But we know him
here, we do!"

She said this playfully, with a lateral addition to her
smile, and she bent over and passed her hand under
the bed-clothes and touched his bandages here and
there.  Elizabeth and Gusta stood looking on.

"Isn't the pain any better?" asked the nurse, still
smilingly, coaxingly.

"Naw," growled the old German, stubbornly refusing
to smile.  "I toldt you it was no besser, don't I?"

The nurse drew out her hand.  The smile left her
face and she stood looking down on him with a
helpless expression that spread to the faces of Elizabeth
and Gusta.  Koerner turned his head uneasily on the
pillow and groaned.

"What is it, pa?" asked Gusta.

"Der rheumatiz'."

"Where?"

"In my leg.  In der same oldt blace.  Ach!"

An expression of puzzled pain came to Gusta's face.

"Why," she said half-fearfully, "how can it--now?"  She
looked at the nurse.  The nurse smiled again, this
time with an air of superior knowledge.

"They often have those sensations," she said, laughing.
"It's quite natural."  Then she bent over Koerner
and said cheerily: "I'm going now, and leave you
with your daughter and Miss Ward."

"Yes, pa," said Gusta, "Miss Elizabeth's here to see you."

She put into her tone all the appreciation of the
honor she wished her father to feel.  Elizabeth came
forward, her gloved hands folded before her, and stood
carefully away from the bed so that even her skirts
should not touch it.

"How do you do, Mr. Koerner?" she said in her soft
voice--so different from the voices of the nurse and
Gusta.

Koerner turned and looked at her an instant, his
mouth open, his tongue playing over his discolored
teeth.

"Hullo," he said, "you gom' to see der oldt man, huh?"

Elizabeth smiled.

"Yes, I came to see how you were, and to know if
there is anything I could do for you."

"*Ach*," he said, "I'm all right.  Dot leg he hurts
yust der same efery day.  Kesterday der's somet'ing
between der toes; dis time he's got der damned oldt
rheumatiz', yust der same he used to ven he's on dere
all right."

The old man then entered into a long description of
his symptoms, and Elizabeth tried hard to smile and to
sympathize.  She succeeded in turning him from his
subject presently, and then she said:

"Is there anything you want, Mr. Koerner?  I'd be
so glad to get you anything, you know."

"Vell, I like a schmoke alreadty, but she won't let
me.  You know my oldt pipe, Gusta?  Vell, I lose him
by der accident dot night.  He's on der railroadt, I bet you."

"Oh, we'll get you another pipe, Mr. Koerner," said
Elizabeth, laughing.  "Isn't there anything else?"

"Naw," he said, "der railroadt gets me eferyt'ing.
I work on dot roadt t'irty-seven year now a'readty.
Dot man, dot--vat you call him?--dot glaim agent, he
kum here kesterday, undt he say he get me eferyt'ing.
He's a fine man, dot glaim agent.  He laugh undt choke
mit me; he saidt der roadt gif me chob flaggin' der
grossing.  All I yust do is to sign der baper--"

"Oh, Mr. Koerner," cried Elizabeth in alarm, and
Gusta, at her expression, started forward, and
Koerner himself became all attention, "you did not sign
any paper, did you?"

The old man looked at her an instant, and then a soft
shadowy smile touched his lips.

"Don't you vorry," he said; "der oldt man only got
von leg, but he don't sign no damned oldt baper."  He
shook his head on the pillow sagely, and then added:
"You bet!"

"That's splendid!" said Elizabeth.  "You're very
wise, Mr. Koerner."  She paused and thought a
moment, her brows knit.  Then her expression cleared
and she said:

"You must let me send a lawyer."

"Oh, der been blenty of lawyers," said Koerner.

"Yes," laughed Elizabeth, "there are plenty of
lawyers, to be sure, but I mean--"

"Der been more as a dozen here alreadty," he went
on, "but dey don't let 'em see me."

"I don't think a lawyer who would come to see you
would be the kind you want, Mr. Koerner."

"Dot's all right.  Der been blenty of time for der
lawyers."

"Oh, pa," Gusta put in, "you must take Miss Elizabeth's
advice.  She knows best.  She'll send you a good
lawyer."

"Vell, ve see about dot," said Koerner.

"I presume, Mr. Koerner," said Elizabeth, "they
wouldn't let a lawyer see you, but I'll bring one with
me the next time I come--a very good one, one that
I know well, and he'll advise you what to do; shall I?"

"Vell, ve see," said Koerner.

"Now, pa, you must let Miss Elizabeth bring a
lawyer," and then she whispered to Elizabeth: "You
bring one anyway, Miss Elizabeth.  Don't mind what
he says.  He's always that way."

Elizabeth brought out her flowers and fruit then,
and Koerner glanced at them without a word, or
without a look of gratitude, and when she had arranged
the flowers on his little table, she bade him good-by and
took Gusta with her and went.

As they passed out, the white rubber-tired carts
were being wheeled down the halls, the patients they
bore still breathing profoundly under the anesthetics,
from which it was hoped they would awaken in their
clean, smooth beds.  The young women hurried out,
and Elizabeth drank in the cool wintry air eagerly.

"Oh, Gusta!" she said, "this air is delicious after that
air in there!  I shall have the taste of it for days."

"Miss Elizabeth, that place is sickening!"--and
Elizabeth laughed at the solemn deliberation with
which Gusta lengthened out the word.

.. _`38`:

.. _`Elizabeth`:

.. figure:: images/img-038.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Elizabeth

   Elizabeth





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`V`:

.. class:: center large

   V

.. vspace:: 2

"Come in, old man."  Marriott glanced up at Dick
Ward, who stood smiling in the doorway of his private
office.

"Don't let me interrupt you, my boy," said Dick as
he entered.

"Just a minute," said Marriott, "and then I'm with
you."  Dick dropped into the big leather chair,
unbuttoned his tan overcoat, arranged its skirts, drew off
his gloves, and took a silver cigarette-case from his
pocket.  Marriott, swinging about in his chair, asked
his stenographer to repeat the last line, picked up the
thread, went on:

"And these answering defendants further say that
heretofore, to wit, on or about--"

Dick, leaning back in his chair, inhaling the smoke
of his cigarette, looked at the girl who sat beside
Marriott's desk, one leg crossed over the other, the
tip of her patent-leather boot showing beneath her
skirt, on her knee the pad on which she wrote in
shorthand.  The girl's eyelashes trembled presently and a
flush showed in her cheeks, spreading to her white
throat and neck.  Dick did not take his eyes from her.
When Marriott finished, the girl left the room hurriedly.

"Well, what's the news?" asked Marriott.

"Devilish fine-looking girl you've got there, old
man!" said Dick, whose eyes had followed the
stenographer.

"She's a good girl," said Marriott simply.

Dick glanced again at the girl.  Through the open
door he could see her seating herself at her machine.
Then he recalled himself and turned to Marriott.

"Say, Bess was trying to get you by 'phone this
morning."

"Is that so?" said Marriott in a disappointed tone.
"I was in court all morning."

"Well, she said she'd give it up.  She said that old
man Koerner had left the hospital and gone home.  He
sent word to her that he wanted to see you."

"Oh, yes," said Marriott, "about that case of his.  I
must attend to that, but I've been so busy."  He
glanced at his disordered desk, with its hopeless litter
of papers.  "Let's see," he went on meditatively, "I
guess"--he thought a moment, "I guess I might as
well go out there this afternoon as any time.  How far
is it?"

"Oh, it's 'way out on Bolt Street."

"What car do I take?"

"Colorado Avenue, I think.  I'll go 'long, if you want me."

"I'll be delighted," said Marriott.  He thought a
moment longer, then closed his desk, and said, "We'll go
now."

When they got off the elevator twelve floors below,
Dick said:

"I've got to have a drink before I start.  Will you
join me?"

"I just had luncheon a while ago," said Marriott;
"I don't really--"

"I never got to bed till morning," said Dick.  "I sat
in a little game at the club last night, and I'm
all in."

Marriott, amused by the youth's pride in his
dissipation, went with him to the café in the basement.
Standing before the polished bar, with one foot on
the brass rail, Dick said to the white-jacketed bartender:

"I want a high-ball; you know my brand, George.
What's yours, Gordon?"

"Oh, I'll take the same."  Marriott watched Dick
pour a generous libation over the ice in the glass.

"Don't forget the imported soda," added Dick with
an air of the utmost seriousness and importance, and
the bartender, swiftly pulling the corks, said:

"I wouldn't forget you, Mr. Ward."

The car for which they waited in the drifting crowd
at the corner was half an hour in getting them out to
the neighborhood in which the Koerners lived.  They
stood on the rear platform all the way, because, as
Dick said, he had to smoke, and as he consumed his
cigarettes, he discoursed to Marriott of the things
that filled his life--his card games and his drinking
at the club, his constant attendance at theaters and
cafés.  His cheeks were fresh and rosy as a girl's, and
smooth from the razor they did not need.  Marriott,
as he looked at him, saw a resemblance to Elizabeth,
and this gave the boy an additional charm for
him.  He studied this resemblance, but he could not
analyze it.  Dick had neither his sister's features nor
her complexion; and yet the resemblance was there,
flitting, remote, revealing itself one instant to
disappear the next, evading and eluding him.  He could not
account for it, yet its effect was to make his heart
warm toward the boy, to make him love him.

Marriott let Dick go on in his talk, but he scarcely
heard what the boy said; it was the spirit that held him
and charmed him, the spirit of youth launching with
sublime courage into life, not yet aware of its
significance or its purpose.  He thought of the danger the
boy was in and longed to help him.  How was he to
do this?  Should he admonish him?  No,--instantly he
recognized the fact that he could not do this; he
shrank from preaching; he could take no priggish or
Pharisaical attitude; he had too much culture, too much
imagination for that; besides, he reflected with a shade
of guilt, he had just now encouraged Dick by drinking
with him.  He flung away his cigarette as if it
symbolized the problem, and sighed when he thought that
Dick, after all, would have to make his way alone
and fight his own battles, that the soul can emerge into
real life only through the pains and dangers that
accompany all birth.

Marriott's knock at the Koerners' door produced
the sensation visits make where they are infrequent, but
he and Dick had to wait before the vague noises died
away and the door opened to them.  Mrs. Koerner led
them through the parlor--which no occasion seemed
ever to merit--to the kitchen at the other end of the
house.  The odor of carbolic acid which the two men
had detected the moment they entered, grew stronger
as they approached the kitchen, and there they beheld
Koerner, the stump of his leg bundled in surgical
bandages, resting on a pillow in a chair before him.
His position constrained him not to move, and he made
no attempt to turn his head; but when the young men
stood before him, he raised to them a bronzed and
wrinkled face.  His white hair was rumpled, and he
wore a cross and dissatisfied expression; he held by its
bowl the new meerschaum pipe Elizabeth had sent him,
and waved its long stem at Marriott and Dick, as he
waved it scepter-like in ruling his household.

"My name is Marriott, Mr. Koerner, and this is
Mr. Ward, Miss Elizabeth's brother.  She said you
wished to see me."

"You gom', huh?" said Koerner, fixing Marriott with
his little blue eyes.

"Yes, I'm here at last," said Marriott.  "Did you
think I was never going to get here?"  He drew up a
chair and sat down.  Dick took another chair, but
leaned back and glanced about the room, as if to
testify to his capacity of mere spectator.  Mrs. Koerner
stood beside her husband and folded her arms.  The
two children, hidden in their mother's skirts,
cautiously emerged, a bit at a time, as it were, until they
stood staring with wide, curious blue eyes at Marriott.

"You bin a lawyer, yet, huh?" asked Koerner severely.

"Yes, I'm a lawyer.  Miss Ward said you wished to
see a lawyer."

"I've blenty lawyers alreadty," said Koerner.  "Der
bin more as a dozen hier."  He waved his pipe at the
clock-shelf, where a little stack of professional cards
told how many lawyers had solicited Koerner as a
client.  Marriott could have told the names of the
lawyers without looking at their cards.

"Have you retained any of them?" asked Marriott.

"Huh?" asked Koerner, scowling.

"Did you hire any of them?"

"No, I tell 'em all to go to hell."

"That's where most of them are going," said Marriott.

But Koerner did not see the joke.

"How's your injury?" asked Marriott.

Koerner winced perceptibly at Marriott's mere
glance at his amputated leg, and stretched the
pipe-stem over it as if in protection.

"He's hurt like hell," he said.

"Why, hasn't the pain left yet?" asked Marriott in
surprise.

"No, I got der rheumatiz' in dot foot," he pointed
with his pipe-stem at the vacancy where the foot used
to be.

"*That* foot!" exclaimed Marriott.

"Bess told us of that," Dick put in.  "It gave her
the willies."

"Well, I should think so," said Marriott.

Koerner looked from one to the other of the two
young men.

"That's funny, Mr. Koerner," said Marriott, "that
foot's cut off."

"I wish der tamn doctors cut off der rheumatiz' der
same time!  Dey cut off der foot all right, but dey
leave der rheumatiz'."  He turned the long stem of his
pipe to his lips and puffed at it, and looked at the leg
as if he were taking up a problem he was working on
daily.

"Well, now, Mr. Koerner," said Marriott presently,
"tell me how it happened and I'll see if I can help
you."

Koerner, just on the point of placing his pipe-stem
between his long, loose, yellow teeth, stopped and
looked intently at Marriott.  Marriott saw at once from
his expression that he had once more to contend with
the suspicion the poor always feel when dealing with a
lawyer.

"So you been Mr. Marriott, huh?" asked Koerner.

"Yes, I'm Marriott."

"Der lawyer?"

"Yes, the lawyer."

"You der one vot Miss Ward sent alreadty, aind't it?"

"Yes, I'm the one."  Marriott smiled, and then,
thinking suddenly of an incontrovertible argument, he
waved his hand at Dick.  "This is her brother.  She
sent him to bring me here."

The old man looked at Dick, and then turned to
Marriott again.

"How much you goin' charge me, huh?"  His little
hard blue eyes were almost closed.

"Oh, if I don't get any damages for you, I won't
charge you anything."

The old man made him repeat this several times,
and when at last he understood, he seemed relieved
and pleased.  And then he wished to know what the
fee would be in the event of success.

"Oh," said Marriott, "how would one-fifth do?"

Koerner, when he grasped the idea of the percentage,
was satisfied; the other lawyers who had come to see
him had all demanded a contingent fee of one-third
or one-half.  When the long bargaining was done and
explained to Mrs. Koerner, who sat watchfully by
trying to follow the conversation, and when Marriott had
said that he would draw up a contract for them to
sign and bring it when he came again, the old man was
ready to go on with his story.  But before he did so
he paused with his immeasurable German patience to
fill his pipe, and, when he had lighted it, he began.

"Vell, Mr. Marriott, ven I gom' on dis gountry, I
go to vork for dot railroadt; I vork dere ever since--dot's
t'irty-seven year now alreadty."  He paused and
puffed, and slowly winked his eyes as he contemplated
those thirty-seven years of toil.  "I vork at first for
t'irty tollar a month, den von day Mister Greene, dot's
der suberintendent in dose tays, he call me in, undt he
say, 'Koerner, you can read?'  I say I read English
some, undt he say, 'Vell, read dot,' undt he handt me a
telegram.  Vell I read him--it say dot Greene can raise
der vages of his vatchman to forty tollar a month.
Vell, I handt him der telegram back undt I say, 'I
could read two t'ree more like dot, Mister Greene.'  He
laugh den undt he say, 'Vell, you read dot von
twicet.'  Vell, I got forty tollar a month den; undt in
ten year dey raise me oncet again to forty-five.  That's
purty goodt, I t'ink."  The old man paused in this
retrospect of good fortune.  "Vell," he went on, "I
vork along, undt dey buildt der new shops, undt I
vork like a dog getting dose t'ings moved, but after
dey get all moved, he calls me in von tay, undt he say
my vages vould be reduced to forty tollar a month.
Vell, I gan't help dot--I haind't got no other chob.
Den, vell, I vork along all right, but der town get
bigger, an' der roadt got bigger, an' dere's so many
men dere at night dey don't need me much longer.
Undt Mr. Greene--he's lost his chob, too, undt
Mr. Churchill--he's der new suberintendent--he's cut
ever't'ing down, undt after he gom' eferbody vork longer
undt get hell besides.  He cut me down to vere I vas at
der first blace--t'irty tollar a month.  So!"

The old man turned out his palms; and his face
wrinkled into a strange grimace that expressed his enforced
submission to this fate.  And he smoked on until
Marriott roused him.

"Vell," he said, "dot night it snows, undt I start
home again at five o'clock.  It's dark undt the snow fly
so I gan't hardly see der svitch lights.  But I gom'
across der tracks yust like I always do goming home--dot's
the shortest way I gom', you know--undt I ben
purty tired, undt my tamned old rheumatiz' he's raisin'
hell for t'ree days because dot storm's comin'--vell,
I gom' along beside dere segond track over dere, undt
I see an engine, but he's goin' on dot main track, so I
gets over--vell, de snow's fallin' undt I gan't see very
well, undt somehow dot svitch-engine gom' over on
der segond track, undt I chump to get away, but my
foot he's caught in der frog--vell, I gan't move, but
I bent vay over to one side--so"--the old man strained
himself over the arm of his chair to illustrate--"undt
der svitch-engine yust cut off my foot nice undt glean.
Vell, dot's all der was aboudt it."

Marriott gave a little shudder; in a flash he had a
vision of Koerner there in the wide switch-yard with
its bewildering red and green lights, the snow filling
the air, the gloom of the winter twilight, his foot fast
in the frog, bending far over to save his body,
awaiting the switch-engine as it came stealing swiftly down
on him.

"Did the engine whistle or ring its bell?"

"No," said the old man.

"And the frog--that was unblocked?"

Koerner leaned toward Marriott with a cunning smile.

"Dot's vere I got 'em, aind't it?  Dot frog he's not
blocked dere dot time; der law say dey block dose
frog all der time, huh?"

"Yes, the frog must be blocked.  But how did your
foot get caught in the frog?"

"Vell, I shlipped, dot's it.  I gan't see dot frog.  You
ask Charlie Drake; he's dere--he seen it."

"What does he do?" asked Marriott as he scribbled
the name on an old envelope.

"He's a svitchman in der yard; he tol' you all aboudt
it; he seen it--he knows.  He say to me, 'Reinhold,
you get damage all right; dot frog haind't blocked dot
time.'"

Just then the kitchen door opened and Gusta came
in.  When she saw Marriott and Ward, she stopped
and leaned against the door; her face, ruddy from the
cool air, suddenly turned a deeper red.

"Oh, Mr. Dick!" she said, and then she looked at
Marriott, whom she had seen and served so often at
the Wards'.

"How do you do, Gusta?" said Marriott, getting up
and taking her hand.  She flushed deeper than ever as
she came forward, and her blue eyes sparkled with
pleasure.  Dick, too, rose and took her hand.

"Hello, Gusta," he said, "how are you?"

"Oh, pretty well, Mr. Dick," she answered.  She
stood a moment, and then quietly began to unbutton
her jacket and to draw the pins from her hat.
Marriott, who had seen her so often at the Wards',
concluded as she stood there before him that he had never
realized how beautiful she was.  She removed her
wraps, then drew up a chair by her father and sat
down, lifting her hands and smoothing the coils of
her golden hair, touching them gently.

"You've come to talk over pa's case, haven't you,
Mr. Marriott?"

"Yes," said Marriott.

"I'm glad of that," the girl said.  "He has a good
case, hasn't he?"

"I think so," said Marriott, and then he hastened
to add the qualification that is always necessary in so
unexact and whimsical a science as the law, "that is,
it seems so now; I'll have to study it somewhat before
I can give you a definite opinion."

"I think he ought to have big damages," said Gusta.
"Why, just think!  He's worked for that railroad all
his life, and now to lose his foot!"

She looked at her father, her affection and sympathy
showing in her expression.  Marriott glanced at Dick,
whose eyes were fixed on the girl.  His lips were
slightly parted; he gazed at her boldly, his eyes following
every curve of her figure.  Her yellow hair was bright
in the light, and the flush of her cheeks spread to her
white neck.  And Marriott, in the one moment he
glanced at Dick, saw in his face another expression--an
expression that displeased him; and as he recalled
the resemblance to Elizabeth he thought he had noted,
he impatiently put it away, and became angry with
himself for ever imagining such a resemblance; he
felt as if he had somehow done Elizabeth a wrong.
All the while they were there Dick kept his bold gaze
on Gusta, and presently Gusta seemed to feel it; the
flush of her face and neck deepened, she grew ill at
ease, and presently she rose and left the room.

When they were in the street Marriott said to Dick:

"I don't know about that poor old fellow's case--I'm
afraid--"

"Gad!" said Dick.  "Isn't Gusta a corker!  I never
saw a prettier girl."

"And you never noticed it before?" said Marriott.

"Why, I always knew she was good-looking, yes,"
said Dick; "but I never paid much attention to her
when she worked for us.  I suppose it was because
she was a servant, don't you know?  A man never
notices the servants, someway."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`VI`:

.. class:: center large

   VI

.. vspace:: 2

Ward had not been in the court-house for years,
and, as he entered the building that morning, he hoped
he might never be called there again if his mission
were to be as sad as the one on which he then was
bent.  Eades had asked him to be there at ten o'clock;
it was now within a quarter of the hour.  With a
layman's difficulty he found the criminal court, and as he
glanced about the high-ceiled room, and saw that the
boy had not yet been brought in, he felt the relief that
comes from the postponement of an ordeal.  With an
effect of effacing himself, he shrank into one of the
seats behind the bar, and as he waited his mind ran
back over the events of the past four weeks.  He
calculated--yes, the flurry in the market had occurred
on the day of the big snow-storm; and now, so soon, it
had come to this!  Ward marveled; he had always
heard that the courts were slow, but this--this was
quick work indeed!  The court-room was almost empty.
The judge's chair, cushioned in leather, was standing
empty behind the high oaken desk.  The two trial
tables, across which day after day lawyers bandied the
fate of human beings, were set with geometric
exactness side by side, as if the janitors had fixed them with
an eye to the impartiality of the law, resolved to give
the next comers an even start.  A clerk was writing
in a big journal; the bailiff had taken a chair in the
fading light of one of the tall southern windows, and
in the leisure he could so well afford in a life that was
all leisure, was reading a newspaper.  His spectacles
failed to lend any glisten of interest to his eyes; he
read impersonally, almost officially; all interest seemed
to have died out of his life, and he could be stirred to
physical, though never to mental activity, only by the
judge himself, to whom he owed his sinecure.  The
life had long ago died out of this man, and he had a
mild, passive interest in but one or two things, like
the Civil War, and the judge's thirst, which he
regularly slaked with drafts of ice-water.

Presently two or three young men entered briskly,
importantly, and went at once unhesitatingly within
the bar.  They entered with an assertive air that marked
them indubitably as young lawyers still conscious of
the privileges so lately conferred.  Then some of the
loafers came in from the corridor and sidled into the
benches behind the bar.  Their conversation in low
tones, and that of the young lawyers in the higher
tones their official quality permitted them, filled the
room with a busy interest.  From time to time the
loafers were joined by other loafers, and they all
patiently waited for the sensation the criminal court
could dependably provide.

It was not long before there was a scrape and shuffle
of feet and a rattle of steel, and then a broad-shouldered
man edged through the door.  With his right hand he
seized a Scotch cap from a head that bristled with a
stubble of red hair.  His left hand hung by his side,
and when he had got into the court-room, Ward saw,
that a white-haired man walked close beside him, his
right hand manacled to the left hand of the red-haired
man.  The red-haired man was Danner, the jailer.
Behind him in sets of twos marched half a dozen other
men, each set chained together.  The rear of the little
procession was brought up by Utter, a stalwart young
man who was one of Danner's assistants.

The scrape of the feet that were so soon to shuffle
into the penitentiary, and leave scarce an echo of their
hopeless fall behind, roused every one in the court-room.
Even the bailiff got to his rheumatic feet and
hastily arranged a row of chairs in front of the trial
tables.  The prisoners sat down and tried to hide their
manacles by dropping their hands between their chairs.

There were seven of these prisoners, the oldest the
man whom Danner had conducted.  He sat with his
white head cast down, but his blue eyes roamed here
and there, taking in the whole court-room.  The other
prisoners were young men, one of them a negro; and
in the appearance of all there was some pathetic
suggestion of a toilet.  All of them had their hair combed
carefully, except the negro, whose hair could give no
perceptible evidence of the comb, unless it were the
slight, almost invisible part that bisected his head.
But he gave the same air of trying somehow to make
the best appearance he was capable of on this eventful day.

Ward's eyes ran rapidly along the row, and rested
on the brown-haired, well-formed head of the youngest
of the group.  He was scarcely more than a boy
indeed, and he alone, of all the line, was well dressed.
His linen was white, and he wore his well-fitting
clothes with a certain vanity and air of style that even
his predicament could not divest him of.  As Ward
glanced at him, an expression of pain came to his
face; the color left it for an instant, and then it grew
redder than it had been before.

These prisoners were about to be sentenced for
various felonies.  Two of them, the old man with the
white hair and the negro, had been tried, the one for
pocket-picking, the other for burglary.  The others
were to change their pleas from not guilty to guilty
and throw themselves on the mercy of the court.  They
sat there, whispering with one another, gazing about
the room, and speculating on what fate awaited them,
or, as they would have phrased it, what sentences they
would draw.  Like most prisoners they were what the
laws define as "indigent," that is, so poor that they
could not employ lawyers.  The court in consequence
had appointed counsel, and the young lawyers who now
stood and joked about the fates that were presently to
issue from the judge's chambers, were the counsel
thus appointed.  Now and then the prisoners looked at
the lawyers, and some of them may have indulged
speculations as to how that fate might have been
changed--perhaps altogether avoided--had they been
able to employ more capable attorneys.  Those among
them who had been induced by their young attorneys to
plead guilty--under assurances that they would thus
fare better than they would if they resisted the law
by insisting on their rights under it--probably had not
the imagination to divine that they might have fared
otherwise at the hands of the law if these lawyers had
not dreaded the trial as an ordeal almost as great to
them as to their appointed clients, or if they had not
been so indigent themselves as to desire speedily to
draw the fee the State would allow them for their
services.  Most of the prisoners, indeed, treated these
young lawyers with a certain patience, if not
forbearance, and now they relied on them for such mercy as
the law might find in its heart to bestow.  Most of them
might have reflected, had they been given to the
practice, that on former experiences they had found the
breast of the law, as to this divine quality, withered
and dry.  They sat and glanced about, and now and
then whispered, but for the most part they were still
and dumb and hopeless.  Meanwhile their lawyers
discussed and compared them, declaring their faces to be
hard and criminal; one of the young men thought a
certain face showed particularly the marks of crime,
and when his fellows discovered that he meant the
face of Danner, they laughed aloud and had a good
joke on the young man.  The young man became very
red, almost as red as Danner himself, whom, he begged,
they would not tell of his mistake.

At that moment the door of the judge's chambers
opened, and instant silence fell.  McWhorter, the judge,
appeared.  He was a man of middle size, with black
curly hair, smooth-shaven face, and black eyes that
caught in the swiftest glance the row of prisoners, who
now straightened and fixed their eyes on him.
McWhorter advanced with a brisk step to the bench,
mounted it, and nodding, said:

"You may open court, Mr. Bailiff."

The bailiff let his gavel fall on the marble slab,
and then with his head hanging, his eyes roving in a
self-conscious, almost silly way, he said:

"Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye, this honorable court
is now in session."

The bailiff sat down as in relief, but immediately
got up again when the judge said:

"Bring me the criminal docket, Mr. Bailiff."

The bailiff's bent figure tottered out of the
court-room.  The court-room was very still; the ticking of
the clock on the wall could be heard.  The judge
swung his chair about and glanced out of the
windows.  Never once did he permit his eyes to rest on
the prisoners.

There was silence and waiting, and after a while
the bailiff came with the docket.  The judge opened
the book, put on a pair of gold glasses, and, after a
time, reading slowly, said:

"The State *versus* Patrick Delaney."

The white-haired prisoner patiently held out two
hands, marvelously tatooed, and Danner unlocked the
handcuffs.  At the same moment one of the young
lawyers stood forth from the rest, and Lamborn, an
assistant prosecutor, rose.

McWhorter was studying the docket.  Presently he said:

"Stand up, Delaney."

Delaney rose, kept his eyes on the floor, clasped a
hand about his red wrist.  Then, for the first time, the
judge looked at him.

"Delaney," he said, "have you anything to say why
the sentence of this court should not be passed upon you?"

Delaney looked uneasily at the judge and then let his
eyes fall.

"No, Judge, yer Honor," he said, "nothing but that
I'm an innocent man.  I didn't do it, yer Honor."

The remark did not seem to impress the judge, who
turned toward the lawyer.  This young man, with a
venturesome air, stepped a little farther from the
sheltering company of his associates and, with a face that
was very white and lips that faltered, said in a
confused, hurried way:

"Your Honor, we hope your Honor'll be as lenient
as possible with this man; we hope your Honor will
be as--lenient as possible."  The youth's voice died
away and he faded back, as it were, into the shelter of
his companions.  The judge did not seem to be more
impressed with what the lawyer had said than he had
with what the client had said, and twirling his glasses
by their cord, he turned toward the assistant prosecutor.

Lamborn, with an affectation of great ease, with one
hand in the pocket of his creased trousers, the other
supporting a book of memoranda, advanced and said:

"May it please the Court, this man is an habitual
criminal; he has already served a term in the penitentiary
for this same offense, and we understand that he
is wanted in New York State at this present time.  We
consider him a dangerous criminal, and the State feels
that he should be severely punished."

McWhorter studied the ceiling of the court-room a
moment, still swinging his eye-glasses by their cord,
and then, fixing them on his nose, looked wisely down
at Delaney.  Presently he spoke:

"It is always an unpleasant duty to sentence a man
to prison, no matter how much he may deserve
punishment."  McWhorter paused as if to let every one realize
his pain in this exigency, and then went on: "But it
is our duty, and we can not shirk it.  A jury, Delaney,
after a fair trial, has found you guilty of burglary.  It
appears from what the prosecutor says that this is not
the first time you have been found guilty of this
offense; the experience does not seem to have done you
any good.  You impress the Court as a man who has
abandoned himself to a life of crime, and the Court
feels that you should receive a sentence in this instance
that will serve as a warning to you and to others.  The
sentence of the Court is--"  McWhorter paused as if to
balance the scales of justice with all nicety, and then
he looked away.  He did not know exactly how many
years in prison would expiate Delaney's crime; there
was, of course, no way for him to tell.  He thought
first of the number ten, then of the number five; then,
as the saying is, he split the difference, inclined the
fraction to the prisoner and said:

"The sentence of the Court is that you be confined in
the penitentiary at hard labor for the period of seven
years, no part of your sentence to be in solitary
confinement, and that you pay the costs of this prosecution."

Delaney sat down without changing expression and
held out his hands for the handcuffs.  The steel clicked,
and the scratch of the judge's pen could be heard as
he entered the judgment in the docket.

These proceedings were repeated again and again.
McWhorter read the title of the case, Danner
unshackled the prisoner, who stood up, gazing dumbly at
the floor, his lawyer asked the Court to be lenient,
Lamborn asked the Court to be severe, McWhorter
twirled his gold glasses, looked out of the window,
made his little speech, guessed, and pronounced
sentence.  The culprit sat down, held out his hands for the
manacles, then the click of the steel and the scratch of
the judicial pen.  It grew monotonous.

But just before the last man was called to book, John
Eades, the prosecutor, entered the court-room.  At
sight of him the young lawyers, the loafers on the
benches, even the judge looked up.

Eades's tall figure had not yet lost the grace of
youth, though it was giving the first evidence that he
had reached that period of life when it would begin to
gather weight.  He was well dressed in the blue clothes
of a business man, and he was young enough at thirty-five
to belong to what may not too accurately be called
the new school of lawyers, growing up in a day when
the law is changing from a profession to a business, in
distinction from the passing day of long coats of
professional black, of a gravity that frequently concealed a
certain profligacy, and, wherever it was successful, of
native brilliancy that could ignore application.  Eades's
dark hair was carefully parted above his smooth brow;
he had rather heavy eyebrows, a large nose, and thin,
tightly-set lips that gave strength and firmness to a
clean-shaven face.  He whispered a word to his
assistant, and then said:

"May it please the Court, when the case of the State
*versus* Henry C. Graves is reached, I should like to be
heard."

"The Court was about to dispose of that case, Mr. Eades,"
said the judge, looking over his docket and fixing
his glasses on his nose.

"Very well," said Eades, glancing at the group of
young attorneys.  "Mr. Metcalf, I believe, represents
the defendant."

The young lawyer thus indicated emerged from the
group that seemed to keep so closely together, and
said:

"Yes, your Honor, we'd like to be heard also."

"Graves may stand up," said the judge, removing
his glasses and tilting back in his chair as if to listen
to long arguments.

Danner had been unlocking the handcuffs again, and
the young man who had been so frequently remarked
in the line rose.  His youthful face flushed scarlet;
he glanced about the court-room, saw Ward, drew a
heavy breath, and then fixed his eyes on the floor.

Eades looked at Metcalf, who stepped forward and
began:

"In this case, your Honor, we desire to withdraw the
plea of not guilty and substitute a plea of guilty.  And
I should like to say a few words for my client."

"Proceed," said McWhorter.

Metcalf, looking at his feet, took two or three steps
forward, and then, lifting his head, suddenly began:

"Your Honor, this is the first time this young man
has ever committed any crime.  He is but twenty-three
years old, and he has always borne a good reputation
in this community.  He is the sole support of a widowed
mother, and--yes, he is the sole support of a widowed
mother.  He--a--has been for three years employed in
the firm of Stephen Ward and Company, and has
always until--a--this unfortunate affair enjoyed the
confidence and esteem of his employers.  He stands
here now charged in the indictment with embezzlement;
he admits his guilt.  He has, as I say, never done
wrong before--and I believe that this will be a lesson
to him which he will not forget.  He desires to throw
himself on the mercy of the Court, and I ask the
Court--to--a--be as lenient as possible."

"Has the State anything to say?" asked the judge.

"May it please the Court," said Eades, speaking in
his low, studied tone, "we acquiesce in all that counsel
for defense has said.  This young man, so far as the
State knows, has never before committed a crime.  And
yet, he has had the advantages of a good home, of an
excellent mother, and he had the best prospects in life
that a young man could wish.  He was, as counsel has
said, employed by Mr. Ward--who is here--"  Eades
turned half-way around and indicated Ward, who rose
and felt that the time had come when he should go
forward.  "He was one of Mr. Ward's trusted employees.
Unfortunately, he began to speculate on the Board
himself, and it seems, in the stir of the recent excitement
in wheat, appropriated some nine hundred dollars of
his employer's money.  Mr. Ward is not disposed to
ideal harshly or in any vengeful spirit with this young
man; he has shown, indeed, the utmost forbearance.
Nor is the State disposed to deal in any such spirit with
him; he, and especially his mother, have my sympathy.
But we feel that the law must be vindicated and upheld,
and while the State is disposed to leave with the Court
the fixing of such punishment as may be appropriate,
and has no thought of suggesting what the Court's
duty shall be, still the State feels that the punishment
should be substantial."

Eades finished and seated himself at the counsel
table.  The young lawyers looked at him, and, whispering
among themselves, said that they considered the
speech to have been very fitting and appropriate under
the circumstances.

McWhorter deliberated a moment, and then,
glancing toward the young man, suddenly saw Ward,
and, thinking that if Ward would speak he would
have more time to guess what punishment to give the
boy, he said:

"Mr. Ward, do you care to be heard?"

Ward hesitated, changed color, and slowly
advanced.  He was not accustomed to speaking in public,
and this was an ordeal for him.  He came forward,
halted, and then, clearing his throat, said:

"I don't know that I have anything much to say,
only this--that this is a very painful experience to me.
I"--he looked toward the youthful culprit--"I was
always fond of Henry; he was a good boy, and we all
liked him."  The brown head seemed to sink between
its shoulders.  "Yes, we all liked him, and I don't know
that anything ever surprised me so much as this thing
did, or hurt me more.  I didn't think it of him.  I feel
sorry for his mother, too.  I--"  Ward hesitated and
looked down at the floor.

The situation suddenly became distressing to every
one in the court-room.  And then, with new effort,
Ward went on: "I didn't like to have him prosecuted,
but we employ a great many men, many of them young
men, and it seemed to be my duty.  I don't know; I've
had my doubts.  It isn't the money--I don't care about
that; I'd be willing, so far as I'm concerned, to have
him go free now.  I hope, Judge, that you'll be as easy
on him, as merciful as possible.  That's about all I can
say."

Ward sat down in the nearest chair, and the judge,
knitting his brows, glanced out of the window.  Nearly
every one glanced out of the window, save Graves, who
stood rigid, his eyes staring at the floor.  Presently
McWhorter turned and said:

"Graves, have you anything to say why the sentence
of this court should not be passed on you?"

The youth raised his head, looked into McWhorter's
eyes, and said:

"No, sir."

McWhorter turned suddenly and looked away.

"The Court does not remember in all his career a
more painful case than this," he began.  "That a young
man of your training and connections, of your advantages
and prospects, should be standing here at the bar
of justice, a self-confessed embezzler, is sad,
inexpressibly sad.  The Court realizes that you have done a
manly thing in pleading guilty; it speaks well for you
that you were unwilling to add perjury to your other
crime.  The Court will take that into
consideration."  McWhorter nodded decisively.

"The Court will also take into consideration your
youth, and the fact that this is your first offense.  Your
looks are in your favor.  You are a young man who,
by proper, sober, industrious application, might easily
become a successful, honest, worthy citizen.  Your
employer speaks well of you, and shows great patience,
great forbearance; he is ready to forgive you, and he
even asks the Court to be merciful.  The Court will
take that fact into consideration as well."

Again McWhorter nodded decisively, and then,
feeling that much was due to a man of Ward's position,
went on:

"The Court wishes to say that you, Mr. Ward," he
gave one of his nods in that gentleman's direction,
"have acted the part of a good citizen in this affair.
You have done your duty, as every citizen should,
painful as it was.  The Court congratulates you."

And then, having thought again of the painfulness
of this duty, McWhorter went on to tell how painful
his own duty was; but he said it would not do to allow
sympathy to obscure judgment in such cases.  He
talked at length on this theme, still unable to end,
because he did not know what sort of guess to make.
And then he began to discuss the evils of speculation,
and when he saw that the reporters were scribbling
desperately to put down all he was saying, he extended
his remarks and delivered a long homily on speculation
in certain of its forms, characterizing it as one of the
worst and most prevalent vices of the day.  After he
had said all he could think of on this topic, he spoke to
Graves again, and explained to him the advantages of
being in the penitentiary, how by his behavior he might
shorten his sentence by several months, and how much
time he would have for reflection and for the formation
of good resolutions.  It seemed, indeed, before he
had done, that it was almost a deprivation not to be
able to go to a penitentiary.  But finally he came to an
end.  Then he looked once more out of the window,
once more twirled his eye-glasses on their cord, and
then, turning about, came to the reserved climax of
his long address.

"The sentence of the Court, Mr. Graves, is that you
be confined in the penitentiary at hard labor for the
term of one year, no part of said sentence to consist of
solitary confinement, and that you pay the costs of this
prosecution."

The boy sat down, held out his wrists for the handcuffs,
the steel clicked, the pen scratched in the silence.

Danner got up, marshaled his prisoners, and they
marched out.  The eyes of every one in the court-room
followed them, the eyes of Ward fixed on Graves.  As
he looked, he saw a woman sitting on the last one of
the benches near the door.  Her head was bowed on her
hand, but as the procession passed she raised her face,
all red and swollen with weeping, and, with a look of
love and tenderness and despair, fixed her eyes on
Graves.  The boy did not look at her, but marched by,
his head resolutely erect.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`VII`:

.. class:: center large

   VII

.. vspace:: 2

Ward returned to his office and to his work, but all
that day, in the excitement on the floor of the exchange,
during luncheon at the club, at his desk, in his carriage
going home at evening, he saw before him that row of
heads--the white poll of old Delaney, the woolly pate
of the negro, but, more than all, the brown head of
Harry Graves.  And when he entered his home at evening
the sadness of his reflections was still in his face.

"What's the matter this evening?" asked Elizabeth.  "Nerves?"

"Yes."

"Been on the wrong side to-day?"

"Yes, decidedly, I fear," said Ward.

"What do you mean?"

"I've sent a boy to the penitentiary."  Ward felt a
kind of relief, the first he had felt all that day, in
dealing thus bluntly, thus brutally, with himself.  Elizabeth
knit her brows, and her eyes winked rapidly in the
puzzled expression that came to them.

"You remember Harry Graves?" asked her father.

"Oh, that young man?"

"Yes, that young man.  Well, I've sent him to the
penitentiary."

"What is that you say, Stephen?" asked Mrs. Ward,
coming just then into the room.  She had heard his
words, but she wished to hear them again.

"I just said I'd sent Harry Graves to the penitentiary."

"For how long?" asked Mrs. Ward, with a judicial
desire for all the facts, usually unnecessary in her
judgments.

"For one year."

"Why, how easily he got off!" said Mrs. Ward.
"And do hurry now, Stephen.  You're late."

Elizabeth saw the pain her mother had been so
unconscious of in her father's face, and she gave Ward
a little pat on the shoulder.

"You dear old goose," she said, "to feel that way
about it.  Of course, you didn't send him--it was John
Eades.  That's his business."

But Ward shook his head, unconvinced.

"Doubtless it will be a good thing for the young
man," said Mrs. Ward.  "He has only himself to blame,
anyway."

But still Ward shook his head, and his wife looked
at him with an expression that showed her desire to
help him out of his gloomy mood.

"You know you could have done nothing else than
what you did do," she said.  "Criminals must be
punished; there is no way out of it.  You're morbid--you
shouldn't feel so."

But once more Ward gave that unconvinced shake
of the head, and sighed.

"See here," said Elizabeth, with the sternness her
father liked to have her employ with him, "you stop
this right away."  She shook him by the shoulder.
"You make me feel as if I had done something wrong
myself; you'll have us all feeling that we belong to the
criminal classes ourselves."

"I've succeeded in making myself feel like a dog,"
Ward replied.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`VIII`:

.. class:: center large

   VIII

.. vspace:: 2

The county jail was in commotion.  In the street
outside a patrol wagon was backed against the curb.  The
sleek coats of its bay horses were moist with mist; and
as the horses stamped fretfully in the slush, the driver,
muffled in his policeman's overcoat, spoke to them,
begging them to be patient, and each time looked back
with a clouded face toward the outer door of the jail.
This door, innocent enough with its bright oak panels
and ground glass, was open.  Inside, beyond the
vestibule, beyond another oaken door, stood Danner.  He
was in black, evidently his dress for such occasions.  He
wore new, squeaking shoes, and his red face showed the
powder a barber had put on it half an hour before.  On
his desk lay his overcoat, umbrella, and a small valise.
The door of the glass case on the wall, wherein were
displayed all kinds of handcuffs, nippers, squeezers,
come-alongs and leather strait-jackets, together with
an impressive exhibit of monstrous steel keys, was
open, and several of its brass hooks were empty.
Danner, as he stood in the middle of the room, looked about
as if to assure himself that he had forgotten nothing,
and then went to the window, drew out a revolver,
broke it at the breach, and carefully inspected its loads.
That done, he snapped the revolver together and
slipped it into the holster that was slung to a belt about
his waist.  He did not button the coat that concealed
this weapon.  Then he looked through the window, saw
the patrol wagon, took out his watch and shouted angrily:

"For God's sake, Hal, hurry up!"

Danner's impatient admonition seemed to be directed
through the great barred door that opened off the other
side of the office into the prison, and from within there
came the prompt and propitiatory reply of the underling:

"All right, Jim, in a minute."

The open door, the evident preparation, the spirit of
impending change, the welcome break in the monotony
of the jail's diurnal routine, all were evidenced in the
tumult that was going on beyond that huge gate of
thick steel bars.  The voice of the under-turnkey had
risen above the din of other voices proceeding from the
depths of hidden cells; there was a constant shuffle of
feet on cement floors, the rattle of keys, the heavy
tumbling of bolts, the clang and grating of steel as the
shifting of a lever opened and closed simultaneously
all the doors of an entire tier of cells.  These noises
seemed to excite the inmates, but presently above
the discord arose human cries, a chorus of good-bys,
followed in a moment by those messages that
conventionally accompany all departures, though these were
delivered in all the various shades of sarcasm and bitter
irony.

"Good-by!"

"Remember us to the main screw!"

"Think of us when you get to the big house!"

Thus the voices called.

And then suddenly, one voice rose above the rest, a
fine barytone voice that would have been beautiful had
not it taken on a tone of mockery as it sang:

|  "We're going home!  We're going home!
|  No more to sin and sorrow."
|

Then other voices took up the lines they had heard
at the Sunday services, and bawled the hymn in a
horrible chorus.  The sound infuriated Danner, and he
rushed to the barred door and shouted:

"Shut up!  Shut up!" and he poured out a volume of
obscene oaths.  From inside came yells, derisive in the
safety of anonymity.

"You'll get nothing but bread and water for supper
after that!" Danner shouted back.  He began to unlock
the door, but, glancing at the desk, changed his mind
and turned and paced the floor.

But now the noise of the talking, the shuffle of feet
on the concrete floors, came nearer.  The door of the
prison was unlocked; it swung back, and there marched
forth, walking sidewise, with difficulty, because they
were all chained together, thirteen men.  Two of the
thirteen, the first and last, were Gregg and Poole,
under-turnkeys.  Utter, Danner's first assistant, came
last, carefully locking the door behind him.

"Line up here," said Danner angrily, "we haven't
got all night!"

The men stood in a row, and Danner, leaning over
his desk, began to check off their names.  There was the
white-haired Delaney, who had seven years for
burglary; Johnson, a negro who had been given fifteen
years for cutting with intent to kill; Simmons, five
years for grand larceny; Gunning, four years for
housebreaking; Schypalski, a Pole, three years for
arson; Graves, the employee of Ward, one year for
embezzlement; McCarthy, and Hayes his partner, five
years each for burglary and larceny; "Deacon" Samuel,
an old thief, and "New York Willie," alias "The Kid,"
a pickpocket, who had each seven years for larceny
from the person; and Brice, who had eight years for
robbery.  These men were to be taken to the penitentiary.
Nearly all of them were guilty of the crimes of
which they had been convicted.

The sheriff had detailed Danner to escort these
prisoners to the penitentiary, as he sometimes did when
he did not care to make the trip himself.  Gregg
would accompany Danner, while Poole would go only
as far as the railway station.  Danner was anxious to
be off; these trips to the state capital were a great
pleasure to him, and he had that nervous dread of
missing the train which comes over most people as they
are about to start away for a holiday.  He was anxious
to get away from the jail before anything happened to
stay him; he was anxious to be on the moving train,
for until then he could not feel himself safe from some
sudden recall.  He had been thinking all day of the
black-eyed girl in a brothel not three blocks from the
penitentiary, whom he expected to see that night after
he had turned the prisoners over to the warden.  He
could scarcely keep his mind off her long enough to
make his entries in the jail record and to see that he
had all his mittimuses in proper order.

The prisoners, standing there in a haggard row,
wore the same clothes they had had on when they
appeared in court for sentence a few weeks before; the
same clothes they had had on when arrested.  None of
them, of course, had any baggage.  The little trinkets
they had somehow accumulated while in jail they had
distributed that afternoon among their friends who
remained behind in the steel cages; all they had in the
world they had on their backs.  Most of them were
dressed miserably.  Gunning, indeed, who had been
lying in jail since the previous June, wore a straw hat,
which made him so absurd that the Kid laughed when
he saw him, and said:

"That's a swell lid you've got on there, Gunny, my
boy.  I'm proud to fill in with your mob."

Gunning tried to smile, and his face, already white
with the prison pallor, seemed to be made more ghastly
by the mockery of mirth.

The Kid was well dressed, as well dressed as Graves,
who still wore the good clothes he had always loved.
Graves was white, too, but not as yet with the prison
pallor.  He tried to bear himself bravely; he did not
wish to break down before his companions, all of whom
had longer sentences to serve than he.  He dreaded the
ride through the familiar streets where a short time
before he had walked in careless liberty, full of the joy
and hope and ambition of youth.  He knew that
countless memories would stalk those streets, rising up
unexpectedly at every corner, following him to the station
with mows and jeers; he tried to bear himself bravely,
and he did succeed in bearing himself grimly, but he
had an aching lump in his throat that would not let
him speak.  It had been there ever since that hour in
the afternoon when his mother had squeezed her face
between the bars of his cell to kiss him good-by again
and again.  The prison had been strangely still while
she was there, and for a long time after she went even
the Kid had been quiet and had forgotten his joshing
and his ribaldry.  Graves had tried to be brave for his
mother's sake, and now he tried to be brave for
appearances' sake.  He envied Delaney and the negro, who
took it all stolidly, and he might have envied the Kid,
who took it all humorously, if it had not been for what
the Kid had said to him that afternoon about his own
mother.  But now the Kid was cheerful again, and kept
up the spirits of all of them.  To Graves it was like
some horrible dream; everything in the room--Danner,
the turnkeys, the exhibit of jailer's instruments on the
wall--was unreal to him--everything save the hat-band
that hurt his temples, and the aching lump in his throat.
His eyes began to smart, his vision was blurred;
instinctively he started to lift his hand to draw his hat
farther down on his forehead, but something jerked,
and Schypalski moved suddenly; then he remembered
the handcuffs.  The Pole was dumb under it all, but
Graves knew how Schypalski had felt that afternoon
when the young wife whom he had married but six
months before was there; he had wept and grown mad
until he clawed at the bars that separated them, and
then he had mutely pressed his face against them and
kissed the young wife's lips, just as Graves's mother
had kissed him.  And then the young wife would not
leave, and Danner had to come and drag her away
across the cement floor.

Johnson was stupefied; he had not known until that
afternoon that he was to be taken away so soon, and
his wife had not known; she was to bring the children
on the next day to see him.  For an hour Johnson had
been on the point of saying something; his lips would
move, and he would lift his eyes to Danner, but he
seemed afraid to speak.

Meanwhile, Danner was making his entries and
looking over his commitment papers.  The Kid had begun
to talk with Deacon Samuel.  He and the Deacon
had been working together and had been arrested for
the same crime, but Danner had separated them in the
jail so they could not converse, and they were together
now for the first time since their arrest.  The Kid bent
his body forward and leaned out of the line to look
down at the Deacon.  The old thief was smooth-faced
and wore gold-rimmed spectacles.  When the Kid
caught his mild, solemn eye, looking out benignly from
behind his glasses, a smile spread over his face, and
he said:

"Well, old pard, we're fixed for the next five-spot."

"Yes," said the Deacon.

"How was it pulled off for you?" asked the Kid.

"Oh, it was the same old thing over again," replied
the Deacon.  "They had us lagged before the trial, but
they had to make a flash of some kind, so they put up
twelve suckers and then they put a rapper up, and that
settled it."

"There was nothing to it," said the Kid, in a tone
that acquiesced in all the Deacon had been saying.  "It
was that way with me.  They were out chewing the rag
for five minutes, then they comes in, hands the stiff to
the old bloke in the rock, and he hands it to quills, who
reads it to me, and then the old punk-hunter made his
spiel."

"Did he?" said the Deacon, interested.  "He didn't
to me; he just slung it at me in a lump."

"Did Snaggles plant the slum?"

"Naw," said the Deacon, "the poke was cold and the
thimble was a phoney."

"Je's," exclaimed the Kid.  "I never got wise!  Well,
then there was no chance for him to spring us."

"No."

"It's tough to fall for a dead one," mused the Kid.

The other prisoners had been respectfully silent while
these two thieves compared notes, but their conversation
annoyed Danner.  He could not understand what
they were saying, and this angered him, and besides,
their talking interfered with his entries, for he was
excessively stupid.

"They gave me a young mouthpiece," the Kid was
beginning, when Danner raised his head and said:

"Now you fellows cut that out, do you hear?  I want
to get my work done and start."

"I beg your pardon, papa," said the Kid; "we're
anxious to start, too.  Did you engage a lower berth
for me?"

The line of miserable men laughed, not with mirth
so much as for the sake of any diversion, and at the
laugh Danner's face and neck colored a deeper red.
The Kid saw this change in color and went on:

"Please don't laugh, gentlemen; you're disturbing
the main screw."  And then, lifting his eyebrows, he
leaned forward a little and said: "Can't I help you,
papa?"

Danner paid no attention, but he was rapidly growing angry.

"I'd be glad to sling your ink for you, papa," the Kid
went on, "and anyway you'd better splice yourself in
the middle of the line before we start, or you might
get lost.  You know you're not used to traveling or to
the ways of the world--"

"Cheese it, Kid," said the Deacon warningly.  But
the spirit of deviltry which he had never been able to
resist, and indeed had never tried very hard to resist,
was upon the Kid, and he went on:

"Deac, pipe the preacher clothes!  And the brand
new kicks, and the mush!  They must have put him on
the nut for ten ninety-eight."

"He'll soak you with a sap if you don't cheese it,"
said the Deacon.

"Oh, no, a nice old pappy guy like him wouldn't,
would you?" the Kid persisted.  "He knows I'm speaking
for his good.  I want him to chain himself to us
so's he won't get lost; if he'd get away and fall off the
rattler, he'd never catch us again."

"Well, I could catch you all right," said Danner,
stopping and looking up.

"Why, my dear boy," said the Kid, "you couldn't
track an elephant through the snow."

The line laughed again, even the under-turnkeys
could not repress their smiles.  But Danner made a
great effort that showed in the changing hues of scarlet
that swept over his face, and he choked down his anger.
He put on his overcoat and picked up his satchel, and
said:

"Come on, now."

Utter unlocked the outer doors, and the line of men
filed out.

"Good-by, Bud," the Kid called to Utter.  "If you
ever get down to the dump, look me up."

The others bade Utter good-by, for they all liked
him, and as the line shuffled down the stone steps the
men eagerly inhaled the fresh air they had not breathed
for weeks, save for the few minutes consumed in going
over to the court-house and back, and a thrill of
gladness momentarily ran through the line.  Then the Kid
called out:

"Hold on, Danner!"

He halted suddenly, and so jerked the whole line to
an abrupt standstill.  "I've left my mackintosh in my
room!"

"If you don't shut up, I'll smash your jaw!"

The Kid's laugh rang out in the air.

"Yes, that'd be just about your size!" he said.

Danner turned quickly toward the Kid, but just at
that instant a dark fluttering form flew out of the misty
gloom and enveloped Schypalski; it was his wife, who
had been waiting all the afternoon outside the jail.  She
clung to the Pole, who was as surprised as any of them,
and she wept and kissed him in her Slavonic fashion,--wept
and kissed as only the Slavs can weep and kiss.
Then Danner, when he realized what had occurred,
seized her and flung her aside.

"You damn bitch!" he said.  "I'll show you!"

"That's right, Danner," said the Kid.  "You've got
some one your size now!  Soak her again."

Danner whirled, his anger loose now, and struck the
Kid savagely in the face.  The line thrilled through its
entire length; wild, vague hopes of freedom suddenly
blazed within the breasts of these men, and they tugged
at the chains that bound them.  Utter, watching from
the door, ran down the walk, and Danner drew his revolver.

"Get into that wagon!" he shouted, and then he
hurled after them another mouthful of the oaths he
always had ready.  The little sensation ended, the hope
fell dead, and the prisoners moved doggedly on.  In a
second the Kid had recovered himself, and then,
speaking thickly, for the blood in his mouth, he said in a
low voice:

"Danner, you coward, I'll serve you out for that, if
I get the chair for it!"

It was all still there in the gloom and the misty rain,
save for the shuffle of the feet, the occasional click of
a handcuff chain, and presently the sobbing of the
Polish woman rising from the wet ground.  Danner
hustled his line along, and a moment later they were
clambering up the steps of the patrol wagon.

"Well, for God's sake!" exclaimed the driver, "I
thought you'd never get here!  Did you want to keep
these horses standing out all night in the wet?"

The men took their seats inside, those at the far end
having to hold their hands across the wagon because
they were chained together, and the wagon jolted and
lurched as the driver started his team and went
bowling away for the station.  The Pole was weeping.

"The poor devil!" said the pickpocket.  "That's a
pretty little broad he has.  Can't you fellows do
something for him?  Give him a cigarette--or--a
chew--or--something."  Their resources of comfort were so few
that the Kid could think of nothing more likely.

Just behind the patrol wagon came a handsome
brougham, whose progress for an instant through the
street which saw so few equipages of its rank had been
stayed by the patrol wagon, moving heavily about
before it started.  The occupants of the brougham had
seen the line come out of the jail, had seen it halt, had
seen Danner fling the Polish woman aside and strike
the pickpocket in the face; they had seen the men
hustled into the patrol wagon, and now, as it followed
after, Elizabeth Ward heard a voice call impudently:

"All aboard for the stir!"





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   IX

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The patrol wagon bowled rapidly onward, and the
brougham followed rapidly behind.  The early darkness
of the winter afternoon was enveloping the world, and
in the damp and heavy air the roar of the city was
intensified.  The patrol wagon turned into Franklin Street
and disappeared in the confusion of vehicles.  The street
was crowded; enormous trucks clung obstinately to the
car tracks and only wrenched themselves away when
the clamor of the gongs became desperate, their drivers
swearing at the motormen, flinging angry glances at
them.  The trolley-cars swept by, filled with shop-girls,
clerks, working-men, business men hanging to straps,
reading evening papers in the brilliant electric lights;
men clung to the broad rear platforms; at every
crossing others attached themselves to these dark masses of
humanity, swarming like insects.  The sidewalks were
crowded, and, as far as one could see, umbrellas
balanced in the glistening mist.

The brougham of the Wards succeeded presently in
crossing Franklin Street.

"They were taking them to the penitentiary!" said
Elizabeth, speaking for the first time.

"I presume they were," said her mother.

"Harry Graves was among them," Elizabeth went
on, staring widely before her, her tone low and level.

Mrs. Ward turned her head.

"I saw his face--it stood out among the rest.  I can
never forget it!"

She sat with her gloved hands in her lap.  Her
mother did not speak, but she looked at her.

"And that man--that big, brutal man, throwing that
woman down, and then striking that man in the face!"

Mrs. Ward, not liking to encourage her daughter's
mood, did not speak.

"Oh, it makes me sick!"

Elizabeth stretched forth her hand, drew a cut-glass
bottle from its case beside the little carriage clock and
mirror, and, sinking back in her cushioned corner,
inhaled the stimulating odor of the salts.  Then her
mother stiffened and said:

"I don't know what Barker means, driving us down
this way where we have to endure such sights.  You
must control yourself, dear, and not allow disagreeable
things to get on your nerves."

"But think of that poor boy, and the man who was
struck, and that woman!"

"Probably they can not feel as keenly as--"

"And think of all those men!  Oh, their faces!  Their
faces!  I can never forget them!"

Elizabeth continued to inhale the salts, her mind
deeply intent on the scene she had just witnessed.
They were drawing near to Claybourne Avenue now,
and Mrs. Ward's spirits visibly improved at the sight
of its handsome lamp posts and the carriages flashing
by, their rubber tires rolling softly on the wet asphalt.

"Well," she exclaimed, settling back on the cushions,
"this is better!  I don't know what Barker was
thinking of!  He's very stupid at times!"

The carriage joined the procession of other equipages
of its kind.  They had left the street at the end of
which could be seen the court-house and the jail.  The
jail was blazing now with light, its iron bars showing
black across its illumined windows.  And beyond the
jail, as if kept at bay by it, a huddle of low buildings
stretched crazily along Mosher's Lane, a squalid street
that preserved in irony the name of one of the city's
earliest, richest and most respectable citizens, long since
deceased.  The Lane twinkled with the bright lights of
saloons, the dim lights of pawnshops, the red lights of
brothels--the slums, dark, foul, full of disease and
want and crime.  Along the streets passed and repassed
shadowy, fugitive forms, negroes, Jews, men, and
women, and children, ragged, unkempt, pinched by
cold and hunger.  But above all this, above the turmoil
of Franklin Street and the reeking life of the slums
behind it, above the brilliantly lighted jail, stood the
court-house, gray in the dusk, its four corners shouldering
out the sky, its low dome calmly poised above the town.





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   X

.. vspace:: 2

"And how is your dear mother?"  Miss Masters
turned to Eades and wrought her wry face into a smile.
Her black eyes, which she seemed able to make sparkle
at will, were fixed on him; her black-gloved hands were
crossed primly in her lap, as she sat erect on the stiff
chair Elizabeth Ward had given her.

"She's pretty well, thanks," said Eades.  He had
always disliked Miss Masters, but he disliked her more
than ever this Sunday afternoon in April when he
found her at the Wards'.  It was a very inauspicious
beginning of his spring vacation, to which, after his
hard work of the winter term, he had looked forward
with sentiments as tender as the spring itself, just
beginning to show in the sprightly green that dotted the
maple trees along Claybourne Avenue.

"And your sister?"

"She is very well, too."

"Dear me!" the ugly little woman ran on, speaking
with the affectation she had cultivated for years enough
to make it natural at last to her.  "It has been so long
since I've seen either of them!  I told mama to-day
that I didn't go to see even my old friends any more.
Of course," she added, lowering her already low tone
to a level of hushed deprecation, "we never go to see
any of the new-comers; and lately there are so many,
one hardly knows the old town.  Still, I feel that we of
the old families understand each other and are sufficient
unto ourselves, as it were, even if we allow years to
elapse without seeing each other--don't you, dear?"  She
turned briskly toward Elizabeth.

Eades had hoped to find Elizabeth alone, and he felt
it to be peculiarly annoying that Miss Masters, whose
exclusiveness kept her from visiting even her friends of
the older families, should have chosen for her exception
this particular Sunday afternoon out of all the other
Sunday afternoons at her command.  He had found it
impossible to talk with Elizabeth in the way he had
expected to talk to her, and he was so out of sorts that
he could not talk to Miss Masters, though that maiden
aristocrat of advancing years, strangely stimulated by
his presence, seemed efficient enough to do all the
talking herself.

Elizabeth was trying to find a position that would
give her comfort, without denoting any lapse from the
dignity of posture due a family that had been known
in that city for nearly fifty years.  But repose was
impossible to her that afternoon, and she nervously kept
her hands in motion, now grasping the back of her
chair, now knitting them in her lap, now raising one to
her brow; once she was on the point of clasping her
knee, but this impulse frightened her so that she
quickly pressed her belt down, drew a deep breath,
resolutely sat erect, crossed her hands unnaturally in
her lap, and smiled courageously at her visitors.  Eades
noted how firm her hands were, and how white; they
were indicative of strength and character.  She held
her head a little to one side, keeping up her pale smile
of interest for Miss Masters, and Eades thought that
he should always think of her as she sat thus, in her
soft blue dress, her eyes winking rapidly, her dark hair
parting of its own accord.

"And how do you like your new work, Mr. Eades?"
Miss Masters was asking him, and then, without
waiting for a reply, she went on: "Do you know, I believe
I have not seen you since your election to congratulate
you.  But we've been keeping watch; we have seen
what the papers said."

She smiled suggestively, and Eades inclined his head
to acknowledge her tribute.

"I think we are to be congratulated on having you
in that position.  I think it is very encouraging to find
some of our *best* people in public office."

There was a tribute surely in the emphasis she placed
on the adjective, and Eades inclined his head again.

"I really think it was noble in you to accept.  It must
be very disagreeable to be brought in contact with--you
know!"  She smiled and nodded as if she could not
speak the word.  "And you have been so brave and
courageous through it all--you are surely to be admired!"

Eades felt suddenly that Miss Masters was not so
bad after all; he relished this appreciation, which he
took as an evidence of the opinion prevailing in the
best circles.  He recalled a conversation he had lately
had with Elizabeth on this very subject, and, with a
sudden impulse to convict her, he said:

"I'm afraid Miss Ward will hardly agree with you."

Miss Masters turned to Elizabeth with an expression
of incredulity and surprise.

"Oh, I am sure--" she began.

"I believe she considers me harsh and cruel," Eades
went on, smiling, but looking intently at Elizabeth.

"Oh, Mr. Eades is mistaken," she said; "I'm sure I
agree with all the nice things that are said of him."

She detested the weakness of her quick retreat; and
she detested more the immediate conviction that it
came from a certain fear of Eades.  She was beginning
to feel a kind of mastery in his mere presence, so that
when she was near him she felt powerless to oppose
him.  The arguments she always had ready for others,
or for him--when he was gone--seemed invariably to
fail her when he was near; she had even gone to the
length of preparing them in advance for him, but when
he came, when she saw him, she could not even state
them, and when she tried, they seemed so weak and
puerile and ineffectual as to deserve nothing more
serious than the tolerant smile with which he received and
disposed of them.  And now, as this weakness came
over her, she felt a fear, not for any of her principles,
which, after all, were but half-formed and superficial,
but a fear for herself, for her own being, and she was
suddenly grateful for Miss Masters's presence.  Still,
Eades and Miss Masters seemed to be waiting, and she
must say something.

"It's only this," she said.  "Not long ago I saw
officers taking some prisoners to the penitentiary.  I can
never forget the faces of those men."

Over her sensitive countenance there swept the
memory of a pain, and she had the effect of sinking in her
straight chair.  But Eades was gazing steadily at her,
a smile on his strong face, and Miss Masters was
saying:

"But, dear me!  The penitentiary is the place for
such people, isn't it, Mr. Eades?"

"I think so," said Eades.  His eyes were still fixed on
Elizabeth, and she looked away, groping in her mind
for some other subject.  Just then the hall bell rang.

Elizabeth was glad, for it was Marriott, and as she
took his hand and said simply, "Ah, Gordon," the light
faded from Eades's face.

Marriott's entrance dissolved the situation of a
moment before.  He brought into the drawing-room,
dimming now in the fading light, a new atmosphere,
something of the air of the spring.  Miss Masters
greeted him with a manner divided between a certain
distance, because Marriott had not been born in that
city, and a certain necessary approach to his mere
deserts as a man.  Marriott did not notice this, but
dropped on to the divan.  Elizabeth had taken a more
comfortable chair.  Marriott, plainly, was not in the
formal Sunday mood, just as he was not in the formal
Sunday dress.  He had taken in Eades's frock-coat and
white waistcoat at a glance, and then looked down at
his own dusty boots.

"I've been hard at work to-day, Elizabeth," he said,
turning to her with a smile.

"Working!  You must remember the Sabbath day
to keep it--"

"The law wasn't made for lawyers, was it, John?"  He
appealed suddenly to Eades, whose conventionality
he always liked to shock, and Elizabeth smiled, and
Eades became very dignified.

"I've been out to see our old friends, the Koerners,"
Marriott went on.

"Oh, tell me about them!" said Elizabeth, leaning
forward with eager interest.  "How is Gusta?"

"Gusta's well, and prettier than ever.  Jove!  What a
beauty that girl is!"

"Isn't she pretty?" said Elizabeth.  "She was a
delight in the house for that very reason.  And how is
poor old Mr. Koerner--and all of them?"

"Well," said Marriott, "Koerner's amputated leg is
all knotted up with rheumatism."

Miss Masters's dark face was pinched in a scowl.

"And Archie's in jail."

"In jail!"  Elizabeth dropped back in her chair.

"Yes, in jail."

"Why!  What for?"

"Well, he seems to belong to a gang that was
arrested day before yesterday for something or other."

"There, Mr. Eades," said Elizabeth suddenly, "there
now, you must let Archie Koerner go."

"Oh, I'll not let John get a chance at him," said
Marriott.  "He's charged with a misdemeanor only--he'll
go to the workhouse, if he goes anywhere."

"And you'll defend him?"

"Oh, I suppose so," said Marriott wearily.  "You've
given me a whole family of clients, Elizabeth.  I went
out to see the old man about his case--I think we'll try
it early this term."

"These Koerners are a family in whom I've been
interested," Elizabeth suddenly thought to explain to
Miss Masters, and then she told them of Gusta, of
old Koerner's accident, and of Archie's career as a
soldier.

"They've had a hard winter of it," said Marriott
"The old man, of course, can't work, and Archie, by
his experience as a soldier, seems to have been totally
unfitted for everything--except shooting--and shooting
is against the law."

Now that the conversation had taken this turn, Miss
Masters moved to go.  She bade Marriott farewell
coldly, and Eades warmly, and Elizabeth went with
her into the hall.  Eades realized that all hope of a
tête-à-tête with Elizabeth had departed, and he and
Marriott not long afterward left to walk down town
together.  The sun was warm for the first time in months,
and the hope of the spring had brought the people out
of doors.  Claybourne Avenue was crowded with
carriages in which families solemnly enjoyed their Sunday
afternoon drives, as they had enjoyed their stupefying
dinners of roast beef four hours before.  Electric
automobiles purred past, and now and then a huge touring
car, its driver in his goggles resembling some demon,
plunged savagely along, its horn honking hoarsely at
every street crossing.  The sidewalks were thronged
with pedestrians, young men whose lives had no other
diversion than to parade in their best clothes or stand
on dusty down-town corners, smoke cigars and watch
the girls that tilted past.

"That Miss Masters is a fool," said Marriott, when
they had got away from the house.

"Yes, she is," Eades assented.  "She was boring Miss
Ward to death."

"Poor Elizabeth!" said Marriott with a little laugh.
"She is so patient, and people do afflict her so."

Eades did not like the way in which Marriott could
speak of Elizabeth, any more than he liked to hear
Elizabeth address Marriott as Gordon.

"I see the *Courier* gave you a fine send-off this
morning," Marriott went on.  "What a record you made!
Not a single acquittal the whole term!"

Eades made no reply.  He was wondering if Elizabeth
had seen the *Courier's* editorial.  In the morning
he thought he would send her a bunch of violets, and
Tuesday--

"Your course is most popular," Marriott went on.
And Eades looked at him; he could not always understand
Marriott, and he did not like to have him speak
of his course as if he had deliberately chosen it as a
mere matter of policy.

"It's the right course," he said significantly.

"Oh, I suppose so," Marriott replied.  "Still--I really
can't congratulate you when I think of those poor
devils--"

"I haven't a bit of sympathy for them," said Eades
coldly.  This, he thought, was where Elizabeth got
those strange, improper notions.  Marriott should not
be permitted--

Just then, in an automobile tearing by, they saw Dick
Ward, and Eades suddenly recalled a scene he had
witnessed in the club the day before.

"That young fellow's going an awful gait," he said
suddenly.

"Who, Dick?"

"Yes, I saw him in the club yesterday--"

"I know," said Marriott.  "It's a shame.  He's a nice
little chap."

"Can't you do something for him?  He seems to like you."

"What can I do?"

"Well, can't you--speak to him?"

"I never could preach," said Marriott.

"Well," said Eades helplessly, "it's too bad."

"Yes," said Marriott; "it would break their
hearts--Ward's and Elizabeth's."





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   XI

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The Koerners, indeed, as Marriott said, had had a
hard winter.  The old man, sustained at first by a
foolish optimism, had expected that his injury would be
compensated immediately by heavy damages from the
railroad he had served so long.  Marriott had begun
suit, and then the law began the slow and wearisome
unfolding of its interminable delays.  Weeks and
months went by and nothing was done.  Koerner sent
for Marriott, and Marriott explained--the attorneys
for the railroad company had filed a demurrer, the
docket was full, the case would not be reached for a
long time.  Koerner could not understand; finally, he
began to doubt Marriott; some of his neighbors, with
the suspicion natural to the poor, hinted that Marriott
might have been influenced by the company.  Koerner's
leg, too, gave him incessant pain.  All winter long he
was confined to the house, and the family grew tired
of his monotonous complainings.  To add to this,
Koerner was now constantly dunned by the surgeon
and by the authorities of the hospital; the railroad
refused to pay these bills because Koerner had brought
suit; the bills, to a frugal German like Koerner, were
enormous, appalling.

The Koerners, a year before, had bought the house
in which they lived, borrowing the money from a
building and loan association.  The agent of the
association, who had been so kind and obliging before the
mortgage was signed, was now sharp and severe; he
had lately told Koerner that unless he met the next
instalment of interest he would set the family out in
the street.

Koerner had saved some money from his wages,
small as they were; but this was going fast.  During
the winter Mrs. Koerner, though still depressed and
ill, had begun to do washings; the water, splashing over
her legs from the tubs in the cold wood-shed day after
day, had given her rheumatism.  Gusta helped, of
course, but with all they could do it was hard to keep
things going.  Gusta tried to be cheerful, but this was
the hardest work of all; she often thought of the
pleasant home of the Wards, and wished she were back
there.  She would have gone back, indeed, and given her
father her wages, but there was much to do at home--the
children to look after, the house to keep, the meals
to get, the washings to do, and her father's leg to dress.
Several times she consulted Marriott about the legal
entanglements into which the family was being drawn;
Marriott was wearied with the complications--the
damage suit, the mortgage, the threatened actions for the
doctor's bills.  The law seemed to be snarling the
Koerners in every one of its meshes, and the family was
settling under a Teutonic melancholia.

Just at this time the law touched the family at
another point--Archie was arrested.  For a while he had
sought work, but his experience in the army had
unfitted him for every normal calling; he had acquired a
taste for excitement and adventure, and no peaceful
pursuit could content him.  He would not return to the
army because he had too keen a memory of the
indignities heaped on a common soldier by officers who had
been trained from youth to an utter disregard of all
human relations save those that were unreal and
artificial.  He had learned but one thing in the army, and
that was to shoot, and he could shoot well.  Somehow
he had secured a revolver, a large one, thirty-eight
caliber, and with this he was constantly practising.

Because Archie would not work, Koerner became
angry with him; he was constantly remonstrating with
him and urging him to get something to do.  Archie
took all his father's reproaches with his usual good
nature, but as the winter wore slowly on and the
shadow of poverty deepened in the home, the old man
became more and more depressed, his treatment of his
son became more and more bitter.  Finally Archie
stayed away from home to escape scolding.  He spent
his evenings in Nussbaum's saloon, where, because he
had been a soldier in the Philippines and was attractive
and good looking, he was a great favorite and
presently a leader of the young men who spent their
evenings there.  These young men were workers in a
machine shop; they had a baseball club called the
"Vikings," and in summer played games in the parks on
Sundays.  In the winter they spent their evenings in
the saloon, the only social center accessible to them;
here, besides playing pool, they drank beer, talked
loudly, laughed coarsely, sang, and now and then
fought, very much like Vikings indeed.

Later, roaming down town to Market Place, Archie
made other acquaintances, and these young men were
even more like Vikings.  They were known as the
Market Place gang, and they made their headquarters
in Billy Deno's saloon, though they were well known in
all the little saloons around the four sides of the
Market.  They were known, too, at the police station,
which stood grimly overlooking Market Place,
for they had committed many petty raids, and most
of them had served terms in the workhouse.  One by
one they were being sent to the penitentiary, a
distinction they seemed to prize, or which their fellows
seemed to prize in them when they got back.  The gang
had certain virtues,--it stuck together; if a member
was in trouble, the other members were all willing to do
anything to help him out.  Usually this willingness took
the form of appearing in police court and swearing to
an alibi, but they had done this service so often that the
police-court habitués and officials smiled whenever they
appeared.  Their testimonies never convinced the
judge; but they were imperturbable and ever ready to
commit perjury in the cause.

When Archie was out of money he could not buy
cartridges for his revolver, and he discovered by chance
one afternoon, when he had drifted into a little
shooting gallery, that the proprietor was glad to give him
cartridges in return for an exhibition with the revolver,
for the exhibition drew a crowd, and the boozy sailors
who lounged along the Market in the evening were
fascinated by Archie's skill and forthwith emulated it.
It was in this way that Archie met the members of the
Market Place gang, and finding them stronger, braver,
more enterprising spirits than the Vikings, he became
one of them, spent his days and nights with them, and
visited Nussbaum's no more.  He became the fast
friend of Spud Healy, the leader of the gang, and in
this way he came to be arrested.

Besides Archie and Spud Healy, Red McGuire,
Butch Corrigan, John Connor and Mike Nailor were
arrested.  A Market Place grocer had missed a box of
dried herrings, reported it to the police, and the police,
of course, had arrested on suspicion such of the gang as
they could find.

Archie's arrest was a blow to Koerner.  He viewed
the matter from the German standpoint, just as he
viewed everything, even after his thirty-seven years in
America.  It was a blow to his German reverence for
law, a reverence which his own discouraging
experience of American law could not impair, and it was a
blow to his German conception of parental authority;
he denounced Archie, declaring that he would do
nothing for him even if he could.

Gusta, in the great love she had for Archie, felt an
instant desire to go to him, but when she mentioned
this, her father turned on her so fiercely that she did not
dare mention it again.  On Monday morning, when her
work was done, Gusta, dressing herself in the clothes
she had not often had occasion to wear during the
winter, stole out of the house and went down town,--a
disobedience in which she was abetted by her mother.
Half an hour later Gusta was standing bewildered in
the main entrance of the Market Place Police Station.
The wide hall was vacant, the old and faded signs on
the walls, bearing in English and in German
instructions for police-court witnesses, could not aid her.
From all over the building she heard noises of various
activities,--the hum of the police court, the sound of
voices, from some near-by room a laugh.  She went on
and presently found an open door, and within she saw
several officers in uniform, with handsome badges on
their breasts and stars on the velvet collars of their
coats.  As she hesitated before this door, a policeman
noticed her, and his coarse face lighted up with a
suggestive expression as he studied the curves of her
figure.  He planted himself directly in front of her, his
big figure blocking the way.

"I'd like to speak to my brother, if I can," said
Gusta.  "He's arrested."

She colored and her eyes fell.  The policeman's eyes
gleamed.

"What's his name, Miss?" he asked.

"Archie Koerner."

"What's he in fer?"

"I can't tell you, sir."

The policeman looked at her boldly, and then he
took her round arm in his big hand and turned her
toward the open door.

"Inspector," he said, "this girl wants to see her
brother.  What's his name?" he asked again, turning to
Gusta.

"Koerner, sir," said Gusta, speaking to the scowling
inspector, "Archie Koerner."

Inspector McFee, an old officer who had been on the
police force for twenty-five years, eyed her suspiciously.
His short hair was dappled with gray, and his
mustache was clipped squarely and severely on a level
with his upper lip.  Gusta had even greater fear of
him than she had of the policeman, who now released
his hold of her arm.  Instinctively she drew away from him.

"Archie Koerner, eh?" said the inspector in a gruff voice.

At the name, a huge man, swart and hairy, in civilian's
dress, standing by one of the big windows, turned
suddenly and glowered at Gusta from under thick
black eyebrows.  His hair, black and coarse and closely
clipped, bristled almost low enough on his narrow
forehead to meet his heavy brows.  He had a flat nose, and
beneath, half encircling his broad, deep mouth, was a
black mustache, stubbed and not much larger than his
eyebrows.  His jaw was square and heavy.  A gleam
showed in his small black eyes and gave a curiously
sinister aspect to his black visage.

"What's that about Koerner?" he said, coming
forward aggressively.  Gusta shrank from him.  She felt
herself in the midst of powerful, angry foes.

"You say he's your brother?" asked the inspector.

"Yes, sir."

"What do you want of him?"

"Oh, I just want to see him, sir," Gusta said.  "I
just want to talk to him a minute--that's all, sir."

Her blue eyes were swimming with tears.

"Hold on a minute," said the man of the dark visage.
He went up to the inspector, whispered to him a
moment.  The inspector listened, finally nodded, then took
up a tube that hung by his desk and blew into it.  Far
away a whistle shrilled.

"Let this girl see Koerner," he said, speaking into
the tube, "in Kouka's presence."  Then, dropping the
tube, he said to Gusta:

"Go down-stairs--you can see him."

The policeman took her by the arm again, and led
her down the hall and down the stairs to the turnkey's
room.  The turnkey unlocked a heavy door and tugged
it open; inside, in a little square vestibule, Gusta saw
a dim gas-jet burning.  The turnkey called:

"Koerner!"

Then he turned to Gusta and said:

"This way."

She went timidly into the vestibule and found
herself facing a heavy door, crossed with iron bars.  On
the other side of the bars was the face of Archie.

"Hello, Gusta," he said.

She had lifted her skirts a little; the floor seemed
to her unclean.  The odor of disinfectants, which, strong
as it was, could not overpower the other odors it was
intended to annihilate, came strongly to her.  Through
the bars she had a glimpse of high whitewashed walls,
pierced near the top with narrow windows dirty beyond
all hope.  On the other side was a row of cells, their
barred doors now swinging open.  Along the wall
miserable figures were stretched on a bench.  Far back,
where the prison grew dark as night, other figures
slouched, and she saw strange, haggard faces peering
curiously at her out of the gloom.

"Hello, Gusta," Archie said.

She felt that she should take his hand, but she
disliked to thrust it through the bars.  Still she did so.
In slipping her hand through to take Archie's hand it
touched the iron, which was cold and soft as if with
some foul grease.

"Oh, Archie," she said, "what has happened?"

"Search me," he said, "I don't know what I'm here
for.  Ask Detective Kouka there.  He run me in."

Gusta turned.  The black-visaged man was standing
beside her.  Archie glared at the detective in open
hatred, and Kouka sneered but controlled himself, and
looked away as if, after all, he were far above such
things.

Then they were silent, for Gusta could not speak.

"How did you hear of the pinch?" asked Archie
presently.

"Mrs. Schopfle was in--she told us," replied Gusta.

"What did the old man say?"

"Oh, Archie!  He's awful mad!"

Archie hung his head and meditatively fitted the toe
of his boot into one of the squares made by the crossed
bars at the bottom of the door.

"Say, Gusta," he said, "you tell him I'm in wrong;
will you?  Honest to God, I am!"

He raised his face suddenly and held it close to the
bars.

"I will, Archie," she said.

"And how's ma?"

"Oh, she's pretty well."  Gusta could not say the
things she wished; she felt the presence of Kouka.

"Say, Gusta," said Archie, "see Mr. Marriott; tell
him to come down here; I want him to take my case.
I'll work and pay him when I get out.  Say, Gusta," he
went on, "tell him to come down this afternoon.  My
God, I've got to get out of here!  Will you?  You know
where his office is?"

"I'll find it," said Gusta.

"It's in the Wayne Building."

Gusta tried to look at Archie; she tried to keep her
eyes on his face, on his tumbled yellow hair, on his
broad shoulders, broader still because his coat and
waistcoat were off, and his white throat was revealed
by his open shirt.  But she found it hard, because her
eyes were constantly challenged by the sights beyond--the
cell doors, the men sleeping off their liquor, the
restless figures that haunted the shadows, the white
faces peering out of the gloom.  The smell that came
from within was beginning to sicken her.

"Oh, Archie," she said, "it must be awful in there!"

Archie became suddenly enraged

"Awful?" he said.  "It's hell!  This place ain't fit for
a dog to stay in.  Why, Gusta, it's alive--it's crawlin'!
That's what it is!  I didn't sleep a wink last night!
Not a wink!  Say, Gusta," he grasped the bars, pressed
his face against them, "see Mr. Marriott and tell him
to get me out of here.  Will you?  See him, will you?"

"I will, Archie," she said.  "Ill go right away."

She was eager now to leave, for she had already
turned sick with loathing.

"And say, Gusta," Archie said, "get me some
cigarettes and send 'em down by Marriott."

"All right," she said.  She was backing away.

"Good-by," he called.  The turnkey was locking the
door on him.

Outside, Gusta leaned a moment against the wall of
the building, breathing in the outdoor air; presently
she went on, but it was long before she could cleanse
her mouth of the taste or her nostrils of the odor of the
foul air of that prison in which her brother was locked.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`XII`:

.. class:: center large

   XII

.. vspace:: 2

Gusta hurried out of the alley as fast as she could
go; she wished to get away from the police station,
and to forget the faces of those men in prison.  It was
now nine o'clock and the activity of the Market was
waning; the few gardener's wagons that lingered with
the remnants of their loads were but a suggestion of the
hundreds of wagons that had packed the square before
the dawn.  Under the shed, a block long, a constable
was offering at public vendue the household goods of
some widow who had been evicted; the torn and rusty
mattresses, broken chairs and an old bed were going
for scarcely enough to pay the costs; a little,
blue-bearded man, who had forced the sale, stood by sharply
watching, ready to bid the things in himself if the
dealers in second-hand furniture should not offer
enough.  Gusta hurried on, past butcher-shops, past
small saloons, and she hurried faster because every
one--the policemen, the second-hand dealers, the drivers
of the market-wagons, the butchers in their blood-stained
smock frocks--turned to look at her.  It was
three blocks to the Wayne Building, rearing its fifteen
stories aloft from the roaring tide of business at its
feet, and Gusta was glad to lose herself in the crowds
that swarmed along the street.

The waiting-room of Marriott's office was filled; the
door which was lettered with his name was closed, and
Gusta had to wait.  She joined the group that sat silent
in the chairs along the walls, and watched the girl with
the yellow hair at the typewriter.  The girl's white
fingers twinkled over the keys; the little bell tinkled and
the girl snatched back the carriage of the machine with
a swift grating sound; she wrote furiously, and Gusta
was fascinated.  She wished she might be a typewriter;
it must be so much easier to sit here in this pleasant,
sunlit office, high above the cares and turmoil of the
world, and write on that beautiful machine; so much
easier than to toil in a poor, unhappy home with a
mother ill, a father maimed and racked by pains so
that he was always morose and cross, a brother in jail,
and always work--the thankless task of washing at a
tub, of getting meals when there was little food to get
them with.  Gusta thought she might master the
machine, but no--her heart sank--she could not spell nor
understand all the long words the lawyers used, so that
was hopeless.

After a while the door marked "Mr. Marriott"
opened, and a man stepped out, a well-dressed man,
with an air of prosperousness; he glanced at the
yellow-haired typewriter as he passed out of the office.
Marriott was standing in his door, looking at the line
of waiting clients; his face was worn and tired.  He
seemed to hesitate an instant, then he nodded to one
of the waiting women, and she rose and entered the
private office.  Just as Marriott was closing the door,
he saw Gusta and smiled, and Gusta was cheered; it
was the first friendly smile she had seen that day.

She had to wait two hours.  The men did not detain
Marriott long, but the women remained in his private
office an interminable time, and whenever he opened
his door to dismiss one of them, he took out his watch
and looked at it.  At last, however, when all had gone,
he said:

"Well, Gusta, what can I do for you?"  He dropped
into his chair, swung round to face her, rested one
elbow on the top of the desk and leaned his head in his
hand.

"I came to see about Archie."

Marriott felt the deadly ennui that came over him
at the thought of these petty criminal cases.  The crimes
were so small, so stupid, and so squalid, they had
nothing to excuse them, not even the picturesque quality of
adventure that by some sophistry might extenuate
crimes of a more enterprising and dangerous class.
They were so hopeless, too, and Marriott could hardly
keep a straight face while he defended the perpetrators,
and yet he allowed himself to be drawn into them; he
found himself constantly pleading for some poor devil
who had neither money to pay him nor the decency to
thank him.  Sometimes he wondered why he did it, and
whenever he wondered he decided that he would never
take another such case.  Then the telephone would ring,
and before he knew it he would be in police court
making another poor devil's cause his own, while more
important litigation must wait--for the petty criminals
were always in urgent need; the law would not stay
for them nor abide their convenience; with them it was
imperative, implacable, insistent, as if to dress the
balance for its delay and complaisance with its larger
criminals.  Marriott often thought it over, and he had
thought enough to recognize in these poor law-breakers
a certain essential innocence; they were so sublimely
foolish, so illogical, they made such lavish sacrifice
of all that was best in their natures; they lived so
hardly, so desperately; they paid such tremendous prices
and got so little; they were so unobservant, they learned
nothing by experience.  And yet with one another they
were so kind, so considerate, so loyal, that it seemed
hard to realize that they could be so unkind and so
disloyal to the rest of mankind.  In his instinctive love of
human nature, their very hopelessness and helplessness
appealed to him.

"Mr. Marriott, do you think he is guilty?" Gusta was
asking.

"Guilty?" said Marriott, automatically repeating the
word.  "Guilty?  What difference does that make?"

"Oh, Mr. Marriott!" the girl exclaimed, her blue
eyes widening.  "Surely, it makes all the difference in
the world!"

"To you?"

"Why--yes--shouldn't it?"

"No, it shouldn't, Gusta, and what's more, it doesn't.
And it doesn't to me, either.  You don't want him sent
to prison even if he is guilty, do you?"

"N--no," Gusta hesitated as she assented to the
heresy.

"No, of course you don't.  Because, Gusta, we know
him--we know he's all right, don't we, no matter what
he has done?  Just as we know that we ourselves are
all right when we do bad things--isn't that it?"

The girl was sitting with her yellow head bent; she
was trying to think.

"But father would say--"

"Oh, yes," Marriott laughed, "father would say and
grandfather would say, too--that's just the trouble.
Father got his notions from the Old World, but
we--Gusta, we know more than father or grandfather in
this country."

Marriott enjoyed the discomfiture that Gusta plainly
showed in her inability to understand in the least what
he was saying.  He felt a little mean about it, for he
recognized that he was speaking for his own benefit
rather than for hers; he had wished Elizabeth might
be there to hear him.

"I don't know much about it, Mr. Marriott," Gusta
said presently, "but when will you go to see him?"

"Oh, I'll try to get down this afternoon."

"All right.  He told me to ask you please to bring him
some cigarettes.  Of course," she was going on in an
apologetic tone, but Marriott cut her short:

"Oh, he wants cigarettes?  Well, I'll take them to him."

Then they talked the futilities which were all such a
case could inspire, and Marriott, looking at his watch,
made Gusta feel that she should go.  But the world
wore a new aspect for her when she left Marriott's
office.  The spring sun was warm now, and she felt that
she had the right to glory in it.  The crowds in the
streets seemed human and near, not far away and
strange as they had been before; she felt that she had
somehow been restored to her own rights in life.  She
had not understood Marriott's philosophy in the least,
but she went away with the memory of his face and the
memory of his smile; she could not realize her
thoughts; it was a feeling more than anything else, but
she knew that here was one man, at least, who believed
in her brother, and it seemed that he was determined
to believe in him no matter what the brother did; and
he believed in her, too, and this was everything--this
made the whole world glad, just as the sun made the
whole world glad that morning.

But Gusta's heart sank at the thought of going
home; there was nothing there now but discord and
toil.  The excitement, the change of the morning, the
little interview with Marriott, had served to divert
her, and now the thought of returning to that dull and
wearisome routine was more than ever distasteful.  It
was nearly noon, and she would be expected, but she
did not like to lose these impressions, and she did not
like to leave this warm sunshine, these busy, moving
streets, this contact with active life, and so she
wandered on out Claybourne Avenue.  There was slowly
taking form within her a notion of eking out her
pleasure by going to see Elizabeth Ward, but she did not let
the thought wholly take form; rather she let it lie
dormant under her other thoughts.  She walked along in
the sunlight and looked at the automobiles that went
trumpeting by, at the carriages rolling home with their
aristocratic mistresses lolling on their cushions.  Gusta
found a pleasure in recognizing many of these women;
she had opened the Wards' big front door to them,
she had served them with tea, or at dinner; she had
heard their subdued laughter; she had covertly
inspected their toilets; some of them had glanced for an
instant into her eyes and thanked her for some little
service.  And then she could recall things she had heard
them say, bits of gossip, or scandal, some of which gave
her pleasure, others feelings of hatred and disgust.  A
rosy young matron drove by in a phaeton, with her
pretty children piled about her feet, and the sight
pleased Gusta.  She smiled and hurried on with
quickened step.

At last she saw the familiar house, and then to her
joy she saw Elizabeth on the veranda, leaning against
one of the pillars, evidently taking the air, enjoying the
sun and the spring.  Elizabeth saw Gusta, too, and her
eyes brightened.

"Why, Gusta!" she said.  "Is that you?"

Gusta stood on the steps and looked up at Elizabeth.
Her face was rosy with embarrassment and pleasure.
Elizabeth perched on the rail of the veranda and
examined the vine of Virginia roses that had not yet
begun to put forth.

"And how are you getting along?" she said.  "How
are they all at home?"

Gusta told her of her father and of her mother and of
the children.

Elizabeth tried to talk to her; she was fond of her,
but there seemed to be nothing to talk about.  She knew,
too, how Gusta adored her, and she felt that she must
always retain this adoration, and constantly prove her
kindness to Gusta.  But the conversation was nothing
but a series of questions she extorted from herself by a
continued effort that quickly wearied her, especially
as Gusta's replies were delivered so promptly and so
laconically that she could not think of other questions
fast enough.  At last she said:

"And how's Archie?"

And then instantly she remembered that Archie was
in prison.  Her heart smote her for her thoughtlessness.
Gusta's head was hanging.

"I've just been to see him," she said.

"I wished to hear of him, Gusta," Elizabeth said,
trying by her tone to destroy the quality of her first
question.  "I spoke to Mr. Marriott about him--I'm
sure he'll get him off."

Gusta made no reply, and Elizabeth saw that her
tears were falling.

.. _`Elizabeth saw that her tears were falling`:

.. figure:: images/img-106.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Elizabeth saw that her tears were falling

   Elizabeth saw that her tears were falling

"Come, Gusta," she said sympathetically, "you
mustn't feel bad."

The girl suddenly looked at her, her eyes full of
tears.

"Oh, Miss Elizabeth," she said, "if you could only
know!  To see him down there--in that place!  Such a
thing never happened to us before!"

"But I'm sure it'll all come out right in the end--I'm
sure of that.  There must have been some mistake.
Tell me all about it."

And then Gusta told her the whole story.

"You don't know how it feels, Miss Elizabeth," she
said when she had done, "to have your own brother--such
a thing couldn't happen to you--here."  Gusta
glanced about her, taking in at a glance, as it were, the
large house, and all its luxury and refinement and
riches, as if these things were insurmountable barriers
to such misfortune and disgrace.

Elizabeth saw the glance, and some way, suddenly,
the light and warmth went out of the spring day for
her.  The two girls looked at each other a moment,
then they looked away, and there was silence.  Elizabeth's
brows were contracted; in her eyes there was a
look of pain.

When Gusta had gone Elizabeth went indoors, but
her heart was heavy.  She tried to throw off the feeling,
but could not.  She told herself that it was her
imagination, always half morbid, but this did not satisfy her.
She was silent at the luncheon-table until her mother
said:

"Elizabeth, what in the world ails you?"

"Oh; nothing."

"I know something does," insisted Mrs. Ward.

Elizabeth, with her head inclined, was outlining with
the prong of a fork the pattern on the salad bowl.

"Gusta has been here, telling me her troubles."

"Oh, that's it, is it?" said Mrs. Ward.

"You know her brother has been arrested."

"What for?"

"Stealing."

"Indeed!  Well!  I do wish she'd keep away!  I'm
sure I don't know what we've done that we should have
such things brought into our house!"

"But it's too bad," said Elizabeth.  "The young man--"

"Yes, the young man!  If he'd go to work and earn
an honest living, he wouldn't be arrested for stealing!"

"I was just thinking--"  Elizabeth finished the
pattern on the salad bowl and inclined her head on the
other side, as if she had really designed the pattern and
were studying the effect of her finished work,--"that
if Dick--"

"Why, Elizabeth!" Mrs. Ward cried.  "How can you
say such a thing?"

Elizabeth smiled, and the smile irritated her mother.

"I'm sure it's entirely different!" Mrs. Ward went
on.  "Dick does not belong to that class at all!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`XIII`:

.. class:: center large

   XIII

.. vspace:: 2

The truth was that Elizabeth had been worried for
days about Dick.  A few evenings before, Ward, who
took counsel of his daughter rather than of his wife in
such affairs, had told her of his concern about his son.

"I don't know what to do with the boy," he had said.
"He seems to have no interest in anything; he tired of
school, and he tired of college; and now he is of age
and--doing nothing."

She remembered how he had sat there, puffing at his
cigar as if that could assist him to some conclusion.

"I tried him in the office for a while, you know, but
he did not seem to take it seriously--of course, it
wasn't really serious; the work went on as well without
him as with him.  I guess he knew that."

Elizabeth sat and thought, but the problem which her
father had put to her immediately overpowered her;
there seemed to be no solution at all--she could not
even arrange its terms in her mind, and she was silent,
yet her silence was charged with sympathy.

"I've talked to him, but that does no good.  I've
pleaded with him, but that does no good.  I tried giving
him unlimited money, then I put him on an allowance,
then I cut him off altogether--it was just the same."

Ward smoked a moment in silence.

"I've thought of every known profession.  He says
he doesn't want to be a lawyer or a doctor; he has no
taste for mechanics, and he seems to have no interest
in business.  I've thought of sending him abroad, or out
West, but he doesn't want to do that."

And again the silence and the smoking and the pain.

"He's out to-night--where, I don't know.  I don't
want to know--I'm afraid to know!"

There was something wild, appealing and pathetic in
this cry wrung from a father's heart.  Elizabeth had
looked up quickly, her own heart aching with pity.
She recalled how he had said:

"Your mother--she doesn't understand; I don't
know that I want her to; she idolizes the boy; she
thinks he can't do wrong."

And then Elizabeth had slipped her arm about his
neck, and, leaning over, had placed her cheek against
his; her tears had come, and she had felt that his tears
had come; he had patted her hand.  They had sat thus
for a long while.

"Poor boy!" Ward had said again.  "He's only making
trouble for himself.  I'd like to help him, but
somehow, Bess, I can't get next to him; when I try to talk
to him, when I try to be confidential and all
that--something comes between us, and I can't say it right.
I can't talk to him as I could to any other man.  I don't
know why it is; I sometimes think that it's all my fault,
that I haven't reared him right, that I haven't done
my duty by him, and yet, God knows, I've tried!"

"Oh, papa," she had replied protestingly, "you
mustn't blame yourself--you've done everything."

"He's really a good boy," Ward had gone on irrelevantly,
ignoring himself in his large, unselfish thought
for his son.  "He's kind and generous, and he means
well enough--and--and--I think he likes me."

This had touched her to the quick, and she had wept
softly, stroking her father's cheek.

"Can't you--couldn't you--" he began.  "Do you
think you could talk to him, Bess?"

"I'll try," she said, and just then her brother had
come into the room, rosy and happy and unsuspecting,
and their confidences were at an end.

Ward did not realize, of course, that in asking
Elizabeth to speak to Dick he was laying a heavy burden on
her.  She had promised her father in a kind of pity for
him, a pity which sprang from her great love; but as
she thought it over, wondering what she was to say,
the ordeal grew greater and greater--greater than any
she had ever had to encounter.  For several days she
was spared the necessity of redeeming her promise, for
Dick was so little at home, and fortunately, as Elizabeth
felt, when he was there the circumstances were not
propitious.  Then she kept putting it off, and putting it off;
and the days went by.  Her father had not recurred to
the subject; having once opened his heart, he seemed
suddenly to have closed it, even against her.  His
attitude was such that she felt she could not talk the matter
over with him; if she could she might have asked him
to give her back her promise.  She could not talk it over
with her mother, and she longed to talk it over with
some one.  One evening she had an impulse to tell
Marriott about it.  She knew that he could sympathize with
her, and, what was more, she knew that he could
sympathize with Dick, whereas she could not sympathize
with Dick at all.  Though she laughed, and sang, and
read, and talked, and drove, and lived her customary
life, the subject was always in her thoughts.  Finally
she discovered that she was adopting little subterfuges
in order to evade it, and she became disgusted with
herself.  She had morbid fears that her character would
give way under the strain.  At night she lay awake
waiting, as she knew her father must be waiting, for the
ratchet of Dick's key in the night-latch.

In the many different ways she imagined herself
approaching the subject with Dick, in the many different
conversations she planned, she always found herself
facing an impenetrable barrier--she did not know with
what she was to reproach him, with what wrong she
was to charge him.  She conceived of the whole affair,
as the Anglo-Saxon mind feels it must always deal
with wrong, in the forensic form--indictment, trial,
judgment, execution.  But after all, what had Dick
done?  As she saw him coming and going through the
house, at the table, or elsewhere, he was still the same
Dick--and this perplexed her; for, looking at him
through the medium of her talk with her father, Dick
seemed to be something else than her brother; he
seemed to have changed into something bad.  Thus his
misdeeds magnified themselves to her mind, and she
thought of them instead of him, of the sin instead of the
sinner.

That night Dick did not come at all.  In the morning
when her father appeared, Elizabeth saw that he was
haggard and old.  As he walked heavily toward his
waiting carriage, her love and pity for him received a
sudden impetus.

Dick did not return until the next evening, and the
following morning he came down just as his father
was leaving the house.  If Ward heard his son's step on
the stairs, he did not turn, but went on out, got into his
brougham, and sank back wearily on its cushions.  It
happened that Elizabeth came into the hall at that
moment; she saw her father, and she saw her brother
coming down the stairs, dressed faultlessly in new
clothes and smoking a cigarette.  As Elizabeth saw
him, so easy and unconcerned, her anger suddenly
blazed out, her eyes flashed, and she took one quick
step toward him.  His fresh, ruddy face wore a smile,
but as she confronted him and held out one arm in
dramatic rigidity and pointed toward her father, Dick
halted and his smile faded.

"Look at him!" Elizabeth said, pointing to her father.
"Look at him!  Do you know what you're doing?"

"Why, Bess"--Dick began, surprised.

"You're breaking his heart, that's what you're doing!"

She stood there, her eyes menacing, her face flushed,
her arm extended.  The carriage was rolling down the
drive and her father had gone, but Elizabeth still had
the vision of his bent frame as he got into his carriage.

"Did you see him?" she went on.  "Did you see how
he's aging, how much whiter his hair has grown in the
last few weeks, how his figure has bent?  You're killing
him, that's what you're doing, killing him inch by inch.
Why can't you do it quick, all at once, and be done with
it?  That would be kinder, more merciful!"

Her lip curled in sarcasm.  Dick stood by the
newel-post, his face white, his lips open as if to speak.

"You spend your days in idleness and your nights
in dissipation.  You won't work.  You won't do
anything.  You are disgracing your family and your name.
Can't you see it, or won't you?"

"Why, Bess," Dick began, "what's the--"

She looked at him a moment; he was like her mother,
so good-natured, so slow to anger.  His attitude, his
expression, infuriated her; words seemed to have no
effect, and in her fury she felt that she must make
him see, that she must force him to realize what he was
doing--force him to acknowledge his fault--force him
to be good.

"Of course, you'd just stand there!" she said.  "Why
don't you say something?  You know what you're doing--you
know it better than I.  I should think you'd be
ashamed to look a sister in the face!"

Dick had seen Elizabeth angry before, but never
quite like this.  Slowly within him his own anger was
mounting.  What right, he thought, had she to take him
thus to task--him, a man?  He drew himself up, his
face suddenly lost its pallor and a flush of scarlet
mottled it.  Strangely, in that same instant, Elizabeth's face
became very white.

"Look here," he said, speaking in a heavy voice, "I
don't want any more of this from you!"

For an instant there was something menacing in his
manner, and then he walked away and left her.

Elizabeth stood a moment, trembling violently.  He
had gone into the dining-room; he was talking with his
mother in low tones.  Elizabeth went up the stairs to
her room and closed the door, and then a great wave of
moral sickness swept over her.  She sat down, trying to
compose herself, trying to still her nerves.  The whole
swift scene with her brother flashed before her in all
its squalor.  Had she acted well or rightly?  Was her
anger what is called a righteous indignation?  She was
sure that she had acted for the best, for her father in
the first place, and for Dick more than all, but it was
suddenly revealed to her that she had failed; she had
not touched his heart at all; she had expended all her
force, and it was utterly lost; she had failed--failed.
This word repeated itself in her brain.  She tried to
think, but her brain was in turmoil; she could think but
one thing--she had failed.  She bent her head and wept.





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   XIV

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Archie Koerner and Spud Healy and the others of
the gang lay in prison for a week; each morning they
were taken with other prisoners to the bull-pen, and
there they would stand--for an hour, two hours, three
hours--and look through the heavy wire screen at
officers, lawyers, court attachés, witnesses and
prosecutors who passed and repassed, peering at them as at
caged animals, some curiously, some in hatred and
revenge, some with fear, now and then one with pity.
The session would end, they would be taken downstairs
again--the police were not yet ready.  But finally,
one Saturday morning, they were taken into the court-room
and arraigned.  Bostwick, the judge, heard a part
of the evidence; it was nearly noon, and court never
sat on Saturday afternoons.  Bostwick and the
prosecutor both were very anxious to get away for their
half-holiday.  The session had been long and trying, the
morning was sultry, a summer day had fallen
unexpectedly in the midst of the spring.  Bostwick was
uncomfortable in his heavy clothes.  He hurried the
hearing and sent them all to the workhouse for thirty
days, and fined them the costs.  Marriott had realized
the hopelessness of the case from the first; even he was
glad the hearing was over, glad to have Archie off his
mind.

The little trial was but a trivial incident in the life of
the city; Bostwick and the prosecutor, to whom it was
but a part of the day's work, forgot it in the zest of
ordering a luncheon; the police forgot it, excepting
Kouka, who boasted to the reporters and felt important
for a day.  Frisby, a little lawyer with a catarrhal voice,
thought of it long enough to be thankful that he had
demanded his fee in advance from the mother of the
boy he had defended--it took her last cent and made
her go hungry over Sunday.  Back on the Flats, in the
shadow of the beautiful spire of St. Francis, there were
cries, Gaelic lamentations, keening, counting of beads
and prayers to the Virgin.  The reporters made
paragraphs for their newspapers, writing in the flippant
spirit with which they had been taught to treat the daily
tragedies of the police court.  Some people scanned the
paragraphs, and life passed by on the other side;
the crowds of the city surged and swayed, and
Sunday dawned with the church-bells ringing peacefully.

The Koerner family had the news that evening from
Jerry Crowley, the policeman who had recently been
assigned to that beat, his predecessor, Miller, having
been suspended for drunkenness.  Crowley had had a
hard time of it ever since he came on the beat.  The
vicinity was German and he was Irish, and race hatred
pursued him daily with sneers, and jibes, and insults,
now and then with stones and clods.  The children took
their cue from the gang at Nussbaum's; the gang made
his life miserable.  Yet Crowley was a kindly Irishman,
with many a jest and joke, and a pleasant word for
every one.  Almost anybody he arrested could get
Crowley to let him go by begging hard enough.  On
the warm evenings Koerner would sit on the stoop,
and Crowley, coming by, would stop for a dish of gossip.

"Oh, come now, Mr. Koerner," he said that Saturday
night, after he had crudely told the old German of his
son's fate, "I wouldn't take it that hard; shure an'
maybe it's good 'twill be doin' the lad an' him needin' it
the way he does."

Officer Crowley was interrupted in his comforting
by a racket at the corner--the warm, soft nights were
bringing the gang out, and he went away to wage his
hopeless battle with it.  When he returned, old man
Koerner had gone indoors.

Gusta shared all her father's humiliation and all her
mother's grief at Archie's imprisonment.  She felt that
she should visit her brother in prison, but it was a whole
week before she could get away, and then on a brilliant
Sunday afternoon she went to the workhouse.  The
hideous prison buildings were surrounded by a high
fence, ugly in its dull red paint; the office and the
adjoining quarters where the superintendent lived had a
grass plot in which some truckling trusty had made
flower-beds to please the superintendent's wife.  In the
office an old clerk, in a long black coat, received Gusta
solemnly.  He was sitting, from the habit of many
years, on the high stool at the desk where he worked;
ordinarily he crouched over his books in the fear that
political changes would take his job from him; now a
Sunday paper, which the superintendent and his family
had read and discarded, replaced the sad records, but
he bent over this none the less timidly.  After a long
while an ill-natured guard, whose face had grown
particularly sinister and vicious in the business, ordered
Gusta to follow him, and led her back into the building.
Reluctantly he unlocked doors and locked them behind
her, and Gusta grew alarmed.  Once, waiting for him to
unlock what proved to be a final door, he waited while
a line of women, fourteen or fifteen of them, in uniform
of striped gingham, went clattering up a spiral iron
stairway; two or three of the women were negresses.
They had been down to the services some Christian
people had been holding for the inmates, preaching to
them that if they believed on Jesus they would find
release, and peace, and happiness.  These people, of
course, did not mean release from the workhouse, and
the peace and happiness, it seemed, could not come
until the inmates died.  So long as they lived, their only
prospect seemed to be unpaid work by day, bread and
molasses to eat, and a cell to sleep in at night, with
iron bars locking them in and armed men to watch
them.  However, the inmates enjoyed the services
because they were allowed to sing.

After the women disappeared, Gusta stood fearfully
before a barred door and looked down into a cell-house.
The walls were three stories high, and sheer from the
floor upward, with narrow windows at the top.  Inside
this shell of brick the cells were banked tier on tier,
with dizzy galleries along each tier.  Though Gusta
could see no one, she could hear a multitude of low
voices, like the humming of a bee-hive--the prisoners,
locked two in each little cell, were permitted to talk
during this hour.  The place was clean, but had, of
course, the institutional odor.  The guard called another
guard, and between them they unlocked several locks
and threw several levers; finally a cell-door opened--and
Gusta saw Archie come forth.  He wore a soiled
ill-fitting suit of gray flannel with wide horizontal
stripes, and his hair had been clipped close to his head.
The sight so confused and appalled Gusta that she
could not speak, and the guard, standing suspiciously
by her side to hear all that was said, made it impossible
for her to talk.  The feeling was worse than that she
had had at the police station when an iron door had
thus similarly separated her from her brother.

Archie came close and took hold of the bars with both
his hands and peered at her; he asked her a few
questions about things at home, and charged her with a few
unimportant messages and errands.  But she could only
stand there with the tears streaming down her face.
Presently the guard ordered Archie back to his cell,
and he went away, turning back wistfully and repeating
his messages in a kind of desperate wish to connect
himself with the world.

When Gusta got outside again, she determined that
she would not go home, for there the long shadow of
the prison lay.  She did not know where to go or what
to do, but while she was trying to decide she heard
from afar the music of a band--surely there would be
distraction.  So she walked in the direction of the
music.  About the workhouse, as about all prisons,
were the ramshackles of squalid poverty and worse;
but little Flint Street, along which she took her way,
began to pick up, and she passed cottages, painted and
prim, where workmen lived, and the people she saw,
and their many children playing in the street, were
well dressed and happy.  It seemed strange to Gusta
that any one should be happy then.  When suddenly
she came into Eastend Avenue, she knew at last where
she was and whence the music came; she remembered
that Miami Park was not far away.  The avenue was
crowded with vehicles, not the stylish kind she had
been accustomed to on Claybourne Avenue, but
buggies from livery-stables, in which men drove to the
road-houses up the river, surreys with whole families
crowded in them, now and then some grocer's or butcher's
delivery wagon furnished with seats and filled with
women and children.  The long yellow trolley-cars
that went sliding by with incessant clangor of gongs
were loaded; the only signs of the aristocracy Gusta
once had known were the occasional automobiles,
bound, like the Sunday afternoon buggy-riders, up the
smooth white river road.

Eastend Avenue ran through the park, and just
before it reached that playground of the people it was
lined with all kinds of amusement pavilions, little
vaudeville shows, merry-go-rounds, tintype studios,
shooting galleries, pop-corn and lemonade stands,
public dance halls where men and girls were whirling in
the waltz.  On one side was a beer-garden.  All these
places were going noisily, with men shouting out the
attractions inside, hand-organs and drums making
a wild, barbaric din, and in the beer-garden a
German band braying out its meretricious tunes.  But
at the beginning of the park a dead-line was invisibly
drawn--beyond that the city would not allow the
catch-penny amusements to go.  On one side of the
avenue the park sloped down to the river, on the other
it stretched into a deep grove.  The glass roof of a
botanical house gleamed in the sun, and beyond,
hidden among the trees, were the zoölogical gardens,
where a deer park, a bear-pit, a monkey house, and a
yard in which foxes skulked and racoons slept, strove
with their mild-mannered exhibits for the beginnings
of a menagerie.  And everywhere were people strolling
along the walks, lounging under the trees, hundreds
of them, thousands of them, dressed evidently in their
best clothes, seeking relief from the constant toil that
kept their lives on a monotonous level.

Gusta stood a while and gazed on the river.  On the
farther shore its green banks rose high and rolled
away with the imagination into woods and fields and
farms.  Here and there little cat-boats moved swiftly
along, their sails white in the sun; some couples were
out in rowboats.  But as Gusta looked she suddenly
became self-conscious; she saw that, of all the
hundreds, she was the only one alone.  Girls moved about,
or stood and talked and giggled in groups, and every
girl seemed to have some fellow with her.  Gusta felt
strange and out of place, and a little bitterness rose in
her heart.  The band swelled into a livelier, more
strident strain, and Gusta resented this sudden burst of
joyousness.  She turned to go away, but just then she
saw that a young man had stopped and was looking at
her.  He was a well-built young fellow, as strong as
Archie; he had dark hair and a small mustache curled
upward at the corners in a foreign way.  His cheeks
were ruddy; he carried a light cane and smoked a
cigar.  When he saw that Gusta had noticed him he
smiled and Gusta blushed.  Then he came up to her
and took off his hat.

"Are you taking a walk?" he asked.

"I was going home," Gusta replied.  She wondered
how she could get away without hurting the young
man's feelings, for he seemed to be pleasant, harmless
and well meaning.

"It's a fine day," he said.  "There's lots o' people
out."

"Yes," said Gusta.

"Where 'bouts do you live?"

"On Bolt Street."

"Oh, I live out that way myself!" said the young
man.  "It's quite a ways from here.  Been out to see
some friends?"

"Yes."  Gusta hesitated.  "I had an errand to do out
this way."

"Don't you want to go in the park and see the zoo?
There's lots of funny animals back there."  The young
man pointed with his little cane down one of the gravel
walks that wound among the trees.  Gusta looked, and
saw the people--young couples, women with children,
and groups of young men, sauntering that way.  Then
she looked at the street-cars, loaded heavily, with
passengers clinging to the running-boards; she was
tempted to go, but it was growing late.

"No, thanks," she said, "I must be going home now."

"Are you going to walk or take the car?" asked the
young man.

"I'll walk, I guess," she said; and then, lest he think
she had no car fare, she added: "the cars are so
crowded."

She started then, and was surprised when the young
man naturally walked along by her side, swinging his
cane and talking idly to her.  At first she was at a loss
whether to let him walk with her or not; she had a
natural fear, a modesty, the feminine instinct, but she
did not know just how to dismiss him.  She kept her
face averted and her eyes downcast; but finally, when
her fears had subsided a little, she glanced at him
occasionally; she saw that he was good-looking, and she
considered him very well dressed.  He had a gold watch
chain, and when she asked him what time it was he
promptly drew out a watch.  Their conversation, from
being at the first quite general, soon became personal,
and before they had gone far Gusta learned that the
young man's name was Charlie Peltzer, that he was a
plumber, and that sometimes he made as much as
twenty dollars a week.  By the time they parted at the
corner near Gusta's home they felt very well acquainted
and had agreed to meet again.

After that they met frequently.  In the evening after
supper Gusta would steal out, Peltzer would be waiting
for her at the corner, and they would stroll under the
trees that were rapidly filling with leaves.  Once,
passing Policeman Crowley, Gusta saw him looking at them
narrowly.  There was a little triangular park not far
from Gusta's home, and there the two would sit all the
evening.  The moon was full, the nights were soft and
mild and warm.  On Sundays they went to the park
where they had met, and now and then they danced in
the public pavilion.  But Gusta never danced with any
of the other men there, nor did Peltzer dance with any
of the other girls; they danced always together, looking
into each other's eyes.  Now she could endure the
monotony and the drudgery at home, the children's
peevishness, her mother's melancholy, her father's
querulousness.  Even Archie's predicament lost its
horror and its sadness for her.  She had not yet,
however, told Peltzer, and she felt ashamed of Archie, as
if, in creating the possibility of compromising her, he
had done her a wrong.  She went about in a dream,
thinking of Peltzer all the time, and of the wonderful
thing that had brought all this happiness into her life.

Gusta had not, however, as yet allowed Peltzer to
go home with her; he went within half a block of the
house, and there, in the shadow, they took their long
farewell.  But Peltzer was growing more masterful;
each night he insisted on going a little nearer, and at
last one night he clung to her, bending over her,
looking into her blue eyes, his lips almost on hers, and
before they were aware they were at her door.  Gusta was
aroused by Crowley's voice.  Crowley was there with
her father, telling him again the one incident in all his
official career that had distinguished him for a place in
the columns of the newspapers.  He was just at the
climax of the thrilling incident, and they heard his
voice ring out:

"An' I kept right on toowards him, an' him shootin'
at me breasht four toimes--"

He had got up, in the excitement he so often evoked
in living over that dramatic moment again, to illustrate
the action, and he saw Gusta and Charlie.  Peltzer
stopped, withdrew his arm hurriedly from Gusta's
waist, and then Crowley, forgetting his story, called
out:

"Oh-ho, me foine bucko!"

Then Koerner saw Gusta, and, forgetting for a moment,
tried to rise to his feet, then dropped back again.

"Who's dot feller mit you, huh?  Who's dot now?"
he demanded.

"Aw, tut, tut, man," said Crowley.  "Shure an' the
girl manes no harm at all--an' the laad, he's a likely
wan.  Shure now, Misther Koerner, don't ye be haard
on them--they're that young now!  An' 'tis the spring,
do ye moind--and it's well I can see the phite flower
on the thorn tra in me ould home these days!"

Gusta's heart and Peltzer's heart warmed to
Crowley, but old Koerner said:

"In mit you!"

And she slipped hurriedly indoors.

But nothing could harm her now, for the world had
changed.





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   XV

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Archie Koerner served his thirty days in the workhouse,
then, because he was in debt to the State for the
costs and had no money with which to pay the debt, he
was kept in prison ten days longer, although it was
against the constitution of that State to imprison a
man for debt.  Forty days had seemed a short time to
Bostwick when he pronounced sentence; had he chosen,
he might have given Archie a sentence, in fine and
imprisonment, that would have kept him in the workhouse
for two years; he frequently did this with thieves.
These forty days, too, had been brief to Marriott, and
to Eades, and they had been brief to Elizabeth, who
had found new happiness in the fact that Mr. Amos
Hunter had given Dick a position in the banking
department of his Title and Trust Company.  These forty
days, in fact, had passed swiftly for nearly every one in
the city, because they were spring days, filled with
warm sunshine by day, and soft and musical showers
by night.  The trees were pluming themselves in new
green, the birds were singing, and people were happy
in their release from winter; they were busied about
new clothes, with riding and driving, with plans for
summer vacations and schemes for the future; they
were all imbued with the spirit of hope the spring had
brought to the world again.  To Gusta, too, in her love,
these days had passed swiftly, like a hazy, golden dream.

But to Archie these forty days had not been forty
days at all, but a time of infinite duration.  He counted
each day as it dragged by; he counted it when he came
from his bunk in the morning; he counted it every hour
during the long day's work over the hideous bricks he
could find no joy in making; he counted it again at
evening, and the last thing before he fell asleep.  It
seemed that forty days would never roll around.

They did pass finally, and a morning came when he
could leave the comrades of his misery.  He felt some
regret in doing this; many of them had been kind to
him, and friendships had been developed by means of
whispers and signs, but more by the silent influence of
a common suffering.  He had quarreled and almost
fought with some of them, for the imprisonment had
developed the beast that was in them, and had made
many of them morose, ugly, suspicious, dangerous,
filling them with a kind of moral insanity.  But he forgot
all these enmities in the joy of his release, and he bade
his friends good-by and wished them luck.  In the
superintendent's office they gave him back his clothes,
and he went out again into the world.

It was strange to be at liberty again.  His first
unconscious impulse was to take up his life where he had
left it off, but he did not know how to do this.  For
behind him stretched an unknown time, a blank, a
break in his existence, which refused to adjust itself
to the rest of his life; it bore no relation to that
existence which was himself, his being, and yet it was there.
The world that knew no such blank or break had gone
on meanwhile and left him behind, and he could not
catch up now.  He was like a man who had been
unconscious and had awakened with a blurred conception
of things; it was as if he had come out of a profound
anæsthesia, to find that he had been irrevocably maimed
by some unnecessary operation in surgery.

Archie did not, of course, realize all this clearly; had
he been able to do so, he might have avoided some of
the consequences.  But he had a troubled sense of
change, and he was to learn it and realize it fully only
by a slow, torturing process, a bit at a time.  He had the
first sensation of this change in the peculiar gleam that
came into the eye of a policeman he passed in Market
Place, and he felt it, too, when, half fearfully, he
presented himself at the back door of his home.  His
father's fury had long since abated, but he showed that
he could not look on Archie as he once had done, and
Gusta showed it, too.  Bostwick may have thought he
had sentenced Archie to forty days in prison, but he
had really sentenced him to a lifetime in prison; for the
influences of those forty days could never leave Archie
now; the shadows of that prison were ever lengthening,
and they were for evermore to creep with him wherever
he went, keeping him always within their shades.  He
was thereafter to be but an umbra at the feast of life.

Archie could not think of the whole matter very
clearly; of the theft of which he had been convicted
he scarcely thought at all.  The change that came in
the world's attitude toward him did not seem to be
concerned with that act; it was never mentioned or
even suggested to him at home or elsewhere.  The thing
that marked him was not the fact that he had been a
thief, but that he had been a prisoner.  When he did
think of the theft, he told himself that he had paid for
that; the score had been wiped out; the world had
taken its revenge on him.  This revenge was expressed
by the smile that lit up the face of the grocer whose
herrings had been stolen; it had been shown in the
satisfaction of the prosecutor when the judge
announced his finding; it had been expressed by the
harshness of the superintendent and the guards at the
workhouse; it was shown even by the glance of that
policeman he met in the Market.  The world had
wreaked its vengeance on him, and Archie felt that it
should be satisfied now.

There was but one place now where the atmosphere
lacked the element of suspicion and distrust, but one
place where he was not made to feel the barrier that
separated him from other men, and that was with the
gang.  The gang welcomed him with a frank heartiness;
they showed almost the same eagerness and pleasure
in him that they showed in welcoming Spud and the
others.  There was balm in their welcome; they asked
no questions, they drew no distinctions; to them he was
the same old Archie, only grown nearer because now
he could unite with them in experience--they all had
those same gaps in their lives.

That afternoon they celebrated with cans of beer in
the shade of a lumber pile, and that night the gang
went down the line.  Having some money, they were
welcome in all the little saloons, and the girls in short
dresses, who stood about the bars rolling cigarettes
constantly, were glad to see them.  And Archie found
that no questions were asked here, that no distinctions
were made even when respected, if not respectable, men
appeared, even when the prosecutor of the police court
came along with a companion, and spent a portion of
the salary these people contributed so heavily to pay,
even when the detectives came and received the tribute
money.  And it dawned on Archie that here was a
little quarter of the world where he was wanted, where
he was made to feel at home, where that gap in his life
made no difference.  It was a small quarter, covering
scarcely more than a dozen blocks.  It was filled with
miserable buildings, painted garishly and blazing with
light; there was ever the music of pianos and orchestras,
and in the saloons that were half theaters, bands
blared out rapid tunes.  And here was swarming life;
here, in the midst of death.  But it was an important
quarter of the town; in rents and dividends and fines
it contributed largely of the money it made at such risk
and sacrifice of body and of soul, to all that was
accounted good and great in the city.  It helped to pay
the salaries of the mayor and the judges and the
prosecutors and the clerks and the detectives and the
policemen; some of its money went to support in idleness and
luxury many dainty and exclusive women in Claybourne
Avenue, to build enormous churches, to pay for
stained-glass windows with pictures of Christ and the
Magdalene, pictures that in soft artistic hues lent a
gentle religious and satisfying melancholy to the ladies
and gentlemen who sat in their pews on Sundays; it
even helped to send missionaries to far countries like
Japan and China and India and Africa, in order that
the heathen who lived there might receive the light of
the Cross.

While in the workhouse Archie had occupied the
same cell with a man called Joseph Mason, which was
not his name.  The prison was crowded, and it was
necessary for the prisoners to double up.  The cells
were narrow and had two bunks, one above and the
other below--there was as much room as there is in a
section of a sleeping-car.  In these cells the men slept
and ate and lived, spending all the time they did not
pass at labor in the brick-yard.  During those forty
days Archie became well acquainted with Mason; they
sat on their little stools all day Sunday and talked, and
when they climbed into their bunks at night they whispered.
They shared with each other their surreptitious
matches and tobacco--all they had.

This man Mason was nearly fifty years old.  His
close-cropped hair and his close-shaven beard gave his
head and cheeks and lips a uniform color of dark blue;
his lips were thin and compressed from a habit of
taciturnity, his eyes were small, bright and alert; at any
sound he would turn quickly and glance behind him.
He had spent twenty years in prison--ten years in
Dannemora, five in Columbus, three in Allegheny and
two in Joliet.  This, however, did not include the time
he had been shut up in police stations, calabooses,
county jails and workhouses.  In the present instance
he had been arrested for pocket-picking, and had
agreed to plead guilty if the offense were reduced to
petit larceny; the authorities had accepted his proposal,
and he had been sentenced to six months in the
workhouse.  He had served four and a half months of his
sentence when Archie went into the workhouse.

The only time when Mason showed any marked
sense of humor was when he told Archie of his having
confessed to pocket-picking.  The truth was that he
was totally innocent of this crime, and if the police had
been wise they would have known this.  Mason was a
Johnny Yegg, that is, an itinerant safe-blower.  As a
yegg man, of course, he never had picked a pocket, and
could not have done so had he wished, for he did not
know how; and if he had known how, still he would
not have done so, for the yeggs held such crimes as
picking pockets in contempt.  All of the terms he had
served in states' prisons had been for blowing safes,
and all of the safes had been in rural post-offices.  The
technical charge was burglary, though he was not a
burglar, either, in the sense of entering dwellings by
night; this was a class of thieving left to prowlers.
The preceding fall, however, a safe had been blown in
a country post-office near the city, and Mason knew that
the United States inspectors would suspect him if they
found him, and while he had been innocent of that
particular crime, he knew that this would make no
difference to the inspectors; they would willingly "job" him,
as he expressed it, justifying the act to any one who
might question it--they would not need to justify it to
themselves--by arguing that if he had not blown that
particular safe he had blown others, so that the balance
would be dressed in the end.  Consequently, when the
police arrested him for pocket-picking, he hailed it as a
stroke of good fortune and looked on the workhouse
as an asylum.  He had been a model prisoner, and had
given the authorities no trouble.  He did this partly
because he was a philosophical fellow, patient and
uncomplaining, partly because he did not wish to attract
attention to himself.  His picture and his measurements,
taken according to the Bertillon system, were in
every police station in the land.

Mason told Archie many interesting stories of his
life, of cooking over a fire in the woods, riding on
freight trains, of hang-outs in sand-houses, and so on,
and he told circumstantially of numerous crimes,
though never did he identify himself as concerned in
any of them excepting those of which he had been
convicted, and in these he did not give the names of his
accomplices.  Before their companionship ended he
had taught Archie the distinctions between yegg men
and peter men and gay cats, guns of various kinds,
prowlers, and sure-thing men, and the other unidentified
horde of criminals who belong to none of these classes.

He had taught Archie also many little tricks whereby
a convict's lot may be lightened--as, for instance, how
to split with a pin one match into four matches, how
to pass little things from one cell to another by a
"trolley" or piece of string, how to lie on a board, and
so on.  But, above all, he had set Archie the example of
a patient man who took things as they came, without
question or complaint.

Archie missed Mason.  He could see him sitting in
the gloom of their little cell, upright and almost never
moving, talking in a low tone, his lips, which had a
streak of tobacco always on them, moving slowly,
shutting tightly after each sentence, until he had swallowed,
then deliberately he would go on.  Mason's view of life
interested Archie, who, up to that time, had never
thought at all, had never made any distinctions, and so
had no view of life at all.  Many of Mason's views
were striking in their insight, many were childish in
their lack of it; they were curiously straightforward
at times, at others astonishingly oblique.  He had a
great hatred of sham and pretense, and he considered
all so-called respectable people as hypocrites.  He had
about the same contempt for them that he had for the
guns, who were sneaks, he said, afraid to take chances.
He had a high admiration for boldness and courage,
and a great love of adventure, and he thought that all
these qualities were best exemplified in yegg men.  For
the courts he had no respect at all; his contempt was
so deep-rooted that he never once considered the
possibility of their doing justice, and spoke as if it were
axiomatic that they could not do justice if they tried.
He had the same contempt for the church, although he
seemed to know much about the life of Jesus and had
respect for His teachings.  He called the people who
came to pray and sing on Sundays "mission stiffs"; he
treated them respectfully enough, but he told Archie
that those prisoners who took an interest in the services
did so that they might secure favors and perhaps
pardons.  He had known many convicts to secure their
liberty in that way, and while he gave them credit for
cleverness and was not disposed to blame them, still he
did not respect them.  Such convicts he called "false
alarms."

There were one or two judges before whom he had
been tried that he admired and thought to be good
men.  He did not blame them for the sentences they
had given him, but explained to Archie that they had
to do this as an incident of their business, and he spoke
as if they might have shared his own regret in the cruel
necessity.  Of all prosecutors, however, he had a
hatred; especially of Eades, of whom he seemed to
have heard much.  He told Archie that as a result of
Eades's severity the thieves some day would "rip" the town.

He looked on his own occupation and spoke of it as
any man might look on his own occupation; it simply
happened that that was his business.  He seemed to
consider it as honest as, or at least no more dishonest than,
any other business.  He had certain standards, and
these he maintained.  On the whole, however, he
concluded that his business hardly paid, though it had its
compensations in its adventure and in its free life.





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   XVI

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Archie was loitering along Market Place, not sure
of what he would do that evening, but ready for any
sensation chance might offer.  Men were brushing
through the flapping green doors of the small saloons,
talking loudly, and swearing, many of them already
drunk.  Pianos were going, and above all the din he
heard the grating of a phonograph grinding out the
song some minstrel once had sung to a banjo; the
banjo notes were realistic, but the voice of the singer
floated above the babel of voices like the mere ghost
of a voice, inhuman and not alive, as perhaps the singer
might not then have been alive.  Archie, wondering
where the gang was, suddenly met Mason.  The sight
gave him real pleasure.

"Hello, Joe!" he cried as he seized Mason's hand.

Mason smiled faintly, but Archie's joy made him happy.

"Je's," said Archie, "I'm glad to see you--it makes
me feel better.  When 'd you get out?"

"This morning," Mason replied.  "Which way?"

"Oh, anywhere," said Archie.  "Where you goin'?"

"Up to Gibbs's.  Want to go 'long?"

Archie's heart gave a little start; to go to Danny
Gibbs's under Mason's patronage would be a distinction.
The evening opened all at once with sparkling
possibilities.

"An old friend o' mine's there," Mason explained
as they walked along up Kentucky Street.  "He's just
got out of a shooting scrape; he croaked that fellow
Benny Moon.  Remember?"

Gibbs's place was scarcely more than a block away;
it displayed no sign; a three-story building of brick, a
side door, and a plate-glass window in front; a curtain
hiding half the window, a light above--that was all.

Mason entered with an assurance that impressed
Archie, who had never before felt the need of
assurance in entering a saloon.  He looked about; it was
like any other saloon, a long bar and a heavy mirror
that reflected the glasses and the bottles of green and
yellow liqueurs arranged before it.  At one table sat a
tattered wreck of a man, his head bowed on his
forearms crossed on the table, fast asleep--one of the many
broken lives that found with Danny Gibbs a refuge.
Over the mirror behind the bar hung an opium pipe,
long since disused, serving as a relic now, the dreams
with which it had once relieved the squalor and
remorse of a wasted life long since broken.

At Mason's step, however, there was a stir in the
room behind the bar-room, and a woman entered.  She
walked heavily, as if her years and her flesh were
burdensome; her face was heavy, tired and expressionless.
She was plainly making for the bar, as if to keep alive
the pretense of a saloon, but when she saw Mason she
stopped, her face lighted up, becoming all at once
matronly and pleasant, and she smiled as she came
forward, holding out a hand.

"Why, Joe," she said, "is that you?  When did you
get out?"

"This morning," he said.  "Where's Dan?"

"He's back here; come in," and she turned and led
the way.

Mason followed, drawing Archie behind him, and
they entered the room behind the bar-room.  The
atmosphere changed--the room was light, it was lived in,
and the four men seated at a round bare table gave to
the place its proper character.  Three of the men had
small tumblers filled with whisky before them, the
fourth had none; he sat tilted back in his chair, his
stiff hat pulled down over his eyes, his hands sunk in
the pockets of his trousers; his fat thighs flattened on
the edge of his chair.  He was dressed in modest gray,
and might have been taken for a commonplace business
man.  He lifted his blue eyes quickly and glanced at
the intruders; his face was round and cleanly shaved,
save for a little blond mustache that curled at the
corners of his mouth.  His hair, of the same color as his
mustache, glistened slightly at the temples, where it
was touched by gray.  This man had no whisky glass
before him--he did not drink, but he sat there with an
air of presiding over this little session, plainly vested
with some authority--sat, indeed, as became Danny
Gibbs, the most prominent figure in the under world.

Gibbs's place was only ostensibly a saloon; in reality
it was a clearing-house for thieves, where accounts
were settled with men who had been robbed under
circumstances that made it advisable for them to keep
the matter secret, and where balances were adjusted
with the police.  All the thieves of the higher
class--those who traveled on railway trains and steamboats,
fleecing men in games of cards, those of that class who
were well-dressed, well-informed, pleasant-mannered,
apparently respectable, who passed everywhere for
men of affairs, and stole enormous sums by means of
a knowledge of human nature that was almost
miraculous--were friends of Gibbs.  He negotiated for them;
he helped them when they were in trouble; when they
were in the city they lived at his house--sometimes they
lived on him.  The two upper floors of his establishment,
fitted like a hotel, held many strange and mysterious
guests.  Gibbs maintained the same relation with
the guns, the big-mitt men, and sneak-thieves, and he
bore the same relation to the yegg men and to the
prowlers.  By some marvelous tact he kept apart all
these classes, so different, so antipathetic, so jealous
and suspicious of one another, and when they happened
to meet he kept them on terms.  There never were loud
words or trouble at Gibbs's.  To all these classes of
professional criminals he was a kind of father, an
ever-ready friend who never forgot or deserted them.  When
they were in jail he sent lawyers to them, he provided
them with delicacies, he paid their fines.  Sometimes he
obtained pardons and commutations for them, for he
was naturally influential in politics and maintained
relations with Ralph Keller, the boss of the city, that
were as close as those he maintained with the police.
He could provide votes for primaries, and he could do
other things.  The police never molested him, though
now and then they threatened to, and then he was
forced to increase the tribute money, already enormous.
A part of his understanding with the police, a clause in
the *modus vivendi*, was that certain friends of Gibbs's
were to be harbored in the city on condition that they
committed no crimes while there; now and then when a
crime was committed in the city, it would be made the
excuse by the police for further extortion.  The
detectives came and went as freely at Gibbs's as the guns,
the yeggs, the prowlers, the sure-thing men, the
gamblers and bunco men.

"Ah, Joe," said Gibbs, glancing at Mason.

"Dan," said Mason, as he took a chair beside Gibbs.
They had spoken in low, quiet tones, yet somehow the
simplicity of their greeting suggested a friendship that
antedated all things of the present, stretching back into
other days, recalling ties that had been formed at times
and under circumstances that were lost in the past and
forgotten by every one, even the police.  However well
the other three might have known Gibbs, they delicately
implied that their relation could not be so close
as that of Joe Mason, and they were silent for an
instant, as if they would pay a tribute to it.  But the
silence held, losing all at once its deference to the
friendship of Gibbs and Mason, and taking on a quality
of constraint, cold and repellent, plainly due to Archie's
presence.  Archie felt this instantly, and Mason felt it,
for he knew the ways of his kind, and, turning to Gibbs,
he said:

"A friend of mine; met him in the boob."  And then
he said: "Mr. Gibbs, let me introduce Mr. Koerner."

Gibbs looked at Archie keenly and gave him his
hand.  Then Mason introduced Archie to the three
other men--Jackson, Mandell and Keenan.  Gibbs,
meanwhile, turned to his wife, who had taken a chair
against the wall and folded her arms.

"Get Joe and his friend something to drink, Kate,"
he commanded.  The woman rose wearily, asked them
what they wished to drink, and went into the bar-room
for the whisky glasses.

The little company had accepted Archie tentatively
on Mason's assurance, but they resumed their
conversation guardedly and without spontaneity.  Mason,
however, gave it a start again when he turned to
Jackson and said:

"Well, Curly, I read about your trouble.  I was glad
you wasn't ditched.  I thought for a while there that
you was the fall guy, all right."

Jackson laughed without mirth and flecked the ash
from his cigarette.

"Yes, Joe, I come through."

"He sprung you down there, too!" said Mason with
more surprise than Archie had ever known him to
show.  "I figured you'd waive, anyhow."

"Well, I wanted a show-down, d'ye see?" said
Jackson.  "I knew they couldn't hold me on the square."

"Didn't they know anything?"

"Who, them chuck coppers?" Jackson sneered.  "Not
a thing; they guessed a whole lot, and when I got out
they asked if I'd object to be mugged."  Jackson was
showing his perfect teeth in a smile that attracted
Archie.  "They'd treated me so well, I was ready to
oblige them--d'ye see?--and I let 'em--so they took
my Bertillon.  I didn't think one more would hurt much."

Jackson looked down at the table and smiled
introspectively.  The smile won Archie completely.  He was
looking at Jackson with admiration in his eyes, and
Jackson, suddenly noticing him, conveyed to Archie
subtly a sense of his own pleasure in the boy's admiration.

"Well, I tell you, Curly," Mason was going on.  "You
done right--that fink got just what was comin' to him.
You showed the nerve, too.  I couldn't 'ave waited half
that long.  But I didn't think you'd stand a show with
Bostwick.  I knowed you'd get off in front of a jury,
but I had my misdoubts about that fellow Eades.
God! he's a cold proposition!  But in front of
Bostwick--!"  Mason slowly and incredulously  shook his head, then
ended by swallowing his little glassful of whisky suddenly.

"Well, you see, Joe," Jackson began, speaking in a
high, shrill voice, as if it were necessary to convince
Mason, "there was nothin' to it.  There was no chance
for the bulls to job me on this thing," and he went
on to explain, as if he had to vindicate his exercise of
judgment in a delicate situation, seeming to forget how
completely the outcome had justified it.

Archie had scarcely noticed Keenan and Mandell;
once he had wrested his eyes from Gibbs, he had
not taken them from Jackson.  He had been puzzled at
first, but now, in a flash, he recognized in Jackson the
man who had shot Moon.

"You see, Joe," Mandell suddenly spoke up--his
voice was a rumbling bass in harmony with his heavy
jaws--"it was a clear case of self-defense.  The
shamming-pusher starts out to clean up down the line, he
unsloughs up there by Connie's place on Caldwell, and
musses a wingy, and then he goes across the street and
bashes a dinge; he goes along that way, bucklin' into
everybody he meets, until he meets Curly, who was
standing down there by Sailor Goin's drum chinnin'
Steve Noonan--he goes up to them and begins.  Curly
mopes off; he dogs him down to Cliff Decker's
corner, catches up and gives Curly a clout in the gash--"

Mason was listening intently, leaning forward, his
keen eyes fixed on Mandell's.  He was glad, at last, to
have the story from one he could trust to give the
details correctly; theretofore he had had nothing but the
accounts in the newspapers, and he had no more
confidence in the newspapers than he had in the courts or
the churches, or any other institution of the world
above him.  Archie listened, too, finding a new
fascination in the tale, though he had had it already from one
of the gang, Pat Whalen, who had been fortunate
enough to see the tragedy, and had had the distinction
of testifying in the case.  Whalen had seen Moon, a
bartender with pugilistic ambitions, make an
unprovoked assault on Jackson, follow him to the corner, and
knock him down; he had seen Jackson stagger to his
feet, draw his revolver and back away.  He had told
Archie how deathly white Jackson's face had gone as
he backed, backed, a whole block, a crowd following,
and Moon coming after, cursing and swearing,
taunting Jackson, daring him to shoot, telling him he was
"four-flushing with that smoke-wagon," warning him
to make a good job when he did shoot, for he intended
to make him eat his gun.  He had told how marvelously
cool Jackson was; he had said in a low voice, "I
don't want to shoot you--I just want you to let me
alone."  And Whalen had described how Moon had
flung off his coat, how bystanders had tried to restrain
him, how he had rushed on, how Jackson had gone
into the vacant lot by old Jim Peppers's shanty, coming
out on the other side, until he was met by Eva Clason,
who tried to open a gate and let Jackson into the brothel
she called home.  Whalen had given Archie a sense of
the ironical fate that that day had led Eva's piano
player to nail up the gate so that the chickens she had
bought could not get out of the yard.  The gate would
not open and Moon was on him again; and Jackson
backed and backed, clear around to the sidewalk on
Caldwell Street, and then, when he had completed the
circuit, Moon had sprung at him.  Then the revolver
had cracked, the crowd closed in, and there lay Moon
on the sidewalk, dead--and Jackson looking down at
him.  Then the cries for air, the patrol wagon, and the
police.

As Mandell told the story now, Archie kept his eyes
on Jackson.  At the point where he had said, "I don't
want to shoot you," Jackson's eyes grew moist with
tears; he blinked and knocked the ashes from his
cigarette with the nail of his little finger, sprinkling
them on the floor.  When Mandell had done, Mason
looked up at Jackson.

"Well, Curly," he said, "you had the right nerve."

"Nerve!" said Mandell.  "I guess so!"

"Nerve!" repeated Keenan.  "He had enough for a whole mob!"

"Ach!" said Jackson, twisting away from them on
his chair.

"I'd 'a' let him have it when he first bashed me," said
Keenan.

"Yes!" cried Jackson suddenly, rising and catching
his chair by the back.  "Yes--and been settled for it!
I didn't want to do it; I didn't want to get into trouble.
You always was that way, Jimmy."

Archie looked at Curly Jackson as he stood with
an arm outstretched toward Keenan; his figure was tall
and straight and slender, and as he noted the short
brown curls that gave him his name, the tanned cheeks,
the attitude in which he held himself, something
confused Archie, some thought he could not catch--some
idea that evaded him, coming near till he was just on
the point of grasping it, then eluding him, like a name
one tries desperately to recall.

"I didn't have my finger on the trigger," Jackson
went on, speaking in his high, shrill, excited voice.  "I
held it on the trigger-guard all the time."

And then suddenly it came to Archie--that bronzed
skin, that set of the shoulders, that trimness, that
alertness, that coolness, Jackson could have got nowhere but
in the army.  He had been a soldier--what was more,
he had been a regular.  And Archie felt something like
devotion for him.

"Sit down, Curly," said Gibbs, and Jackson sank into
his chair.  A minute later Jackson turned to Mason and
said quietly:

"You see, Joe, I don't like to talk about it--nor to
think of it.  I didn't want to kill him, God knows.  I
don't see anything in it to get swelled about and be the
wise guy."





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   XVII

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Curly Jackson sat for a moment idly making little
circles on the polished surface of the table with the
moist bottom of his glass; then abruptly he rose and
left the room.  The others followed him with their
eyes.  Archie was deeply interested.  He longed to talk
to Jackson, longed to show him how he admired him,
but he was timid in this company, and felt that it
became him best to remain quiet.  But Jackson's conduct
in the tragedy had fired Archie's imagination, and
Jackson was as much the hero in his eyes as he was in
the eyes of his companions.  And then Archie thought
of his own skill with the carbine and the revolver, and
he wished he could display it to these men; perhaps in
that way he could attract their notice and gain their
approval.

"He doesn't want to talk about it," said Mason when
Jackson had disappeared.

"No," said Gibbs.  "Let him alone."

Jackson was gone but a few minutes, and then he
returned and quietly took his seat at the table.  They
talked of other things then, but Archie could understand
little they said, for they spoke in a language that
was almost wholly unintelligible to him.  But he sat
and listened with a bewildering sense of mystery that
made their conversation all the more fascinating.  What
they said conveyed to him a sense of a wild, rough,
dangerous life that was full of adventure and a kind of
low romance, and Archie felt that he would like to
know these men better; if possible, to be one of them,
and at the thought his heart beat faster, as at the
sudden possibility of a new achievement.

As they talked voices were heard in the bar-room
outside, and presently a huge man stood in the
door-way.  He was fully six feet in height, and blond.  His
face was red, and he was dressed in dark gray clothes,
a blue polka-dotted cravat giving his attire its one
touch of color.  He reminded Archie of some one, and
he tried to think who that person was.

"Oh, Dan," the man in the doorway said, "come here
a minute."

Gibbs went into the bar-room.

"Who's that?" asked Mandell.

"He's a swell, all right," said Keenan.

The three, Mandell, Keenan and Jackson, looked at
Mason as if he could tell.  But Archie suddenly remembered.

"He looks like an army officer," he said, speaking
his thought aloud.

"What do you know about army officers, young
fellow?" demanded Jackson.  The others turned, and
Archie blushed.  But he did not propose to have
Jackson put him down.

"Well," he said with spirit, "I know something--I
was in the regular army three years."

"What regiment?" Jackson fixed Archie with his
blue eyes, and there seemed to be just a trace of
concern in their keen, searching glance.

"The twelfth cavalry," said Archie.  "I served in the
Philippines."

"Oh!" said Jackson, as if relieved, and he released
Archie from his look.  Archie felt relieved, too, and
went on:

"He looks just like a colonel in the English army I
saw at Malta.  Our transport stopped there."

"It's Lon McDougall," said Mason when Archie had
finished.  "He's a big-mitt man."

The others turned away with an effect of lost interest
and something like a sneer.

"I suppose there's a lot o' those guns out there," said
Keenan.

"A mob come in this afternoon," said Mason;
"they're working eastward out of Chicago with the rag."

"Well, let's make a get-away," said Keenan, unable
to conceal a yegg man's natural contempt of the guns.

They all got up, Archie with them, and went out.  In
the bar-room five men were standing; they were all
men of slight figure, dressed well and becomingly, and
with a certain alert, sharp manner.  They cast quick,
shifty glances at the men who came out of the back
room, but there was no recognition between them.
These men, as Mason had said, were all pickpockets;
they had come to town that afternoon, and naturally
repaired at once to Gibbs's.  They had come in advance
of a circus that was to be in the city two days later,
and were happy in the hope of being able to work
under protection.  They knew Cleary as a chief of
police with whom an arrangement could be made, and
McDougall, who had come in to work on circus day
himself, had kindly agreed to secure them this
protection.  At that moment, indeed, McDougall was
whispering with Gibbs at the end of the bar; they were
discussing the "fixing" of Cleary.

The pickpockets had been talking rather excitedly.
They were glad at the prospect of the circus, and, in
common with the rest of humanity, they were glad
that spring had come, partly from a natural human
love of this time of joy and hope, partly because the
spring was the beginning of the busy season.  They
could do more in summer, when people were stirring
about, just as the yegg men could do more in winter,
when the nights were long and windows were closed
and people kept indoors.  But at the appearance of
Mason and his friends, one of the pickpockets gave the
thieves' cough, and they were silent.  McDougall
glanced about, then resumed his low talk with Gibbs.

"Give us a little drink, Kate," said Jackson, who
seemed to have money.  As they stood there pouring
out their whisky, a little girl with a tray of flowers
entered the saloon, and the pickpockets instantly bought
all her carnations and adorned themselves.  And then
a man entered, a small man, with a wry, comical face
and a twisted, deformed figure; his left hand was
curled up as if he had been paralyzed on that side from
his youth.  But once behind the big walnut screen which
shut off the view from the street, he straightened
suddenly and became as well formed as any one.  His
comedian's face broke into a smile, and he greeted
every one there familiarly; he knew them all--Gibbs
and McDougall, the pickpockets, and the yegg men,
and he burst into loud congratulations when he saw
Jackson.

"Well, Curly," he said, "you gave that geezer all
that was coming to him!  You--"

"Cheese it, Jimmy," said Jackson.  "I don't want to
hear any more about that."

Jackson spoke with such authority that the little
fellow stepped back, the smile that was on his lips
faded suddenly, and he joined the pickpockets.  The
little fellow was a grubber; he could throw his body
instantly into innumerable hideous shapes of deformity;
he had not the courage to be a thief, was afraid to
sleep in a barn, and so had become a beggar.

As Mason bade Gibbs good night and went out he
was laughing, and Archie had not often seen him laugh.
On the way down the street he told stories of Jimmy's
abilities as a beggar, and they all laughed, all save
Jackson, who was gloomy and morose and walked
along shrouded in a kind of gloom that impressed
Archie powerfully.

And now new days dawned for Archie--days of
association with Mason, Jackson, Keenan and Mandell.
The Market Place gang had no standing among
professional criminals, though it had furnished recruits,
and now Archie became a recruit, and soon approved
himself.  It was not long until he could speak their
language; he called a safe a "peter" and nitroglycerin
"soup," a freight-train was a "John O'Brien"; he spoke
of a man convicted as a "fall man", conveying thus
subtly a sense of vicarious sacrifice; he called
policemen "bulls", and jails "pogeys"; the penitentiary where
all these men had been was the "stir", and the little
packages of buttered bread and pie that were handed
out to them from kitchen doors were "lumps".  And he
learned the distinctions between the classes of men who
defy society and its laws; he knew what gay cats were,
and guns and dips, lifters, moll-buzzers, hoisters, tools,
scratchers, stalls, damper-getters, housemen,
gopher-men, peter-men, lush-touchers, super-twisters,
penny-weighters, and so forth.  And after that he was seen at
home but seldom; his absences grew long and mysterious.





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   XVIII

.. vspace:: 2

Elizabeth did not go often to the Country Club, and
almost never for any pleasure she herself could find;
now and then she went with her father, in order to lure
him out of doors; but to-day she had come with Dick,
who wanted some fitting destination for his new
touring car.  She was finding on a deserted end of the
veranda a relief from the summer heat that for a week
had smothered the city.  A breeze was blowing off the
river, and she lay back languidly in her wicker chair
and let it play upon her brow.  In her lap lay an open
book, but she was not reading it nor meditating on it;
she held it in readiness to ward off interruption; her
reputation as a reader of books, while it made her
formidable to many and gave her an unpopularity that was
more and more grieving her mother, had its
compensations--people would not often intrude upon a book.
She looked off across the river.  On its smooth surface
tiny sail-boats were moving; on the opposite bank there
was the picturesque windmill of a farm-house, white
against the bright green.  The slender young oak trees
were rustling in the wind; the links were dotted with
players in white, and the distant flags and fluttering
guidons that marked hidden putting greens.  Then
suddenly Marriott was before her.  He had come in from
the links, and he stood now bareheaded, glowing from
his exercise, folding his arms on the veranda rail.  His
forearms were blazing red from their first burning of
the season, and his nose was burned red, giving him
a merry look that made Elizabeth smile.

"My! but you're burned!" she exclaimed.

"Am I?" said Marriott, pleased.

"Yes--like a mower," she added, remembering some
men working in a field that had fled past them as they
came out in the automobile.  She remembered she had
fancied the men burned brown as golfers, and she had
some half-formed notion of a sentence she might turn
at the expense of a certain literary school that viewed
life thus upside down.  She might have gone on then
and talked it over with Marriott, but her brain was too
tired; she could moralize just then no further than
to say:

"You don't deserve to be burned as a mower--your
work isn't as hard."

"No," said Marriott, "it isn't work at all--it's
exercise; it's a substitute for the work I should be
doing."  A look of disgust came to his face.

She did not wish then to talk seriously; she was
trying to forget problems, and she and Marriott were
always discussing problems.

"It's absurd," Marriott was saying.  "I do this to get
the exercise I ought to get by working, by producing
something--the exercise is the end, not an incident of
the means.  You don't see any of these farmers around
here playing golf.  They're too tired--"

"Gordon," said Elizabeth, "I'm going away."

"Where to?" he asked, looking up suddenly.

"To Europe," she said.

"Europe!  Why, when?  You must have decided hurriedly."

"Yes, the other night after I came home from
Mr. Parrish's--we decided rather quickly--or papa decided
for us."

"Well!" Marriott exclaimed again.  "That's fine!"

He looked away toward the first tee, where his
caddie was waiting for him.  He beckoned, and the boy
came with his bag.

"Tell Mr. Phillips I'll not play any more--I'll see
him later."

The caddie took up the bag and went lazily away,
stopping to take several practice swings with one of
Marriott's drivers.  The boy was always swinging this
club in the hope that Marriott would give it to him.

Marriott placed his hands on the rail, sprang over it,
and drew up a chair.

"Well, this is sudden," he said, "but it's fine for
you."  He took out a cigarette.  "How did it happen?"

"Do you want the real reason?" she asked.

"Of course; I've a passion for the real."

"I'm going in order to get away."

Marriott was sheltering in his palms a match for his
cigarette.  He looked up suddenly, the cigarette still
between his lips.

"Away from what?"

"Oh, from--everything!"  She waved her hands
despairingly.  Marriott did not understand.

"That's it," she said, looking him in the eyes.  He
saw that she was very serious.  He lighted his cigarette,
and flung away the match that was just beginning
to burn his fingers.

"I'm going to run away; I'm going to forget for a
whole summer.  I'm going to have a good time.  When
I come back in the fall I'm going to the Charity Bureau
and do some work, but until then--"

"Who's going with you?" asked Marriott.  He had
thought of other things to say, but decided against
them.

"Mama."

"And your father?"

"Oh, he can't go.  He and Dick will stay at home."

"Then you won't shut up the house?"

"No, we'll let the maids go, but we've got Gusta
Koerner to come in every day and look after things.
I'm glad for her sake--and ours.  We can trust her."

"I should think Dick would want to go."

"No, he has this new automobile now, and he says,
too, that he can't leave the bank."  She smiled as she
thought of the seriousness with which Dick was
regarding his new duties.

"Then you'll not go to Mackinac?"

"No, we'll close the cottage this summer.  Papa
doesn't want to go there without us, and--"

"But Dick will miss his yacht."

"Oh, the yacht has been wholly superseded in his
affections by the auto."

"Well," said Marriott, "I'll not go north myself then.
I had thought of going up and hanging around, but
now--"

She looked to see if he were in earnest.

"Really, I'm not as excited over the prospect of
going to Europe as I should be," said Elizabeth with a
little regret in her tone.  "I haven't been in Europe
since I graduated, and I've been looking forward to
going again--"

"Oh, you'll have a great time," Marriott interrupted.

She leaned back and Marriott eyed her narrowly;
he saw that her look was weary.

"Well, you need a rest.  It was such a long, hard winter."

Elizabeth did not reply.  She looked away across the
river and Marriott followed her gaze; the sky in the
west was darkening, the afternoon had grown sultry.

"Gordon," she said presently, "I want you to do
something for me."

His heart leaped a little at her words.

"Anything you say," he answered.

"Won't you"--she hesitated a moment--"won't you
look after Dick a little this summer?  Just keep an eye
on him, don't you know?"

Marriott laughed, and then he grew sober.  He realized
that he, perhaps, understood the seriousness that
was behind her request better than she did, but he said
nothing, for it was all so difficult.

"Oh, he doesn't need any watching," he said, by way
of reassuring her.

"You will understand me, I'm sure."  She turned her
gray eyes on him.  "I think it is a critical time with
him.  I don't know what he does--I don't want to
know; I don't mean that you are to pry about, or do
anything surreptitious, or anything of that sort.  You
know, of course; don't you?"

"Why, certainly," he said.

"But I have felt--you see," she scarcely knew how to
go about it; "I have an idea that if he could have a
certain kind of influence in his life, something
wholesome--I think you could supply that."

Marriott was moved by her confidence; he felt a
great affection for her in that instant.

"It's good in you, Elizabeth," he said, and he
lingered an instant in pronouncing the syllables of her
name, "but you really overestimate.  Dick's all right,
but he's young.  I'm not old, to be sure; but he'd think
me old."

"I can see that would be in the way," she frankly
admitted.  "I don't know just how it could be done;
perhaps it can't be done at all."

"And then, besides all that," Marriott went on, "I
don't know of any good I could do him.  I don't know
that there is anything he really needs more than we all
need."

"Oh, yes there is," she insisted.  "And there is much
you could give him.  Perhaps it would bore you--"

He protested.

"Oh, I know!" she said determinedly.  "We can be
frank with each other, Gordon.  Dick is a man only in
size and the clothes he wears; he's still a child--a good,
kind-hearted, affectionate, thoughtless child.  The
whole thing perplexes me and it has perplexed
papa--you might as well know that.  I have tried, and I can
do nothing.  He doesn't care for books, and somehow
when I prescribe books and they fail, or are not
accepted, I'm at the end of my resources.  I have been trying
to think it all out, but I can't.  I know that something
is wrong, but I can't tell you what it is.  I only know
that I *feel* it, and that it troubles me and worries
me--and that I am tired."  Then, as if he might
misunderstand, she went on with an air of haste: "I don't mean
necessarily anything wrong in Dick himself, but
something wrong in--oh, I don't know what I mean!"

She lifted her hand in a little gesture of despair.

"I feel somehow that the poor boy has had no chance
in the world--though he has had every advantage and
opportunity."  Her face lighted up instantly with a
kind of pleasure.  "That's it!" she exclaimed.  "You
see"--it was all clear to her just then, or would be if
she could put the thought into words before she lost
it--"there is nothing for him to do; there is no work for
him, no necessity for his working at all.  This new
place he has in the Trust Company--he seems happy
and important in it just now, but after all it doesn't
seem to me real; he isn't actually needed there; he got
the place just because Mr. Hunter is a friend of
papa."  The thought that for an instant had seemed on
the point of being posited was nebulous again.  "Don't
you understand?" she said, turning to him for help.

"I think I do," said Marriott.  His brows were
contracted and he was trying to grasp her meaning.

"It's hard to express," Elizabeth went on.  "I think
I mean that Dick would be a great deal better off if he
did not have a--rich father."  She hesitated before
saying it, a little embarrassed.  "If he had to work, if he
had his own way to make in the world--"

"It is generally considered a great blessing to have a
rich father," said Marriott.

"Yes," said Elizabeth, "it is.  I've heard that very
word used--in church, too.  But with Dick"--she went
back to the personal aspect of the question, which
seemed easier--"what is his life?  Last summer, up at
the island, it was the yacht--with a hired skipper to do
the real work.  This summer it's the touring-car; it's
always some sensation, something physical, something
to kill time with--and what kind of conception of life
is that?"

She turned and looked at him with' a little arch of
triumph in her brows, at having attained this
expression of her thought.

"We all have a conception of life that is more or less
confused," Marriott generalized.  "That is, when we
have any conception at all."

"Of course," said Elizabeth, "I presume Dick's
conception is as good as mine; and that his life is quite as
useful.  My life has been every bit as objective--I have
a round of little duties--teas and balls and parties, and
all that sort of thing, of course.  I've been sheltered,
like all girls of my class; but poor Dick--he's exposed,
that is the difference."

She was silent for a while.  Marriott had not known
before how deep her thought had gone.

"I'm utterly useless in the world," she went on, "and
I'm sick of it!  Sick of it!"  She had grown vehement,
and her little fists clenched in her lap, until the
knuckles showed white.

"Do you know what I've a notion of doing?" she said.

"No; what?"

"I've a notion to go and work in a factory, say half
a day, and give some poor girl a half-holiday."

"But you'd take her wages from her," said Marriott.

"Oh, I'd give her the wages."

Marriott shook his head slowly, doubtingly.

"I know it's impractical," Elizabeth went on.  "Of
course, I'd never do it.  Why, people would think I'd
gone crazy!  Imagine what mama would say!"

She smiled at the absurdity.

"No," she said, "I'll have to go on, and lead my idle,
useless life.  That's what it is, Gordon."  He saw the
latent fires of indignation and protest leap into her eyes.
"It's this life--this horrible, false, insane life!  That's
what it is!  The poor boy is beside himself with it, and
he doesn't know it.  There is no place for him, nothing
for him to do; it's the logic of events."

He was surprised to see such penetration in her.

"I've been thinking it out," she hurried to explain.
"I've suffered from it myself.  I've felt it for a long
time, without understanding it, and I don't understand
it very well now, but I'm beginning to.  Of what use
am I in the world?  Not a bit--there isn't a single
thing I can do.  All this whole winter I've been going
about to a lot of useless affairs, meeting and chattering
with a lot of people who have no real life at all--who
are of no more use in the world than I.  I'm wearing
myself out at it--and here I am, glad that the long,
necessary waste of time is over--tired and sick, of
this--this--sofa-pillow existence!"  She thumped a silken
pillow that lay on a long wicker divan beside her,
thumped it viciously and with a hatred.

"Sometimes I feel that I'd like to leave the town and
never see anybody in it again!" Elizabeth exclaimed.
"Don't you?"

"Yes--but--"

"But what?"

"But is there any place where we could escape it all?"

"There must be some place--some place where we
know no one, so that no one's cares could be our cares,
where we could be mere disinterested spectators and sit
aloof, and observe life, and not feel that it was any
concern of ours at all.  That's what I want.  I'd like to
escape this horrible ennui."

"Well, the summer's here and we can have our
vacations.  Of course," he added whimsically, "the
Koerners will have no vacation."

"Gordon, don't you ever dare to mention the Koerners again!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`XIX`:

.. class:: center large

   XIX

.. vspace:: 2

A few days later Eades and Marriott stood on a step
at the Union Station, and watched the majestic Limited
pull out for the east.  The white-haired engineer in his
faded blue jumper looked calmly down from the high
window of his cab, the black porters grinned in the
vestibule, the elderly conductor carrying his
responsibilities seriously and unaffectedly, swung gracefully
aboard, his watch in his hand, and there, on the
observation platform, stood Elizabeth, very pretty in her
gray gown and the little hat with the violets, Eades's
flowers in one hand, Marriott's book in the other,
waving her adieux.  They watched her out of sight, and
then Ward, standing beside them, sighed heavily.

"Well," he said, "it'll be lonesome now, with
everybody out of town."

They waited for Dick, who alone of all of them had
braved the high corporate authority at the gate, and
gone with the travelers to their train.  He came, and
they went through the clamorous station to the street,
where Dick's automobile was waiting, shaking as if it
would shake itself to pieces.  They rode down town in
solemn silence.  Eades and Marriott, indeed, had had
little to say; during the strain of the parting moments
with Elizabeth they had been stiff and formal with each
other.

"I hope to get away myself next week," said Eades,
"The town will soon be empty."

The city day was drawing to a close.  Forge fires
were glowing in the foundries they passed.  Through
the gloom within they could see the workmen, stripped
like gunners to the waist, their moist, polished skins
glowing in the fierce glare.  They passed noisy
machine-shops whence machinists glanced out at them.  In some
of the factories bevies of girls were thronging the
windows, calling now and then to the workmen, who, for
some reason earlier released from toil, were already
trooping by on the sidewalk.  In the crowded streets
great patient horses nodded as they easily drew the
empty trucks that had borne such heavy loads all day;
their drivers were smoking pipes, greeting one another,
and whistling or singing; one of them in the
camaraderie of toil had taken on a load of workmen, to haul
them on their homeward way.  The street-cars were
filled with men whose faces showed the grime their
hasty washing had not removed.

Suddenly whistles blew, then there was a strange
silence.  Something like a sigh went up from all that
quarter of the town.

The automobile was tearing through the tenderloin
with its gaudily-painted saloons and second-hand stores
sandwiched between.  Old clothes fluttered above the
sidewalk, and violins, revolvers, boxing-gloves and bits
of jewelry, the trash and rubbish of wasted, feverish
lives showed in the windows.  Fat Jewish women sat
in the doorways of pawn-shops, their swarthy children
playing on the dirty sidewalk.  In the swinging green
doors of saloons stood bartenders; and everywhere
groups of men and women, laughing, joking, haggling,
scuffling and quarreling.  Now and then girls with
their tawdry finery tripped down from upper rooms,
stood a moment in the dark, narrow doorways, looked
up and down the street, and then suddenly went forth.
In some of the cheap theaters, the miserable tunes that
never ended, day or night, were jingling from metallic
pianos.  They passed on into the business district.
Shops were closing, the tall office buildings, each a city
in itself, were pouring forth their human contents; the
sidewalks were thronged--everywhere life, swarming,
seething life, spawned out upon the world.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`BOOK II`:
.. _`2-I`:

.. class:: center large

   BOOK II

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large

   I

.. vspace:: 2

All day long Archie Koerner and Curly Jackson had
ridden in the empty box-car.  They had made
themselves as comfortable as they could, and had beguiled
the time with talk and stories and cigarettes.  Now and
then they had fallen asleep, but not for long, for their
joints ached with the jolting of the train, and, more
than all else, there was a constant concern in their
minds that made them restless, furtive and uneasy.
The day was warm, and toward noon the sun beat
down, hotter and hotter; the car was stifling, its
atmosphere charged with the reminiscent odors of all the
cargoes it had ever hauled.  Long before daylight
that morning they had crawled into the car as it stood
on a siding in a village a hundred miles away.  Just
before dawn the train came, and they heard the
conductor and brakeman moving about outside; now and
then they caught the twinkle of their lanterns.  Then
the car was shunted and jolted back and forth for half
an hour; finally the train was made up, and pulled out
of the sleeping village they were so glad to get away
from.  With the coming of the dawn, they peeped out
to see the sun come up over the fields.  They watched
the old miracle in silence until they saw a farmer
coming across the field with a team.  The farmer stopped,
watched the train go by, then turned and began to plow
corn.

"Pipe the Hoosier," Curly had said, the sight of a
human being relieving the silence imposed by nature in
her loneliness.  "We call 'em suckers.  He'll be
plowing all day, but next winter he'll be sitting by a
fire--and we'll--we'll be macing old women for lumps at the
back doors."

Archie was not much affected by Curly's sarcastic
philosophy; he had not yet attained to Curly's point of
view.

Two days before, at evening, they had left the city
and spent the first half of the night on foot, trudging
along a country road; then a freight-train had taken
them to a little town far to the south, where, in the
small hours of the morning, they had broken into a
post-office, blown open the safe with nitroglycerin,
and taken out the stamps and currency.  Curly
considered the venture successful, though marred by one
mishap: in the explosion the currency had been shattered
and burned.  But he had carefully gathered up the
remnants, wrapped them in a paper, and stowed them
away in his pocket with the stamps.  The next day they
hid in a wood.  Curly made a fire, cooked bacon, and
brewed tea in a tomato can, and these, with bread, had
made a meal for them.  Then he had carefully sorted
the stamps, and had hidden in the ground all the
five- and ten-cent stamps, preserving only those of the
one- and two-cent denominations.  After that he had lain
down on the grass and slept.

While Curly slept, Archie sat and examined with an
expert's loving interest and the fascination of a boy a
new revolver he had stolen from a hardware store in
the city three days before.  Curly at first had opposed
the theft of the revolver, but had finally consented
because he recognized Archie's need; Archie had had no
revolver since he was sent to the workhouse.  The one
he had when he was arrested had been confiscated--as
it is called--by the police, and given by Bostwick to a
friend, a lawyer who had long wanted a revolver to
shoot burglars in case any should break into his home.
Curly had consented to Archie's stealing the revolver,
but he had commanded him to take nothing else, and
had waited outside while Archie went into the
hardware store.  Archie had chosen a fine one, a double-acting,
self-cocking revolver of thirty-eight caliber, like
those carried by the police.  He had been childishly
happy in the possession of this weapon; he had taken it
out and looked at it a hundred times, and had been
tempted when they were alone in the woods to take a
few practice shots, but when Curly ordered him not to
think of such nonsense, he drew the cartridges, aimed
at trees, twigs, birds, and snapped the trigger.  Every
little while in the box-car that day he had taken it out,
looked at it, caressed it, turned it over in his palm,
delicately tested its weight, and called Curly to admire it
with him.  He thought much more of the revolver than
he did of the stamps and blasted currency they had
stolen, and Curly had spoken sharply to him at last and
said:

"If you don't put up that rod, I'll ditch it for you."

Archie obeyed Curly, but when he had restored the
revolver to his pocket, he continued to talk of it, and
then of other weapons he had owned, and he told
Curly how he had won the sharp-shooter's medal in the
army.

But finally, in his weariness, Archie lost interest
even in his new revolver, and when Curly would not let
him go to the door of the car and look out, lest the
trainmen should see them and force them into an
encounter, Archie had fallen asleep in a corner.

It was a relief to Curly when Archie went to sleep,
for in addition to his joy in his revolver, Archie had
been excited over their adventure.  Curly was in many
ways peculiar; he was inclined to be secretive; he
frequently worked alone, and his operations were as much
a mystery to his companions and to Gibbs as they were
to the police.  He had had his eye on the little
post-office at Trenton for months; it had called to him, as
it were, to come and rob it.  It had advantages, the
building was old; an entrance could be effected easily.
He had stationed Archie outside to watch while he
knocked off the peter, and Archie had acquitted himself
to Curly's satisfaction.  The affair came off smoothly.
Though it was in the short summer night, no one had
been abroad; they got away without molestation.  Now,
as they drew near the city, Curly felt easy.

Late in the afternoon Curly saw signs of the city's
outposts--the side-tracks were multiplying in long
lines of freight-cars.  Then Curly wakened Archie, and
when the train slowed up, they dropped from the car.

It was good to feel once more their feet on the
ground, to walk and stretch their tired, numb muscles,
good to breathe the open air and, more than all, good to
see the city looming under its pall of smoke.  They
joined the throngs of working-men; and they might
have passed for working-men themselves, for Curly
wore overalls, as he always did on his expeditions, and
they were both so black from the smoke and cinders of
their journey, that one might easily have mistaken their
grime for that of honest toil.

They came to the river, pressed up the long approach
to its noble bridge, and submerged themselves in the
stream of life that flowed across it, the stream that was
made up of all sorts of people--working-men, clerks,
artisans, shop-girls, children, men and women, the old
and the young, each individual with his burden or his
care or his secret guilt, his happiness, his hope, his
comedy or his tragedy, losing himself in the mass,
merging his identity in the crowd, doing his part to
make the great epic of life that flowed across the bridge
as the great river flowed under it--the stream in which
no one could tell the good from the bad, or even wish
thus to separate them, in which no one could tell Archie
or Curly from the teacher of a class in a Sunday-school.
Here on the bridge man's little distinctions were lost
and people were people merely, bound together by the
common possession of good and bad intentions, of good
and bad deeds, of frailties, errors, sorrows, sufferings
and mistakes, of fears and doubts, of despairs, of hopes
and triumphs and heroisms and victories and boundless
dreams.

Beside them rumbled a long procession of trucks and
wagons and carriages, street-cars moved in yellow
procession, ringing their cautionary gongs; the draw in the
middle of the bridge vibrated under the tread of all
those marching feet; its three red lights were already
burning overhead.  Far below, the river, growing dark,
rolled out to the lake; close to its edge on the farther
shore could be descried, after long searching of the
eye, the puffs of white smoke from crawling trains;
vessels could be picked out, tugs and smaller craft,
great propellers that bore coal and ore and lumber up
and down the lakes; here and there a white passenger-steamer,
but all diminutive in the long perspective.
Above them the freight-depots squatted; above these
elevators lifted themselves, and then, as if on top of
them, the great buildings of the city heaved themselves
as by some titanic convulsive effort in a lofty pile,
surmounted by the high office buildings in the center,
with here and there towers and spires striking upward
from the jagged sky-line.  All this pile was in a
neutral shade of gray,--lines, details, distinctions, all were
lost; these huge monuments of man's vanity, or greed,
or ambition, these expressions of his notions of utility
or of beauty, were heaped against a smoky sky, from
which the light was beginning to fade.  Somewhere,
hidden far down in this mammoth pile, among all the
myriads of people that swarmed and lost themselves
below it, were Gusta and Dick Ward, old man Koerner
and Marriott, Modderwell and Danner, Bostwick and
Parrish, and Danny Gibbs, and Mason, and Eades, but
they were lost in the mass of human beings--the
preachers and thieves, the doctors and judges, and
aldermen, and merchants, and working-men, and social
leaders, and prostitutes--who went to make up the
swarm of people that crawled under and through this
pile of iron and stone, thinking somehow that the
distinctions and the grades they had fashioned in their
little minds made them something more or something less
than what they really were.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`2-II`:

.. class:: center large

   II

.. vspace:: 2

And yet, after having crossed the bridge in the
silence that was the mysterious effect of the descent of
evening over the city, after having been gathered back
again for a few moments into human relations with
their fellow mortals, Archie and Curly became thieves
again.  This change in them occurred when they saw
two policemen standing at the corner of High Street,
where the crowd from the bridge, having climbed the
slope of River Street, began to flow in diverging lines
this way and that.  The change was the more marked
in Archie, for at sight of the policemen he stopped
suddenly.

"Look!" he whispered.

"Come on!" commanded Curly, and Archie fell into
step.  "You never want to halt that way; it don't make
any difference with harness bulls, but if a fly dick was
around, it might put him hip."

It was a relief to Archie when at last they turned
into Danny Gibbs's; the strange shrinking sensation he
had felt in the small of his back, the impulse to turn
around, the starting of his heart at each footfall behind
him, now disappeared.  It was quiet at Gibbs's; the
place was in perfect order; in the window by the door,
under the bill which pictured two pugilists, the big cat
he had seen now and then slinking about the place was
curled in sleep; and two little kittens were playing near
her.  At one of the tables, his head bowed in his hands,
was the wreck of a man Archie had so often seen in
that same attitude and in that same place--the table
indeed seemed to be used for no other purpose.  Gibbs
himself was there, in shirt-sleeves, leaning over the
evening paper he had spread before him on his bar.
He was freshly shaven, and was reading his paper and
smoking his cigar in the peace that had settled on his
establishment; his shirt was fresh and clean; the
starch was scarcely broken in its stiff sleeves, and
Archie was fascinated by the tiny red figures of
horseshoes and stirrups and jockey caps that dotted it; he
had a desire to possess, some day, just such a shirt
himself.  At the approaching step of the two men,
Gibbs looked up suddenly, and the light flashed blue
from the diamond in the bosom of his shirt.  Curly
jerked his head toward the back room.  Gibbs looked
at Curly an instant and then at Archie, a question in his
glance.

"Sure," said Curly; "he's in."  Then Gibbs carefully
and deliberately folded his paper, stuck it in one of the
brackets of his bar, and went with the two men into
the back room.  There he stood beside the table, his
hands thrust into his pockets, his cigar rolling in the
corner of his mouth, his head tilted back a little.  Archie
was tingling with interest and expectation.

"Well," said Gibbs, in an introductory way.

Curly was unbuttoning his waistcoat; in a moment
he had drawn from its inner pocket a package,
unwrapped it, and disclosed the sheets of fresh new
stamps, red and green, and stiff with the shining
mucilage.  He counted them over laboriously and separated
them, making two piles, one of the red two-cent stamps,
another of the green one-cent stamps, while Gibbs
stood, squinting downward at the table.  When Curly
was done, Gibbs counted the sheets of postage stamps
himself.

"Just fifty of each, heh?" he asked when he had done.

"That's right," said Curly.

"That's right, is it?" Gibbs repeated; a shrewdness
in his squint.

"Yes," Curly said.

"Sixty per cent.," said Gibbs.

"All right," said Curly.

"I can't give more for the stickers just now," Gibbs
went on, as if the men were entitled to some word of
explanation; "business is damned bad, and I'm not
making much at that."

"That's all right," said Curly somewhat impatiently,
as one who disliked haggling.

"That goes with you, does it, Dutch?" Gibbs said to
Archie.

"Sure," said Archie, glancing hastily at Curly,
"whatever he says goes with me all right."  And then
he smiled, his white teeth showing, his face ruddier,
his blue eyes sparkling with the excitement he felt--smiled
at this new name Gibbs had suddenly given him.

Curly had thrust his hand into another pocket
meanwhile, and he drew out another package, done up in a
newspaper.  He laid this on the table, opened it slowly,
and carefully turning back the folds of paper, disclosed
the bundle of charred bank-notes.  Gibbs began shaking
his head dubiously as soon as he saw the contents.

"I can't do much with that," he said.  "But you
leave it and I'll see."

"Well, now, that's all right," said Curly, speaking in
his high argumentative tone; "I ain't wolfing.  You can
give us our bit later."

"All right," said Gibbs, and carefully doing up the
parcels, he took them and disappeared.  In a few
moments he came back, counted out the money on the
table--ninety dollars--and then went out with the air of
a man whose business is finished.

Curly divided the money, gave Archie his half, and
they went out.  The bar-room was just as they had
left it; the wreck of a man still bowed his head on his
forearms, the cat was still curled about her kittens.
Gibbs had taken down his paper, and resumed his reading.

"I'm going to get a bath and a shave," Curly said.
He passed his hand over his chin, rasping its palm on
the stubble of his beard.  Archie was surprised and a
little disappointed at the hint of dismissal he felt in
Curly's tone.  He wished to continue the companionship,
with its excitement, its interest, its pleasure, above
all that quality in it which sustained him and kept up
his spirits.  He found himself just then in a curious
state of mind; the distinction he had felt but a few
moments before in the back room with Gibbs, the
importance in the success of the expedition, more than all,
the feeling that he had been admitted to relationships
which so short a time before had been so mysterious
and inaccessible to him,--all this was leaving him,
dying out within, as the stimulus of spirits dies out in a
man, and Archie's Teutonic mind was facing the darkness
of a fit of despondency; he felt blue and unhappy;
he longed to stay with Curly.

"Look at, Dutch," Curly was saying; "you've got a
little of the cush now--it ain't much, but it's something.
You want to go and give some of it to your mother;
don't go and splash it up in beer."

It pleased Archie to have Curly call him Dutch.
There was something affectionate in it, as there is in
most nicknames--something reassuring.  But the
mention of his mother overcame this sense; it unmanned
him, and he looked away.

"And look at," Curly was going on, "you'll bit up
on that burned darb; you be around in a day or two."

Curly withdrew into himself in the curious, baffling
way he had; the way that made him mysterious and
somewhat superior, and, at times, brought on him the
distrust of his companions, always morbidly suspicious
at their best.  Archie disliked to step out of Gibbs's
place into the street; it seemed like an exposure.  He
glanced out.  The summer twilight had deepened into
darkness.  The street was deserted and bare, though
the cobblestones somehow exuded the heat and
turmoil of the day that had just passed from them.  Archie
thought for an instant of what Curly had said about
his mother; he could see her as she would be sitting
in the kitchen, with the lamp on the table; Gusta would
be bustling about getting the supper, the children
moving after her, clutching at her skirts, retarding her,
getting in her way, seeming to endanger their own lives
by scalding and burning and falling and other
domestic accidents, which, though always impending,
never befell.  The kitchen would be full of the pleasant
odor of frying potatoes, and the coffee, bubbling over
now and then and sizzling on the hot stove--Archie
had a sense of all these things, and his heart yearned
and softened.  And then suddenly he thought of his
father, and he knew that the conception of the home
he had just had was the way it used to be before his
father lost his leg and all the ills following that
accident had come upon the family; the house was no
longer cheerful; the smell of boiling coffee was not in
it as often as it used to be; his mother was depressed
and his father quarrelsome, even Gusta had changed;
he would be sure to encounter that lover of hers, that
plumber whom he hated.  He squeezed the roll of bills
in his pocket; suddenly, too, he remembered his new
revolver and pressed it against his thigh, and he had
pleasure in that.  He went out into the street.  After
all, the darkness was kind; there were glaring and
flashing electric lights along the street, of course; the
cheap restaurant across the way was blazing, people
were drifting in and out, but they were not exactly the
same kind of people in appearance that had thronged
the streets by day.  There was a new atmosphere--a
more congenial atmosphere, for night had come, and
had brought a change and a new race of people to the
earth--a race that lived and worked by night, with
whom Archie felt a kinship.  He did not hate them as
he was unconsciously growing to hate the people of the
daylight.  He saw a lame hot-tamale man in white,
hobbling up the street, painfully carrying his steaming
can; he saw cabmen on their cabs down toward Cherokee
Street; he saw two girls, vague, indistinct, suggestive,
flitting hurriedly by in the shadows; the electric
lights were blazing with a hard fierce glare, but there
were shadows, deep and black and soft.  He started
toward Cherokee Street; he squeezed the money in his
pocket; he was somehow elated with the independence
it gave him.  At the corner he paused again; he had
no plan, he was drifting along physically just as he was
morally, following the line of least resistance, which
line, just then, was marked by the lights along Market
Place.  He started across that way, when all at once
a hand took him by the lapel of his coat and Kouka's
black visage was before him.  Archie looked at the
detective, whose eyes were piercing him from beneath the
surly brows that met in thick, coarse, bristling hairs
across the wide bridge of his nose.

"Well," said Kouka, "so I've got you again!"

Archie's heart came to his throat.  A great rage
suddenly seized him, a hatred of Kouka, and of his black
eyes; he had a savage wish to grind the heel of his
boot heavily, viciously, remorselessly into that face,
right there where the eyebrows met across the
nose--grinding his heel deep, feeling the bones crunch
beneath it.  For some reason Kouka suddenly released
his hold.

"You'd better duck out o' here, young fellow,"
Kouka was saying.  "You hear?"

Archie heard, but it was a moment before he could
fully realize that Kouka knew nothing after all.

"You hear?" Kouka repeated, bringing his face close
to Archie's.

"Yes, I hear," said Archie sullenly, as it seemed, but
thankfully.

"Don't let me see you around any more, you--"

Archie, saved by some instinct, did not reply, and he
did not wait for Kouka's oath, but hurried away, and
Kouka, as he could easily feel, stood watching him.
He went on half a block and paused in a shadow.  He
saw Kouka still standing there, then presently saw him
turn and go away.

Archie paused in the shadow; he thought of Kouka,
remembering all the detective had done to him; he
remembered those forty days in the workhouse; he
thought of Bostwick, of the city attorney, of the whole
town that seemed to stand behind him; the bitterness of
those days in the workhouse came back, and the force
of all the accumulated hatred and vengeance that had
been spent upon him was doubled and quadrupled in
his heart, and he stood there with black, mad, insane
thoughts clouding his reason.  Then he gripped his
roll of money, he pressed his new revolver, and he felt
a kind of wild, primitive, savage satisfaction,--the
same primitive satisfaction that Kouka, and Bostwick,
the city attorney, the whole police force, and the whole
city had seemed to take in sending him to the
workhouse.  And then he went on toward the tenderloin.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`2-III`:

.. class:: center large

   III

.. vspace:: 2

Gibbs, never sure that the police would keep their
word with him, rose earlier than usual the next morning,
ate his breakfast, called a cab--he had an eccentric
fondness for riding about in hansom-cabs--and was
driven rapidly to the corner of High and Franklin
Streets, the busiest, most distracting corner in the city.
There the enormous department store of James E. Bills
and Company occupied an entire building five stories
high.  The store was already filled with shoppers,
mostly women, who crowded about the counters, on
which all kinds of trinkets were huddled, labeled with
cards declaring that the price had just been reduced.
The girls behind the counters, all of whom were
dressed in a certain extravagant imitation of the
women who came every day to look these articles over,
were already tired; their eyes lay in dark circles that
were the more pronounced because their cheeks were
covered with powder, and now and then they lifted
their hands, their highly polished finger-nails gleaming,
to the enormous pompadours in which they had
arranged their hair.  Many of the women in the store,
clerks and shoppers, wore peevish, discontented
expressions, and spoke in high ugly voices; the noise of their
haggling filled the whole room and added to the din
made by the little metal money-boxes that whizzed by
on overhead wires, and increased the sense of
confusion produced by the cheap and useless things which,
with their untruthful placards, were piled about
everywhere.  The air in the store was foul and unwholesome;
here and there pale little girls who carried
bundles in baskets ran about on their little thin legs,
piping out shrill numbers.

Gibbs was wearied the moment he entered, and irritably
waved aside the sleek, foppish floor-walker.  The
only person to whom he spoke as he passed along was
a private detective leaning against one of the counters;
Gibbs had already had dealings with him and had got
back for him articles that had been stolen by certain
women thieves who were adept in the art of shoplifting.
Gibbs went straight back to the elevator and was lifted
out of all this din and confusion into the comparative
quiet of the second floor, where the offices of the
establishment occupied a cramped space behind thin wooden
partitions.  Gibbs entered the offices and glanced about
at the clerks, who worked in silence; on each of them
had been impressed a subdued, obedient demeanor;
they glanced at Gibbs surreptitiously.  It was plain
that all spirit had been drilled out of them; they were
afraid of something, and, driven by their necessities,
they toiled like machines.  Gibbs felt a contempt for
them as great as the contempt he felt for the
floor-walkers below, a contempt almost as great as that he
had for Bills himself.  A timid man of about forty-five,
with a black beard sprouting out of the pallor of his
skin, came up, and lifted his brows with amazement
when Gibbs, ignoring him, made plainly for the door
that was lettered: "Mr. Bills."

"Mr. Bills is engaged just now," the man said in a
hushed tone.

"Well, tell him Mr. Gibbs is here."

"But he's engaged just now, sir; he's dictating."  The
man leaned forward and whispered the word
"dictating" impressively.

But Gibbs kept on toward the door; then the man
blocked his way.

"Tell him if you want to," said Gibbs, "if not, I will."

It seemed that Gibbs might walk directly through
the man, who retreated from him, and, having no other
egress, went through Mr. Bills's door.  A moment more
and he held it open for Gibbs.

Bills was sitting at an enormous desk which was set
in perfect order; on either side of him were baskets
containing the letters he was methodically answering.
Bills's head showed over the top of the desk; it was
a round head covered with short black hair, smoothly
combed and shining.  His black side-whiskers were
likewise short and smooth.  His neck was bound by a
white collar and a little pious, black cravat, and he wore
black clothes.  His smoothly-shaven lips were pursed
in a self-satisfied way; he was brisk and unctuous, very
clean and proper, and looked as if he devoutly anointed
himself with oil after his bath.  In a word, he bore
himself as became a prominent business man, who,
besides his own large enterprise, managed a popular
Sunday-school, and gave Sunday afternoon "talks" on
"Success," for the instruction of certain young men of
the city, too mild and acquiescent to succeed as
anything but conformers.

"Ah, Mr. Gibbs," he said.  "You will excuse me a moment."

Bills turned and resumed the dictation of his stereotyped
phrases of business.  He dictated several letters,
then dismissed his stenographer and, turning about,
said with a smile:

"Now, Mr. Gibbs."

Gibbs drew his chair close to Bills's desk, and, taking
a package from his pocket, laid out the stamps.

"One hundred sheets of twos, fifty of ones," he said.

Bills had taken off his gold glasses and slowly
lowered them to the end of their fine gold chain; he rubbed
the little red marks the glasses left on the bridge of his
nose, and in his manner there was an uncertainty that
seemed unexpected by Gibbs.

"I was about to suggest, Mr. Gibbs," said Bills,
placing his fingers tip to tip, "that you see our Mr. Wilson;
he manages the mail-order department, now."

"Not for mine," said Gibbs decisively.  "I've always
done business with you.  I don't know this fellow
Wilson."

Bills, choosing to take it as a tribute, smiled and went on:

"I think we're fully stocked just now, but--how
would a sixty per cent. proposition strike you?"

"No," said Gibbs, as decisively as before.

"No?" repeated Bills.

"No," Gibbs went on, "seventy-five."

Bills thought a moment, absently lifting the rustling
sheets.

"How many did you say there were?"

"They come to one-fifty," said Gibbs; "count 'em."

Bills did count them, and when he had done, he said:

"That would make it one-twelve-fifty?"

"That's it."

"Very well.  Shall I pass the amount to your credit?"

"No; I'll take the cash."

"I thought perhaps Mrs. Gibbs would be wanting
some things in the summer line," said Bills.

Gibbs shook his head.

"We pay cash," said he.

Bills smiled, got up, walked briskly with a little
spring to each step and left the room.  He returned
presently, closed the door, sat down, counted the bills
out on the leaf of his desk, laid a silver half-dollar on
top and said:

"There you are."

Gibbs counted the money carefully, rolled it up
deliberately and stuffed it into his trousers pocket.

Gibbs had one more errand that morning, and he
drove in his hansom-cab to the private bank Amos
Hunter conducted as a department of his trust
company.  Gibbs deposited his money, and then went into
Hunter's private office.  Hunter was an old man, thin
and spare, with white hair, and a gray face.  He sat
with his chair turned away from his desk, which he
seldom used except when it became necessary for him
to sign his name, and then he did this according to the
direction of a clerk, who would lay a paper before him,
dip a pen in ink, hand it to Hunter, and point to the
space for the signature.  Hunter was as economical of
his energy in signing his name as in everything else;
he wrote it "A. Hunter."  He sat there every day
without moving, as it seemed, apparently determined to
eke out his life to the utmost.  His coachman drove
him down town at ten each morning, at four in the
afternoon he came and drove him home again.  It was
only through the windows of the carriage and through
the windows of his private office that Hunter looked
out on a world with which for forty years he had never
come in personal contact.  His inert manner gave the
impression of great age and senility; but the eyes
under the thick white brows were alert, keen, virile.  He
was referred to generally as "old Amos."

Gibbs went in, a parcel in his hand.

"Just a little matter of some mutilated currency," he
said.

Old Amos's thin lips seemed to smile.

"You may leave it and we'll be glad to forward it to
Washington for you, Mr. Gibbs," he said, without moving.

Gibbs laid the bundle on old Amos's desk, and,
taking up a bit of paper, wrote on it and handed it to
Hunter.

"Have you a memorandum there?" asked Hunter.
He glanced at the paper and wrote on the slip:

"A. H."

Then he resumed the attitude that had scarcely been
altered, laid his white hands in his lap and sat there
with his thin habitual smile.

Gibbs thanked him and went away.  His morning's
work among the business men of the city was done.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`2-IV`:

.. class:: center large

   IV

.. vspace:: 2

It promised to be a quiet evening at Danny Gibbs's.
There had been a vicious electrical storm that afternoon,
but by seven o'clock the lightning played prettily
in the east, the thunder rolled away, the air cooled, and
the rain fell peacefully.  The storm had been predicted
to Joe Mason in the rheumatism that had bitten his
bones for two days, but now the ache had ceased, and
the relief was a delicious sensation he was content
simply to realize.  He sat in the back room, smoking and
thinking, a letter in his hand.  Gibbs's wife had gone to
bed--she had been drinking that day.  Old Johnson,
the sot who, by acting as porter, paid Gibbs for his
shelter and the whisky he drank--he ate very little,
going days at a time without food--had set the
bar-room in order and disappeared.  Gibbs was somewhere
about, but all was still, and Mason liked it so.  From
time to time Mason glanced at the letter.  The letter
was a fortnight old; it had been written from a
workhouse in a distant city by his old friend Dillon, known
to the yeggs as Slim.  Mason had not seen Dillon for
a year--not, in fact, since they had been released from
Dannemora.  This was the letter:

.. vspace:: 2

OLD PAL--I thought I would fly you a kite, and take
chances of its safe arrival at your loft.  I was lagged
wrong, but I am covered and strong and the bulls can't
throw me.  I am only here for a whop, and I'll hit the
road before the dog is up.  I have filled out a country
jug that can be sprung all right.  We can make a safe
lamas.  There is a John O'Brien at 1:30 A. M., and a
rattler at 3:50.  The shack next door is a cold slough,
and the nearest kip to the joint is one look and a peep.
There is a speeder in the shanty, and we can get to the
main stem and catch the rattler and be in the main fort
by daylight.  The trick is easy worth fifty centuries.
Now let me know, and make your mark and time.  I
am getting this out through a broad who will give it to
our fall-back, you know who.

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

Yours in durance vile,
      SLIM.

.. vspace:: 2

Mason had not answered the letter, and only the day
before Dillon had appeared, bringing with him a youth
called Squeak.  And now this night, as Mason sat there,
he did not like to think of Dillon.  Dillon had traveled
hundreds of miles by freight-trains to be with Mason,
to give him part in his enterprise; he had been to the
little town and examined the bank; he had even
entered it by night alone.  He had laid his plans, and,
like all his kind, could not conceive of their
miscarrying.  He had estimated the amount they would
procure; he considered five thousand dollars a conservative
estimate.  It was the big touch, of which they
were always dreaming as a means of reformation.  But
Mason had refused.  Then Dillon asked Curly, and
Curly refused.  Mason gave Dillon no reason for his
refusal, but Curly contended that summer was not the
time for such a big job; the nights were short and
people slept lightly, with open windows, even if the
old stool-pigeon was not up.  Dillon had taunted him
and hinted contemptuously at a broad.  They had
almost come to blows.  Finally Dillon had left, taking
with him Mandell and Squeak and Archie--all eager
to go.

Mason sat there and thought of Dillon and his
companions.  He could imagine them on the John O'Brien,
jolting on through the rain, maybe dropping off when
the train stopped, to hide under some water-tank, or
behind some freight-shed--he had done it all so many,
many times himself.  Still he tried not to think of
Dillon, for he could not do so without a shade of
self-reproach; it seemed like pigging to refuse Dillon as he
had; they had worked so long together.  Dillon's long,
gaunt figure presented itself to his memory as crouching
before some old rope mold, a bit of candle in his
left hand, getting ready to pour the soup, and then
memory would usually revert to that night when Dillon
had suddenly doused the candle--but not before Mason
had caught the gleam in his eyes and the setting of his
jaw--and, pulling his rod, had barked suddenly into
the darkness.  Then the flight outside, the rose-colored
flashes from their revolvers in the night, the race down
the silent street--white snow in the fields across the
railroad tracks, and the bitter cold in the woods.

He shook his head as if to fling the memories from
him.  But Dillon's figure came back, now in the front
rank of his company, marching across the hideous
prison yard, his long legs breaking at the middle as he
leaned back in the lock-step.  Mason tried to escape
these thoughts, but they persisted.  He got a
newspaper, but understood little of what he read, except one
brief despatch, which told of a tramp found cut in two
beside the tracks, five hundred dollars sewed in his coat.
The despatch wondered how a hobo could have so
much money, and this amused Mason; he would tell
Gibbs, and they would have a laugh--their old laugh at
the world above them.  Then they themselves would
wonder--wonder which one of the boys it was; it
might be weeks before the news would reach them in
an authoritative form.  He enjoyed for a moment his
laugh at the stupid world, the world which could not
understand them in the least, the world which
shuddered in its ignorance of them.  Then he thought of
Dillon again.  Dillon had never refused him; he had not
refused him that evening in northern Indiana, when the
sheriff and the posse of farmers, armed with pitchforks
and shot-guns and old army muskets, had brought
them to bay in the wheat stubble; his ammunition had
given out, but old Dillon, with only three cartridges
left, had stood cursing and covering his retreat.  Mason
was beginning to feel small about it, and yet--Dillon
did not understand; when he came back he would
explain it all to him.  This notion gave him some comfort,
and he lighted his cigar, turned to his newspaper again,
and listened for the rain falling outside.  Suddenly
there was a noise, and Mason started.  Was that old
Dillon crouching there beside him, his face gleaming
in the flicker of the dripping candle?  He put his hand
to his head in a kind of daze.

"Je's!" he exclaimed.  "I'm getting nutty."

He was troubled, for his head had now and then
gone off that way in prison--they called it stir simple.
Mason sat down again, but no longer tried to read.
He heard the noise in the bar-room, the noise of high
excitement, and he wondered.  His curiosity was great,
but he had learned to control his curiosity.  He could
hear talking, laughing, cursing, the shuffle of feet, the
clink of glasses--some sports out for a time, no doubt.
In a moment the door opened and Gibbs appeared.

"Where's Kate?" he demanded.

"She went to bed half an hour ago," said Mason.
"Why--what's the excitement?"

"Eddie Dean's here--come on out."  Gibbs
disappeared; the door closed.

Mason understood; no wonder the place thrilled with
excitement.  He had heard of Eddie Dean.  Down into
his world had come stories of this man, of his amazing
skill and cleverness, of the enormous sums he made
every year--made and spent.  Dean had the fascination
for Mason that is born of mystery; he had had Dean's
methods and the methods of other big-mitt men
described to him; he had heard long discussions in
sand-house hang-outs and beside camp-fires in the woods,
but the descriptions never described; he could never
grasp the details.  He could understand the common,
ordinary thefts; he could see how a pickpocket by long
practice learned his art, but the kind of work that Dean
did had something occult in it.  How a man could go
out, wearing good clothes, and, without soiling his
fingers, merely by talking and playing cards, make such
sums of money--Mason simply could not realize it.
Surely it was worth while to have a look at him.  He
started out, then he remembered; he passed his hand
over the stubble of hair that had been growing
after the shaving at the workhouse, and he picked up
his low-crowned, narrow-brimmed felt hat--the kind
worn by the brakemen he now and then wished to be
taken for--pulled it down to his eyebrows, and went out.

Eddie Dean, who stood at the bar in the blue clothes
that perfectly exemplified the fashion of that summer,
was described in the police identification records as a
man somewhat above medium size, and now, at forty,
he was beginning to take on fat.  His face was heavy,
and despite the fact that his nose was twisted slightly
to one side, and his upper lip depressed where it met
his nose, the women whom Dean knew considered him
handsome.  His face was smooth-shaven and blue, like
an actor's, from his heavy beard.  His mouth was large,
and his lips thin; he could close them and look serious
and profound; and when he smiled and disclosed the
gold fillings in his teeth, he seemed youthful and gay.
His face showed vanity, a love of pleasure, vulgarity,
selfishness, sensuality accentuated by dissipation, and
the black eyes that were so sharp and bright and
penetrating were cruel.  Mason, however, could not
analyze; he only knew that he did not like this fellow,
and merely grunted when Gibbs introduced him, and
Dean patronizingly said, without looking at him:

"Just in time, my good fellow."

Then he motioned imperiously to the bartender, who
took down another wine-glass, wiped it dexterously,
and set it out with an elegant flourish and filled it.
Mason watched the golden bubbles spring from the
hollow stem to the seething surface.  He did not care
much for champagne, but he lifted his glass and looked
at Dean, who was saying:

"Here's to the suckers--may they never grow less."

The others in the party laughed.  Besides Gibbs, who
was standing outside his own bar like a visitor, there
were Nate Rosen, a gambler, dressed more conspicuously
than Dean; a small man in gray, with strange
pale eyes fastened always on Dean; and a third man in
tweeds, larger than either, with broad shoulders, heavy
jaw and an habitual scowl.  Beyond him, apart, with
the truckling leer of the parasite, stood a man in seedy
livery, evidently the driver of the carriage that was
waiting outside in the rain.

Dean's history was the monotonous one of most men
of his kind.  Having a boy's natural dislike for school,
he had run away from home and joined a circus.  At
first he led the sick horses, then he was hired by one of
the candy butchers and finally allowed to peddle on the
seats; there he learned the art of short change, and
when he had mastered this he sold tickets from a little
satchel outside the tents; by the time he was twenty-five
he knew most of the schemes by which the foolish,
seeking to get something for nothing, are despoiled of
their money.  He was an adept at cards; he knew monte
and he could work the shells; later he traveled about,
cheating men by all kinds of devices, aided by an
intuitive knowledge of human nature.  He could go
through a passenger train from coach to coach and
pick out his victims by their backs.  As he went through
he would suddenly lose his balance, as if by the
lurching of the train, and steady himself by the arm of the
seat in which his intended victim sat.  His confederate,
following behind, would note and remember.  Later,
he would return and invite him to make a fourth hand
at whist or pedro or some other game.  Dean would do
the rest.  He went to all large gatherings--political
conventions, especially national conventions, conclaves,
celebrations, world's fairs, the opening of any new strip
of land in the West, the gold-fields of Alaska, and so
on.  He had roamed all over the United States; he had
been to Europe, and Cuba, and Jamaica, and Old
Mexico; he had visited Hawaii; he boasted that he had
traveled the whole world over--"from St. Petersburg
to Cape Breton" was the way he put it, and it
impressed his hearers all the more because most of them
had none but the most confused notion of where either
place was.  He boasted, too, that United States
senators, cabinet officers, congressmen, governors,
financiers and other prominent men had been among his
victims, and many of these boasts were justified--by
the facts, at least.

The atmosphere of the bar-room had been changed
by the arrival of Dean.  It lost its usual serenity and
quivered with excitement.  The deference shown to
Dean was marked in the attitude of the men in his
suite; it was marked, too, by the bartender's attitude,
and even in that of Gibbs, though Gibbs was more
quiet and self-contained, bearing himself, indeed, quite
as Dean's equal.  He did not look at Dean often, but
stood at his bar with his head lowered, gazing
thoughtfully at the glass of mineral water he was drinking,
turning it round and round in his fingers, with a faint
smile on his lips.  But no one could tell whether the
amusement came from his own thoughts or the little
adventures Dean was relating.

"No, I'm going out in the morning," Dean was saying,
the diamond on his white, delicate hand flashing as
he lifted his glass.

"Which way?" asked Gibbs.

"I'm working eastward," said Dean.  "Here!" he
turned to the bartender, "let's have another--and get
another barrel of water for Dan."

He smiled with what tolerance he could find for a
man who did not drink.

"How much of that stuff do you lap up in a week, Dan?"

"Oh, I don't know," Gibbs said.  He was not quick
at repartee.

"Well, slush up, but don't make yourself sick," Dean
went on.

The bartender, moving briskly about, pressed the
cork from a bottle, poured a few drops into Dean's
glass, and then proceeded to fill the other glasses.

"Well, how's the graft?" Gibbs asked presently.

"Oh, fairly good," said Dean.  "A couple of bucks
yesterday."  He switched his leg with the slender stick
he carried.

Gibbs's eyes lighted with humorous interest and pleasure.

"They were coming out of St. Louis," Dean went
on, and then, as if he had perhaps given an exaggerated
impression of the transaction, he went on in a quick,
explicatory way: "Oh, it didn't amount to much--just
for the fun of the thing, you know.  But say, who do
you think I saw in St. Louis?"

"Don't know," said Gibbs, shaking his head.

"Why, old Tom Young."

"No!" exclaimed Gibbs, looking up in genuine
interest and surprise.

"Sure," said Dean.

"What's he doing?"

"He made the big touch, quit the business, got a
farm in Illinois, and settled down with Lou.  The girl's
grown up, just out of a seminary, and the boy's in
college.  He said he'd like me to see the place, but he
wouldn't take me out 'cause the girl was home then.
Remember the old joint in the alley?"

Gibbs's eyes kindled with lively memories.

"Remember that afternoon Bob's man came down
for the brace-box?  I can see Tom now--he gets the
box and says, 'Tell Bob not to frisk him.'  God!  They
sent that mark through the alley that afternoon to a
fare-you-well.  And they had hell's own time keepin'
the box in advance of 'em--it was the only one in the
alley.  Remember?"

Gibbs remembered, but that did not keep Dean from
relating the whole story.

"What became of Steve Harris?" Dean asked.

"He's out with the rag, I guess," Gibbs replied.

"I heard Winnie sold her place."

"Oh, yes," said Gibbs; "bought a little home in the
swell part--quiet street and all that--and they're living
there happy as you please."

"Well, that's good," said Dean.  "Steve and me was
with the John Robinson show in the old days.  He was
holdin' a board for the monte tickets, and old Pappy
King was cappin' for the game.  I remember one night
in Danville, Kentucky"--and Dean told another story.
The stories were all alike, having for their theme the
despoilment of some simpleton who had tried to beat
Dean or his confederates at one of their own numerous
games.

"I was holding the shingle for Jim Steele when he
was playing the broads, you understand.  He was the
greatest spieler ever.  I can see him now, taking up the
tickets, looking around and saying: 'Is there a
speculator in the party?'"

Dean's face was alight with the excitement of dramatizing
the long-past scene.  He laid his stick on the bar
and bent over, with his white fingers held as if they
poised cards.  He was a good mimic.  One could easily
imagine the scene on the trampled grass, with the white
canvas tents of the circus for a background.

"Dick Nolan and Joe Hipp were capping, and Dick
would come up--he had the best gilly make-up in the
world, you understand, a paper collar, a long linen
duster and big green mush--he'd look over the
cards--see?"--Dean leaned over awkwardly like a
country-man, pointing with a crooked forefinger--"and then
he'd say, 'I think it's that one.'"

His voice had changed; he spoke in the cracked tone
of the farmer, and his little audience laughed.

"Well, the guy hollers, you understand, but at the
come-back they're all swipes--working in the horse
tents; you'd never know 'em.  And then," Dean went
on, with the exquisite pleasure of remembering, "old
Ben Mellott was there working the send--you
remember Ben, Dan?"

Gibbs nodded.

"Jake Rend was running the side-show, and old Jew
Cohen had a dollar store--a drop-case, you know."

Gibbs nodded again.  Dean grew meditative, and a
silence fell on the group.

"We had a great crowd of knucks, too; the guns
to-day are nothing to them.  Those were the days, Dan.
Course, there wasn't much in it at that."

Dean meditated over the lost days a moment, and
then he grew cheerful again.

"I met Luke Evans last fall, Dan," he began again.
"In England.  The major and I were running between
London and Liverpool, working the steamer trains, and
him and me--"

And he was off into another story.  Having taken up
his English experience, Dean now told a number of
vulgar stories, using the English accent, which he could
imitate perfectly.  While in the midst of one of them,
he suddenly started at a footfall, and looked hastily
over his shoulder.  A man came in, glanced about, and
came confidently forward.

"Good morning, Danny," he said, in a tone of the
greatest familiarity.

Gibbs answered the greeting soberly, and then, at a
sign from the man, stepped aside rather reluctantly and
whispered with him.  Dean eyed them narrowly, took
in the fellow's attire from his straw hat to his damp
shoes, and, when he could catch Gibbs's eye, he crooked
his left arm, touched it significantly, and lifted his
eyebrows in sign of question.  Gibbs shook his head
in a negative that had a touch of contempt for the
implication, and then drew the man toward the bar.
Without the man's seeing him or hearing him, Dean touched
his arm again and said to Gibbs softly:

"Elbow?"

"No," said Gibbs, "reporter."

Then he turned and, speaking to the new-comer, he
presented him to Dean, saying:

"Mr. Jordon, make you acquainted with Mr. Wales,
of the *Courier*."

"Glad to meet you, Mr. Jordon," said the newspaper man.

"Ah, chawmed, I'm suah," said Dean, keeping to the
English accent he had just been using.  "I say, won't
you join us?"

The bartender, at a glance from Dean, produced
another bottle of champagne; the newspaper man's
eyes glistened with pleasure, Dean was taking out his
cigarette case.  Wales glanced at the cigarettes, and
Dean hastened to proffer them.  In conversation with
the reporter Dean impersonated an English follower of
the turf who had brought some horses to America.  As
he did this, actor that he was, he became more and
more interested in his impromptu monologue, assumed
the character perfectly and lived into it, and the others
there who knew of the deceit he was practising on the
reporter--he was nearly always practising some sort of
deceit, but seldom so innocently as now--were utterly
delighted; they listened to his guying until nearly
midnight, when Dean, having sustained the character of
the Englishman for more than two hours, grew weary
and said he must go.  As he was leaving he said to the
reporter:

"You've been across, of course?  No?  Well, really
now, that's quite too bad, don't you know!  But I say,
whenever you come, you must look me up, if you don't
mind, at Tarlingham Towers.  I've a bit of a place
down in the Surrey country; I've a beast there that's
just about up to your weight.  Have you ever ridden
to the hounds?"

The reporter was delighted; he felt that a distinction
had been conferred upon him.  Wishing to show his
appreciation, he asked Dean, or Jordan, as he was to
him, if he might print an interview.  Dean graciously
consented, and the reporter left for his office, glad of a
story with which to justify to his city editor, at least
partly, his wasted evening.

When Dean had gone, taking his three companions
with him, Gibbs and Mason sat for a long while in the
back room.

"So that's Eddie Dean!" said Mason.

"Yes," said Gibbs, "that's him."

"And what's his graft?"

"Oh," said Gibbs, "the send, the bull con, the big
mitt, the cross lift--anything in that line."

"And those two other guys with him?" asked Mason.

"That little one is Willie the Rat, the other is Gaffney."

"Sure-thing men, too?"

"Yes, they're in Ed's mob."

Mason was still for a while, then he observed:

"Je's!  He did make a monkey of that cove!"

Gibbs laughed.  "Oh, he's a great cod!  Why, do you
know what he did once?  Well, he went to Lord
Paisley's ball in Quebec, impersonating Sir Charles
Jordon--that's why I introduced him as Mr. Jordon
to-night."  Gibbs's eyes twinkled.  "He went in to look for
a rummy, but the flatties got on and tipped him off."

"He's smart."

"Yes, the smartest in the business.  He's made
several ten-century touches."

Gibbs thought seriously a moment and then said:

"No, he isn't smart; he's a damn fool, like all of them."

"Fall?"

"Yes, settled twice; done a two-spot at Joliet and a
finiff at Ionia."

Mason knit his brows and thought a long time, while
Gibbs smoked.  Finally Mason shook his head.

"No," he said, "no, Dan, I don't get it.  I can understand
knocking off a peter--the stuff's right there.  All
you do is to go take it.  I can understand a hold-up,
or a heel, or a prowl; I can see how a gun reefs a
britch kick and gets a poke--though I couldn't put my
hand in a barrel myself and get it out again--without
breaking the barrel.  I haven't any use for that kind,
which you know--but these sure-thing games, the big
mitt and the bull con--no, Dan, I can't get hip."

Gibbs laughed.

"Well, I can't explain it, Joe.  You heard him string
that chump to-night."

Mason dropped that phase of the question and
promptly said:

"Dan, I suppose there's games higher up, ain't they?"

Gibbs laughed a superior laugh.

"Higher up?  Joe, there's games that beat his just as
much as his beats yours.  I could name you men--"  Then
he paused.

Mason had grown very solemn.  He was not listening
at all to Gibbs, and, after a moment or two, he looked
up and said earnestly:

"Dan, what you said a while back is dead right.  I'm
a damn fool.  Look at me now--I've done twenty years,
and in all my time I've had less than two thousand
bucks."

Gibbs was about to speak, but Mason was too
serious to let himself be interrupted.

"I was thinking it all over to-night, and I
decided--know what I decided?"

Gibbs shook his head.

"I decided," Mason went on, "to square it without
waiting for the big touch."  Gibbs was not impressed;
the good thieves were always considering reformation.
"I know I can't get anything to do--I'm too old, and
besides--well, you know."  Mason let the situation
speak for itself.  "I'm about all in, but I was thinking,
Dan, this here place you've got in the country, can't
you--"  Mason hesitated a little--"can't you let me work
around there?  Just my board and a few clothes?"  Mason
leaned forward eagerly.

"You know, Joe," said Gibbs, seeing that Mason
was serious, "that as long as I've got a place you can
have a home with me.  I'm going to take Kate out there
and live.  I've got the place almost paid for."

Mason leaned back, tried to speak, paused, swallowed,
and moistened his lips.

"I worried about Slim to-night," he managed to say
presently.  It was hard for him to give utterance to
thoughts that he considered sentimental.  "My treating
him so, you see--that I decided; I want to try it.
That's why I wouldn't go with him; he didn't
understand, but maybe I can explain.  As I was thinking
to-night, my head went off again--that stir simple, you
know."

He raised his hand to his head and Gibbs was concerned.

"You'd better take a little drink, Joe," he said.

After Gibbs had brought the whisky, they sat there
and discussed the future until the early summer dawn
was red.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`2-V`:

.. class:: center large

   V

.. vspace:: 2

Dillon, Archie, Mandell and Squeak had left the city
that morning.  Dillon was gloomy and morose because
Mason had refused to join him.  He had been
disappointed, too, in Curly, but not so much surprised, for
Curly was so strange and mysterious that nothing he
might do could surprise his friends.  Cedarville was far
away, in Illinois, and long before daylight the four
men had started on their journey in a freight-train.
Dillon's plan was to rob the bank that night.  He had
chosen Saturday night because a Sunday would
probably intervene before discovery, and thus give them
time to escape.  But the journey was beset by
difficulties; the train spent long hours in switching, in
cutting out and putting in cars, and at such times the four
men had been compelled to get off and hide, lest the
trainmen detect them.  Besides, the train made long
inexplicable stops, standing on a siding, with nothing to
mar the stillness but the tired exhaust of the engine and
the drone of the wide country-side.  At noon the empty
box-car in which the men had been riding was cut out
and left stranded at a village; after that, unable to find
another empty car, they rode on a car that was laden
with lumber, but this, too, was cut out and left behind.
Then they rode in most uncomfortable and dangerous
positions on the timber-heads over the couplings.
Half-way to Cedarville they met the storm.  It had been
gathering all the morning, and now it broke suddenly;
the rain came down in torrents, and they were drenched
to the skin.  Mandell, who was intensely afraid of
lightning, suffered agonies, and threatened to abandon
the mob at the first opportunity.  Late in the afternoon,
just as the train was pulling into the village of
Romeo, the rear brakeman discovered them, called the
conductor and the front brakeman, and ordered the
men to leave the train.

"Stick and slug!" cried Mandell, made irritable by
the storm.  But Dillon repressed him.

"Unload!" he commanded.  "Don't goat 'em."

Archie, on the other side of the car, had not been
seen clearly by the trainmen, but the others had, and
though Dillon made them all get off, he could not keep
Squeak from stopping long enough to curse the train-men
with horrible oaths.  Then the train went on and
left them.

At evening they went into the woods and built a fire.
There were discouragements as to the fire; the wood
was wet, but finally they achieved a blaze, and Dillon
went into the village after food.  When he returned the
fire was going well, the men had dried their clothes,
and their habitual spirits had returned.  In the water of
a creek Dillon washed the can he had found, and made
tea; they cooked bacon on pointed sticks, broke the
bread and cheese, and ate their supper.  Then, in the
comfort that came of dry clothes and warmth and the
first meal they had eaten that day, they sat about, rolled
cigarettes, and waited for the night.  Then darkness
fell, Dillon made them put out the fire, and they
tramped across the fields to the railroad.

"We'll wait here for the John O'Brien," said Dillon,
when they came to the water-tank.  "We must get the
jug to-night--that'll give us all day to-morrow for the
get-away."

They waited then, and waited, while the summer
night deepened to silence; once, the headlight of an
engine sent its long light streaming down the track;
they made ready; the train came swaying toward them.

"Hell!" exclaimed Mandell, in the disappointment
that was common to all of them.  "It's a rattler!"  And
the lighted windows of a passenger-train swept by.

They waited and waited, and no freight-train came.
At midnight, when they were all stiff and cold, Dillon
ordered them into the village.  They were glad enough
to go.  In the one business street of the town they
found a building in which a light gleamed.  They
glanced through a window; it was the post-office.  Then
Dillon changed his plan in that ease with which he
could change any plan, and forgot the little bank at
Cedarville.  He placed Squeak at the rear of the
building, Mandell in the front.

"Come on, Dutch," he said.

He took Archie with him because he was not so sure
of him as he was of the two other men, though Archie
felt that he had been honored above them.  He followed
Dillon into the deep shadows that lay between the
post-office and the building next door.  He kept close behind
Dillon, and watched with excitement while Dillon's tall
form bent before one of the windows.  Dillon was
groping; presently he stood upright, his back bowed,
he strained and grunted and swore, then the screws
gave, and Dillon wrenched the little iron bars from the
windows.

"Come on," he said.

He was crawling through the window; Archie followed.

Inside, Dillon stood upright, holding Archie behind
him, and peered about in the dim light from the oil
lamp that burned before a tin reflector on the wall.
The safe was in the light.  Dillon looked back, made a
mental note of the window's location, and put out the
lamp.  Then he lighted a candle and knelt before the safe.

Archie stood with his revolver in his hand; Dillon
laid his on the floor beside him.  Then from the pocket
of his coat he drew out some soap; a moment more
and Archie could see him plastering up the crevices
about the door of the safe, leaving but one opening, in
the middle of the top of the door.  Then out of the soap
he fashioned about this opening a crude little cup.
Archie watched intently.  Dillon worked rapidly,
expertly, and yet, as Archie noted, not so rapidly nor so
expertly as Curly had worked.  Curly was considered
one of the most skilful men in the business, but Dillon
was older and could tell famous tales of the old days
when they had blown gophers--the days when they
used to drill the safes and pour in powder.  Dillon's
age was telling; his fingers were clumsy and knotted
with rheumatism, and now and then they trembled.

.. _`Archie could see him plastering up the crevices`:

.. figure:: images/img-206.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Archie could see him plastering up the crevices

   Archie could see him plastering up the crevices

"Now the soup," Dillon was saying, quite to himself,
and he poured the nitroglycerin from a bottle into the
little cup he had made of soap.

"And the string," said Archie, anxious to display
his knowledge.

"Cheese it!" Dillon commanded.

He was fixing a fulminating cap to the end of a fuse,
and he inserted this into the cup.  Then he plastered it
all over with soap, picked up his revolver, lighted the
slow fuse from the candle, and, rising quickly, he
stepped back, drawing Archie with him.  They stood in
a corner of the room watching the creeping spark; a
moment more and there was the thud of an explosion,
and Dillon was springing toward the safe; he seized
the handle, opened the heavy door, and was down with
his candle peering into its dark interior.  He went
through it rapidly, drew out the stamps and the
currency and the coin.  Another moment and they were
outside.  Mandell and Squeak were where Dillon had
left them.

"All right," Dillon said.  "Lam!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`2-VI`:

.. class:: center large

   VI

.. vspace:: 2

A week later, returning by a roundabout way, Dillon
and his companions came back to town.  That night
Dillon, Archie, Squeak, Mandell and Mason were
arrested.  When Archie was taken up to the detectives'
office and found himself facing Kouka, his heart sank.

"Couldn't take a little friendly advice, could you?"
said Kouka, thrusting forward his black face.

Archie was dumb.

"Where'd you get that gat?" Kouka demanded.

Still Archie was dumb.

"You might as well tell," Kouka said.  "Your pals
have split on you."

Archie had heard of that ruse; he did not think any
of them would confess, and he was certain they had
not done so when Kouka referred to his revolver, for
no one but Jackson knew where he had got the weapon.
After an hour Kouka gave it up, temporarily at least,
and sent Archie back to the prison.

The next morning all five men were taken to the
office of the detectives.  Besides Kouka, Quinn and
Inspector McFee, there were two others, one of whom the
prisoners instantly recognized as Detective Carney.
Dillon and Mason had long known Carney, and respected
him; he was the only detective in the city whom they
did respect, for this silent, undemonstrative man, with
the weather-beaten face, white hair and shrewd blue
eyes, had a profound knowledge of all classes of thieves
and their ways.  Indeed, this knowledge, which made
Carney the most efficient detective in the city, militated
against him with his superiors; he knew too much for
their comfort.  As for Kouka and the other detectives,
they were jealous of him, though he never interfered
in their work nor offered suggestion or criticism; but
they all felt instinctively that he contemned them.
When Dillon saw Carney his heart sank; Mason's, on
the contrary, rose.  Carney gave no sign of recognition;
it was plain that he was a mere spectator.  But when
Dillon saw the other man he whispered to Mason out
of the corner of his mouth:

"It's all off."

This man was a tall, well-built fellow, with iron-gray
hair, a ruddy face and a small black mustache above
full red lips; he was dressed in gray, and he bore
himself as something above the other officers present
because he was an United States inspector.  His name
was Fallen.  He glanced at the five men, and smiled
and nodded complacently.

"I thought it looked like one of your jobs," he said,
addressing Dillon and Mason jointly.  Dillon could not
refrain from nudging Mason, and in the same instant
he caught Carney's eye.  Carney winked quietly, and
Dillon smiled, and to hide the smile, self-consciously
ducked his head and spat out his tobacco.

"Well," said Fallen, "I'm much obliged to you men."  He
included McFee officially, and Kouka and Quinn
personally in this acknowledgment.  "I'll have the
marshal come for them after dinner.  I want Mason there
and Dillon"--he pointed fiercely and menacingly--"and
Mandell and that kid."  He was indicating
Squeak.  "What's your name?" he demanded.

Squeak hesitated, then said: "Davis."

Fallen laughed in his superior, federal way, and said:

"That'll do as well as any."

Then he looked at Archie.

"I don't want him," he said.  "He doesn't belong to
this gang; he wasn't there.  There were only four of
them.  You can cut him out."

Kouka and Quinn looked at each other in surprise;
they were about to protest.  In Archie's heart, as he
watched this little drama, a wild hope flamed.  Carney,
too, looked up, showing the first interest he had
evinced.  Something in his look deterred Fallen, held
his eye.  He knew Carney and his reputation; his
glance plainly implied a question.

"You're wrong on that fellow Mason," said Carney.

Fallen looked at him, then at Mason; then he smiled
his superior smile.

"Oh, I guess not," he said lightly.  He turned away
with his complacent, insulting smile.

"All right," said Carney.  "You've got him wrong,
that's all.  He's been here in town for three weeks.  Of
course, it's nothing to me--'tain't my business."  He
plunged his hands in his trousers pockets and walked
over to the window.

The men in the chained line shuffled uneasily.

"Do I get out now?" Archie asked.

Kouka laughed.

"Yes--when I'm through with you."

That afternoon Dillon, Mason, Mandell and Squeak
were taken to the county jail on warrants charging
them with the robbery of the post-office at Romeo.

Gibbs appeared at the jail early that evening, his
blue eyes filled with a distress that made them almost
as innocent as they must have been when he was a
little child.

"I just heard of the pinch," he said apologetically.

"Didn't they send you word last night?" asked Dillon.

Gibbs shook his head impatiently, as if it were
useless to waste time in discussing such improbabilities.

"Never mind," he said.  "I'll send a mouthpiece."

"Yes, do, Dan," said Mason.  "We want a hearing."

"Well, now, leave all that to me, Joe," said Gibbs.
"I'll send you some tobacco and have John fetch in
some chuck."

Gibbs attended to their little wants, but he had
difficulty as to the lawyer.  He had, from time to time,
employed various lawyers in the city, being guided in his
selections, not by the reputed abilities of the lawyers,
but by his notions of their pull with the authorities.
Formerly he had employed Frisby on the recommendation
of Cleary, the chief of police, with whom Frisby
divided such fees, but Frisby's charges were extortionate,
and lately, Gibbs understood, his influence was
waning.  In thinking over the other lawyers, he recalled
Shelley Thomas, but Thomas, he found, was on a
drunk.  At last he decided on Marriott.

"There's nothing to it," he said to Marriott,
"especially so far as Mason's concerned; he's a friend of
mine.  He's in wrong, but these United States inspectors
will job him if they get a chance."

Marriott wished that Gibbs had retained some other
lawyer.  The plight of the men seemed desperate
enough.  He thought them guilty, and, besides, he
wished to go away on his vacation.  But his interest
deepened; he found that he was dealing with a greater
power than he encountered in the ordinary state case;
the power, indeed, of the United States.  The officials
in the government building were unobliging; Fallen
was positively insulting; from none of them could he
receive any satisfaction.  The hearing was not set, and
then one evening Fallen mysteriously disappeared.
Marriott was enraged, Gibbs was desperate, and
Marriott found himself sharing Gibbs's concern.

Dillon and Mandell and Squeak spoke only of proving
an alibi; they said that Gibbs would arrange this
for them.  This disheartened Marriott, confirmed his
belief in their guilt, and he shrank from placing on the
stand the witnesses Gibbs would supply.  And then,
one afternoon at the jail, a strange experience befell
him.  Mason was looking at him, his face pressed
against the bars; he fixed his eyes on him, and,
speaking slowly, with his peculiar habit of moistening his
lips and swallowing between his words, he said:

"You think I'm guilty of this, Mr. Marriott."

Marriott tried to smile, and tried to protest, but his
looks must have belied him.

"I know you do," Mason went on, "but I'm not, Mr. Marriott.
I've done time--lots of it, but they've got me
wrong now.  These inspectors will lie, of course, but I
can prove an alibi.  What night was the job done?"

"The twelfth," said Marriott.

"That was Saturday, wasn't it?"

"Yes."

"Well, that night I was in Gibbs's.  There was a mob
of sure-thing men in there that night--Ed Dean and
the Rat and some others--Gibbs will tell you.  I can't
subpoena them--they couldn't help; nobody would
believe them, and they dassen't show, anyway."

"Are they--"  Marriott felt a delicacy in saying the word.

"Thieves?" said Mason.  "Yes--you see how it is."

"Of course," said Marriott.

"But," Mason went on, "there was a fellow in there--I
don't know his name--a reporter; he put a piece in
his paper the next day about Dean.  Dean was kidding
him--Gibbs can tell you.  I wish you'd see him--he'll
remember me, and he can fix the time by that piece he
wrote."

Mason paused.

"I've done nearly twenty years, Mr. Marriott," he
said presently.  "That was all right; they done that on
the square; this is the first time they ever had me in
wrong.  Dillon was with me every time--we worked
together--that'll go against me.  And them inspectors
don't care--they'd just as soon job a fellow as not.  All
I ask now is a fair show.  But those United States
courts are a fierce game to put a man up against."

While Mason was talking a great wave of sympathy
swept over Marriott; a conviction came to him that
Mason was telling the truth.

"But," he said as the thought came to him, "can't
Dillon and the others help you?"

"Well," Mason hesitated.  "They've got themselves
to look after.  I'd rather fall myself than to throw
them down.  You see Gibbs about that reporter."

Marriott was convinced that Mason was not deceiving
him; he felt a reproach at his own original lack of
faith in the man.  As he waited for the turnkey to
unlock the door and let him out, a sickness came over him.
The jail was new; there were many boasts about its
modern construction, its sanitary conditions, and all
that, but when he went out, he was glad of the
cool air of the evening--it was wholly different from
the atmosphere inside, however scientifically pure
that may have been.  He stopped a moment and looked
back at the jail.  It lifted its stone walls high above
him; it was all clean, orderly, and architecturally not
bad to look on.  The handsome residence of the sheriff
was brilliantly lighted; there were lace curtains at the
windows, and within, doubtless, all the comforts, and
yet--the building depressed Marriott.  It struck him,
though he could not then tell why, as a hideous
anachronism.  He thought of the men mewed within its
stone walls; he could see Dillon's long eager face, ugly
with its stubble of beard; he could see the reproach
in Mason's eyes; he could see the shadowy forms of
the other prisoners, walking rapidly up and down
the corridors in their cramped exercises--how many
were guilty? how many innocent?  He could not tell;
none could tell; they perhaps could not tell themselves.
A great pity for them all filled his breast; he longed to
set them all free.  He wished this burden were lifted
from him; he wished Gibbs had never come to him; he
wished he could forget Mason--but he could not, and a
great determination seized him to liberate this man, to
prevent this great injustice which was gathering
ominously in the world, drawing within its coils not only
Mason, but all those who, like Fallen and the other
officials, were concerned in the business, even though they
remained free in the outer world.  And Marriott had
one more thought: if he could not prevent the injustice,
would it taint him, too, as it must taint all who came
in contact with it?  He shuddered with a vague,
superstitious fear.

Marriott found Wales, who recalled the evening at
Gibbs's, consulted the files of his newspaper, made sure
of the date, and then went with Marriott to the jail
and looked through the bars into Mason's expectant
eyes.  He prolonged his inspection, plainly for the
effect.  Presently he said:

"Yes, he was there."

"You'll swear to it?" asked Marriott.

"Sure," said Wales, "with pleasure."

There was relief in Mason's eyes and in his manner,
as there was relief in Marriott's mind.

"That makes it all right, Joe," he said, and Mason
smiled gratefully.  Marriott left the jail happy.  His
faith was restored.  The universe resumed its order and
its reason.  After all, he said to himself, justice will
triumph.  He felt now that he could await the preliminary
hearing with calmness.  Wales's identification of
Mason made it certain that he could establish an alibi
for him; he must depend on Gibbs for the others, but
somehow he did not care so much for them; they had
not appealed to him as Mason had, whether because of
his conviction that they were guilty or not, he could not
say.  The hearing was set for Thursday at two o'clock,
but Marriott looked forward to it with the assurance
that as to Mason, at least, there was no doubt of the
outcome.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`2-VII`:

.. class:: center large

   VII

.. vspace:: 2

Although Fallen had told the police they could set
Archie free, the police did not set him free.

"It's that fellow Kouka," Archie explained to Marriott.
"He's got it in for me; he wants to see me get
the gaff."

That afternoon Archie was legally charged with being
a "suspicious person."  The penalty for being thus
suspected by the police was a fine of fifty dollars and
imprisonment in the workhouse for sixty days.
Marriott was angry; the business was growing complicated.
He began to fear that he would never get away on his
vacation; he was filled with hatred for Fallen, for
Kouka, because just now they personified a system
against which he felt himself powerless; finally, he was
angry with Archie, with Dillon, even with Mason, for
their stupidity in getting into such desperate scrapes.

"They're fools--that's what they are," he said to
himself; "they're crazy men."  But at this thought he
softened.  When he recalled Mason in his cell at the
jail, and Archie in the old prison at the Central
Station, his anger gave way to pity.  He resolved to give
up his vacation, if necessary, and fight for their release.
He determined to demand a jury to try Archie on this
charge of suspicion; he knew how Bostwick and all the
attachés of the police court disliked to have a jury
demanded, because it made them trouble.  As he walked
up the street he began to arrange the speech he would
make in Archie's defense; presently, he noticed that
persons turned and looked at him; he knew he had been
talking to himself, and he felt silly; these people would
think him crazy.  This dampened his ardor, crushed his
imagination and ruined his speech.  He began to think
of Mason again; he would have to let Archie's case go
until after Mason had had a hearing; he must do one
thing at a time.

Archie had been able to endure the confinement as
long as Mason and Dillon and Mandell and Squeak
were there; the five men had formed a class by
themselves; they had a certain superiority in the eyes of the
other prisoners, who were confined for drunkenness,
for disturbance, for fighting, for petty thefts and other
insignificant offenses.  But when his companions were
taken away, when his own hope of liberty failed, he
grew morose.  The city prison was an incredibly filthy
place.  The walls dripped always with dampness.  High
up, a single gas-jet burned economically in its mantle,
giving the place the only light it ever knew.  A bench
ran along the wall below it, and on this bench the
prisoners sat all day and talked, or stretched themselves
and slept; now and then, for exercise, they tried
chinning themselves from the little iron gallery that ran
around the cells of the upper tier.  Twice a day they
were fed on bologna and coffee and bread.  At night
they were locked in cells, the lights were put out, and
the place became a hideous bedlam.  Men snored from
gross dissipations, vermin crawled, rats raced about,
and the drunken men, whose bodies from time to time
were thrown into the place, went mad with terror
when they awoke from their stupors, and cursed and
blasphemed.  The crawling vermin and the scuttling
rats, the noises that suggested monsters, made their
delirium real.  The atmosphere of the prison was foul,
compounded of the fumes of alcohol exhaled by all
those gaping mouths, of the feculence of all those
filthy bodies, of the foul odors of the slop-pails, of the
germs of all the diseases that had been brought to the
place in forty years.  Archie could not sleep; no one
could sleep except those who were overcome by liquor,
and they had awful nightmares.

His few moments of relief came when the turnkey,
a man who had been embruted by long years of locking
other men in the prison, opened the door, called him
with a curse and turned him over to Kouka.  Then the
respite ended.  He was subjected to new terrors, to
fresh horrors, surpassing those physical terrors of the
night by infinity.  For Kouka and Quinn took him into
a little room off the detectives' office, closed and locked
the door, and then for two hours questioned him about
the robbery of the post-office at Romeo, about countless
other robberies in the city and out of it; they accused
him of a hundred crimes, pressed him to tell where he
had stolen the revolver.  They bent their wills against
his, they shook their fingers under his nose, their fists
in his face; they told him they knew where he had got
the revolver; they told him that his companions had
confessed.  He was borne down and beaten; he felt
himself grow weak and faint; at times a nausea
overcame him--he was wringing with perspiration.

The first day of this ordeal he sat in utter silence,
sustained by dogged Teutonic stubbornness.  That
afternoon they renewed the torture; still he did not reply.

The morning of the second day, though weakened in
body and mind, he still maintained his stubbornness;
that afternoon they had brought McFee with a fresh
will to bear on him.  By evening he told them he had
stolen the revolver in Chicago.  He did this in the hope
of peace.  It did gain him a respite, but not for long.
The next morning they told him he had lied and he
admitted it; then he gave them a dozen explanations of
his possession of the revolver, all different and all false.
Then, toward evening, Kouka suddenly fell upon him,
knocked him from his chair with a blow, and then, as
he lay on the floor, beat him with his enormous hairy
fists.  Quinn, the only other person in the room, stood
by and looked on.  Finally, Quinn grew alarmed and said:

"Cheese it, Ike!  Cheese it!"

Kouka stopped and got up.

Archie was weeping, his whole body trembling, his
nerves gone.  That night he lay moaning in his
hammock, and the man in the cell under him and the man in
the cell next him, cursed him.  In the morning they
took him again up to the detective's office; this was the
morning of the third day.  Archie was in a daze, his
mind was no longer clear, and he wondered vaguely,
but with scarcely any interest, why it was that Kouka
looked so smiling and pleasant.

"Set down, Arch, old boy," Kouka said, "and let me
tell you all about it."

And then Kouka told him just where he had stolen
the revolver, and when, and how--told him, indeed,
more about the hardware store and the owners of it
than Archie had ever known.  And yet Archie did not
seem surprised at this.  He felt numbly that it was no
longer worth while to deny it--he wondered why he
ever had denied it in the first place.  It did not matter;
nothing mattered; there was no difference between
things--they were all the same.  But presently his mind
became suddenly clear; he was conscious that there
was one unanswered question in the world.

"Say, Kouka," he said, "how did you tumble?"

Kouka laughed.  He was in fine humor that morning.

"Oh, it's no use, my boy," he said; "it's no use; you
can't fool your Uncle Isaac.  You'd better 'ave taken
his advice long ago--and been a good boy."

"That's all right," said Archie, a strange calm having
come to him because of the change in the world, "but
who put you wise?"

Kouka looked at Quinn and smiled, and then he
said to Archie:

"Oh, what you don't know won't hurt you."

Then he had Archie taken back to the prison, but
before they locked him up Kouka gave him a box of
cigarettes he had taken from a prostitute whom he had
arrested the night before, and he left Archie leaning
against the door of the prison smoking one of the
cigarettes.

"What have they been doing to you?" asked a prisoner.

"The third degree," said Archie laconically.

The knowledge which Kouka preferred to shroud in
mystery had been obtained in a simple way.  Glancing
over the records in the detective's office, he had by
chance come across an old report of the robbery of a
hardware store.  Kouka had taken the revolver found
on Archie to the merchant, and the merchant had
identified it.  That evening Marriott read in the newspapers
conspicuous accounts of the brilliant work of Detective
Kouka in solving the mystery that had surrounded a
desperate burglary.  The articles gave Kouka the
greatest praise.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`2-VIII`:

.. class:: center large

   VIII

.. vspace:: 2

The United States court-room had been closed ever
since court adjourned in May, but when it was thrown
open for the hearing of the case against Dillon and
Mason and the rest, it was immediately imbued with
the atmosphere of federal authority.  This atmosphere,
cold, austere and formal, smote Marriott like a blast
the moment he pushed through the green baize doors.

The great court-room was furnished in black walnut;
the dark walls immediately absorbed the light that
came through the tall windows.  On the wall behind the
bench was an oil portrait of a former judge; Marriott
could see it now in the slanting light--the grave and
solemn face, smooth-shaven, with the fine white hair
above it, expressing somehow the older ideals of the
republic.  On the wall, laureled Roman fasces were
painted in gilt.  The whole room was somber and gloomy,
suggesting the power of a mighty government poised
menacingly above its people; there were hints of
authority and old precedents in that atmosphere.

The reason the room held this atmosphere was that
the judge who ordinarily sat on the bench had been
appointed to his position for life, and there were no real
checks on his power.  For twenty years before he had
been appointed this man had been the attorney for great
corporations, had amassed a fortune in their promotion
and defense, and, as a result, his sympathies and
prejudices were with the rich and powerful.  He knew
nothing of the common currents and impulses of humanity,
having never been brought in contact with the people;
the almost unlimited power he wielded, and was to
wield until he died, made him, quite naturally,
autocratic, and he had impressed his character on the room
and on all who held official positions there.  The clerks,
commissioners and assistant prosecutors whom he
appointed imitated him and acquired his habits of
thought, for they received his opinions just as they
received his orders.

Marriott sat at the table and waited, and while he
waited looked about.  He looked at Wilkison, the
commissioner; the judge had appointed him to his place;
the amount of fees he received depended entirely on the
number of cases the district attorney and his assistants
brought before him; consequently, there being two
commissioners, he wished to have the good will of the
district attorney, and always reached decisions that
would please him.

Dalrymple, the assistant district attorney, was a
good-looking young man with a smooth-shaven, regular
face that might have been pleasant, but, because of his
new importance, it now wore a stern and forbidding
aspect.  He was dressed in new spring clothes; the
trousers were rolled up at the bottoms, showing the low
tan shoes which just then had come again into vogue.
He wore a pink flannel shirt of exquisite texture; on
this flannel shirt was a white linen collar.  This
combination produced an effect which was thought to give
him the final touch of aristocracy and refinement.  When
he was not talking to Wilkison or to Fallen, he was
striding about the court-room with his hands in his
trousers pockets.  Once he stopped, drew a silver case
from his pocket and lighted a cigarette made with his
monogram on the paper.

Marriott turned from Dalrymple with disgust; he
looked beyond the railing, and there, on the walnut
benches, sat Gibbs, with a retinue that made Marriott
smile.  They must have come in when Marriott was
preoccupied, for he was surprised to see them.  Gibbs sat
on the end of one bench, as uncomfortable and ill at
ease as he would have been in a pew at church.  He was
shaved to a pinkness, his hair was combed smooth, and
he was very solemn.  Marriott could easily see that the
atmosphere of the court-room oppressed and cowed
him; he had lost his native bearing, and had suddenly
grown meek, humble and afraid.  Marriott knew none
of the others; there were half a dozen men, none of
them dressed as well as Gibbs, with strange visages,
marked by crime and suffering, all the more touching
because they were so evidently unconscious of these
effects.  The heads ranged along the bench were of
strange shapes, startlingly individual in one sense, very
much alike in another.  They were all solemn, afraid to
speak, bearing themselves self-consciously, like children
suddenly set out before the public.  On one bench sat
a young girl, and something unmistakable in her eyes,
in her mouth, in the clothes she wore--she had piled on
herself all the finery she had--told what she was.  Her
toilet, on which she had spent such enormous pains,
produced the very effect the womanhood left in her
had striven to avoid.

Marriott smiled, until he detected the deep concern
which Gibbs was trying to hide; then his heart was
touched, as the toilet of the girl had touched it.
Marriott knew that these people were the witnesses by
whom Gibbs expected to establish an alibi for Dillon
and Squeak and Mandell; the sight of them did not
reassure him; he had again that disheartening conviction
of the utter lack of weight their appearance would
carry with any court; he did not credit them himself,
and he began to feel a shame for offering such
witnesses.  He was half decided, indeed, not to put them
forward.  But his greater concern came with the thought
of Mason, whom he believed to be innocent; where, he
suddenly wondered, was the reporter Wales?

But just at this moment the green baize doors of the
court-room swung inward and suddenly all the people
in the court-room--Dalrymple, Fallen, Wilkison, Marriott,
Gibbs, the clerks and the reporters, the bailiff and
the group Gibbs had brought up with him from the
under world--forgot the distinctions and prejudices
and hatreds that separated them, yielded to the claims
of their common humanity and became as one in the
eager curiosity which concentrated all their interest on
the entering prisoners.

They came in a row, chained together by handcuffs,
in charge of deputy marshals.  They were marched
within the bar, still wearing the hats they could not
remove.  The United States marshal himself and another
deputy came forward and joined the deputies in charge
of the prisoners.  The officers took off their hats for
them, and when they took chairs at the table, stood
close beside them, as if to give the impression that the
prisoners were most dangerous and desperate characters,
and that they themselves were officials with the
highest regard for their duty.

Wilkison, with great deliberation, was seating himself
at the clerk's desk.  Ordinarily he held hearings in
an anteroom, but as this hearing would be reported in
the newspapers he felt justified in using the
court-room; besides, he could then test some of the
sensations of a judge.

"Aren't you going to unhandcuff these men?" said
Marriott to the marshal.

The marshal merely smiled in a superior official way,
and the smile completed the rage that had seized on
Marriott when the deputies stationed themselves behind
the prisoners.  Marriott felt in himself all the evil and
all the hatred that were in the hearts of these officers;
he felt all the hatred that was gathering about these
prisoners; it seemed that every one there wished to
revenge himself personally on them.  Fallen, sitting
beside Dalrymple, had an air of directing the whole
proceeding, as if his duties did not end with the
apprehension of his prisoners, but required him to see that
the assistant district attorney, the commissioner and
the rest did their whole duty.  He sat there with the two
rosy spots on his plump cheeks glowing a deeper red,
his blue eyes gloating.  Marriott restrained himself by
an effort; he needed all his faculties now.

"The case of the United States *versus* Dillon and
others."  Wilkison was officially fingering the papers on
his desk.  "Are the defendants ready for hearing?"

"We're ready, yes," said Marriott, plainly excluding
from his words and manner any of the respect for the
court ordinarily simulated by lawyers.  Mason, sitting
beside him, and Dillon and the rest followed with eager
glances every movement, listened to every word.  They
forgot the handcuffs, and fastened their eyes on Fallen
standing up to be sworn.  When the oath had been
administered, Dalrymple put the stereotyped preliminary
questions and then asked him who the defendants were.
Fallen pointed to them one after another and
pronounced their names as he did so.  When he had done
this Dalrymple turned, looked at Marriott with his
chin in the air, and said pertly:

"Take the witness."

Marriott was surprised and puzzled; the suspicions
that he had all along held were increased.

"How many witnesses will you have?" he asked.

"This is all," said Dalrymple with an impertinent
movement of the lip, "except this."  He held up a legal
document.  "This certified copy of an indictment--"

At the word "indictment" the truth flashed on
Marriott.  He understood now; this explained the delay, the
stealth, the subterfuge of which he had been dimly
conscious for days; this explained the conduct of the
officials; this explained Fallen's absence--he had gone to
Illinois, secured the indictment of the four men, and
returned.  And this was not a preliminary hearing at
all; it was a mere formality for the purpose of
removing the prisoners to the jurisdiction in which the crime
had been committed.  He saw now that he would not
be allowed to offer any testimony; nothing could be
done.  The men would be tried in Illinois, where they
could have no witnesses, for the law, as he remembered,
provided that process for witnesses to testify on behalf
of defendant could not be issued beyond a radius of
one hundred miles of the court where they were tried;
they were poor, they could not pay to transport
witnesses, and now the alibis for Dillon and Squeak and
Mandell could not be established, and Mason could not
have the benefit of Wales's testimony, unless depositions
were used, and he knew what a farce depositions
are.  He had been tricked.  It was all legal, of course,
but he had been tricked, that was all, and he was filled
with mortification and shame and rage.

"Mr. Marriott," Wilkison was saying in his most
impartial tone, "do you wish to examine this witness?"

Marriott was recalled.  He looked at Fallen, waiting
there in the witness-chair, pulling at his little mustache,
the pink spots in his cheeks glowing, and his eyes
striving for an expression of official unconcern.  Marriott
questioned Fallen, but without heart.  He tried to break
the force of his identification, but Fallen was positive.
They were Joseph Mason, James Dillon, Louis
Skinner, alias Squeak, and Stephen Mandell.  When
Marriott had finished, Dalrymple rose and said:

"Your Honor, we offer as evidence a certified copy of
an indictment returned by the grand jury at this
present term, and the government rests."

He looked in triumph at Marriott.

The prisoners were leaning eagerly over the table
under which they hid their shackled hands, not understanding
in the least the forces that were playing with
them.  Dillon's long, unshaven face was suspended
above the green felt, his eyes, bright with excitement
and deepest interest, shifting quickly from Dalrymple
to Marriott and then back again to Dalrymple.  Mason's
eyes went from one to the other of the lawyers, but his
gaze was easier, not so swift, hardly so interested.  A
slight smile lurked beneath the mask he wore, and the
commissioner decided with pleasure that this smile
proved Mason's guilt, a conclusion which he found it
helpful to communicate to Dalrymple after the hearing.
Mandell and Squeak wore heavy expressions; the
realization of their fate had not yet struggled to
consciousness.  In fact, they did not know what had happened,
and they were trying to learn from a study of the
expressions of Dalrymple and Marriott.

Dalrymple continued to look at Marriott in the pride
he felt at having beaten him.  Because he had really
been unfair and had practised a sharp trick on
Marriott, he disliked him.  This dislike showed now in
Dalrymple's glance, as it had been expressed in the sharp,
important voice in which he had put his questions
during the hearing.  He had spoken with an affected
accent, and had objected to every question that Marriott
asked on cross-examination.  He had learned to speak
in this affected accent at college, where he had spent
four years, after which he had spent three other years
at a law school; consequently, he knew little of that life
from which he had been withdrawn for those seven
years, knew nothing of its significance, or meaning, or
purpose, and, of course, nothing of human nature.  The
stern and forbidding aspect in which he tried to mask
a countenance that might have been good-looking and
pleasing, had it worn a natural and simple expression,
was amusing to those who, like Dillon and Mason, were
older and wiser men.  Dalrymple had no views or
opinions or principles of his own; those he had, like his
clothes and his accent, had been given him by his
parents or the teachers his parents had hired; he had
accepted all the ideas and prejudices of his own class as
if they were axioms.  He felt it a fine thing to be there
in the United States court in an official capacity that
made every one look at him, and, as he supposed, envy
him; that gave an authority to anything he said.  He
thought it an especially fine thing to represent the
government.  He used this word frequently, saying "the
government feels," or "the government wishes," or
"the government understands," speaking, indeed, as if
he were the government himself.  The power behind
him was tremendous; an army stood ready at the last to
back up his sayings, his opinions, and his mistakes.
Against such a power, of course, Dillon and Mason,
who were poor, shabby men, had no chance.  Dalrymple,
to be sure, had no notion of what he was doing to
these men; no notion of how he was affecting their
lives, their futures, perhaps their souls.  He was totally
devoid of imagination and incapable of putting
himself in the place of them or of any other men, except
possibly those who were dressed as he was dressed and
spoke with similar affectation.  He did not consider
Dillon and Mason men, or human beings at all, but another
kind of organism or animate life, expressed to him by
the word "criminal."  He did not consider what
happened to them as important; the only things that were
important to him were, first, to be dressed in a correct
fashion, and modestly, that is, to be dressed like a
gentleman; secondly, to see to it that his sympathies and
influence were always on the side of the rich, the
well-dressed, the respectable and the strong, and to maintain
a wide distinction between himself and the poor,
disreputable and ill-clad, and, thirdly, to bear always,
especially when in court or about the government building,
an important and wise demeanor.  He felt, indeed, that
in becoming an assistant United States district attorney,
he had become something more than a mere man; that
because a paper had been given him with an eagle
printed on it and a gilt seal, a paper on which his name
and the words by which he was designated had been
written, he had become something more than a mere
human being.  The effect of all this was revealed in the
look with which he now regarded Marriott.

Marriott, however, did not look at Dalrymple; he
wished Dalrymple to feel the contempt he had for him,
and after a moment he rose and addressed the commissioner.

The commissioner straightened himself in his chair;
his face was very long and very solemn.  He did not
listen to what Marriott was saying; having conferred
with Dalrymple before the hearing and read a decision
which Dalrymple had pointed out to him in a calf-bound
report, he was now arranging in his mind the decision
he intended to give presently.

Marriott, of course, realized the hopelessness of his
case, but he did not think it becoming to give in so
easily, or, at least, without making a speech.  He began
to argue, but Wilkison interrupted him and said:

"This whole question is fully discussed in the
Yarborough case, where the court held that in a removal
proceeding no testimony can be presented in behalf of
the defense."

Then Wilkison announced his decision, saying that
Marriott's witnesses could be heard at the proper time
and place, that is, on the trial, where he said the rights
of the defendants would be fully conserved.  Feeling
that his use of this word "conserved" was happy and
appropriate and had a legal sound, he repeated it
several times, and concluded by saying:

"The defendants will be remanded to the custody of
the marshal for removal."

The marshal and his deputies tapped the prisoners
on the shoulders.  Just then there was a slight
commotion; Gibbs had pushed by the bailiff and was coming
forward.  He came straight up to the men.  The
marshal put out a hand to press him back, but Marriott
said:

"Oh, let him talk to them a minute.  Good God--!"

The marshal glared at Marriott, and then gave way.

"But he wants to be quick about it," he threatened.

Gibbs leaned over Mason's shoulder.

"Well, Joe," he said.

"I'm kangarooed, Dan," said Mason.

"It looks that way," said Gibbs.

"Dan, I want you to do something for me--I want
you to send me some tobacco.  You know you can get
those clippings in pound packages; they only cost a
quarter."

Gibbs looked hurt.

"Joe," he said, "I've known you for forty years, and
that's the only mean thing you ever said to me."

"Well, don't get sore, Dan," Mason said.  "I knew
you would--only--"

The marshal cut them short and marched the prisoners
out of the court-room.  Outside in the street the
prison-van was waiting, the van that had been ordered
before the hearing, to take the prisoners to the station.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`2-IX`:

.. class:: center large

   IX

.. vspace:: 2

It was several days before Marriott saw Gibbs again,
and then he appeared at Marriott's office with a
companion and leaned for an instant unsteadily against the
door he had carefully closed.  Marriott saw that he was
changed, and that it was the change drink makes in a
man.  Gibbs sank helplessly into a chair, and stared at
Marriott blankly.  He was not the clean, well-dressed
man Marriott had beheld in him before.  He was
unshaven, and the stubble of his beard betrayed his age
by its whiteness; the pupils of his eyes were dilated,
his lips stained with tobacco.  His shoes were muddy,
one leg of his trousers was turned up; and his lack of
a collar seemed the final proof of that moral disintegration
he could not now conceal.  When he had been
there a moment the atmosphere was saturated with the
odor of alcohol.

"My friend, Mr. McDougall," said Gibbs, toppling
unsteadily in his chair, as he waved one fat hand at
his companion, a heavy blond fellow, six feet tall, well
dressed and dignified.

"I've gone to the bad," said Gibbs.  Marriott looked
at him in silence.  The fact needed no comment.

"The way those coppers jobbed Mason was too much
for me," Gibbs went on.  "Worst I ever seen.  I couldn't
stand for it, it put me to the bad."

"Well, you won't do him any good, at that--" McDougall
began.

"Aw, to hell with you!" said Gibbs, waving
McDougall aside with a sweep of his arm.  The movement
unsettled him in his chair, and he steadied himself by
digging his heels into the rug.  Then he drew a broken
cigar from his coat pocket, struck a match, and held it
close to his nose; it took him a long time to light his
cigar; he puffed hurriedly, but could not keep the cigar
in the flame; before he finished he had burned his
fingers, and Marriott felt a pain as Gibbs shook the
match to the floor.

"He hasn't touched a drop for five years," said
McDougall indulgently.  "But when they kangarooed
Mason--"

McDougall looked at Gibbs, not in regret or pity,
nor with disapproval, but as one might look at a woman
stricken with some recent grief.  To him, getting drunk
seemed to be as natural a way of expressing emotion
as weeping or wringing the hands.  Marriott gazed on
the squalid little tragedy of a long friendship, gazed a
moment, then turned away, and looked out of his
window.  Above the hideous roofs he could see the
topmasts of schooners, and presently a great white
propeller going down the river.  It was going north, to
Mackinac, to the Soo, to Duluth, and the sight of it
filled Marriott with a longing for the cold blue waters
and the sparkling air of the north.

Gibbs evidently had come to talk about Mason's
case, but when he began to speak his voice was lost
somewhere in his throat; his head sank, he appeared to
sink into sleep.  McDougall glanced at him and laughed.
Then he turned seriously to Marriott.

"It was an outrage," he said.  "Mason has been right
here in town--I saw him that day.  He ought to be
alibied."

"Couldn't you testify?" asked Marriott.

McDougall looked at Marriott with suspicion, and
hesitated.  But suddenly Gibbs, whom they had
supposed to be asleep, said impatiently, without opening
his eyes:

"Oh, hell!--go on and tell him.  He's a right guy, I
tell you.  He's wise to the gun."  And Gibbs slumbered
again.

"Well," said McDougall with a queer expression,
"my business is unfortunately of such a nature that it
can't stand much investigation, and I don't make the
best witness in the world."

Gibbs suddenly sat up, opened his eyes, and drew an
enormous roll of money from his pocket.

"How much do I owe you?" he asked, unrolling the
bills.  "It comes out of me," he said.  Marriott was
disappointed in this haggling appeal, not for his own
sake, but for Gibbs's; it detracted from the romantic
figure he had idealized for the man, just as Gibbs's
intoxication had done.  Marriott hesitated in the usual
difficulty of appraising professional services, but when,
presently, he rather uncertainly fixed his fee, Gibbs
counted out the amount and gave it to him.  Marriott
took the money, with a wonder as to where it had come
from, what its history was; he imagined in a flash a
long train of such transactions as McDougall must be
too familiar with, of such deeds as had been involved in
the hearing before the commissioner, of other
transactions, intricate, remote, involved, confused in
morals--and he thrust the bills into his pocket.

"It comes out of me," Gibbs explained again.
"They hadn't any fall money."

"Have you heard from them?" asked Marriott, who
did not know what fall money was, and wished to
change the subject.

"No," said Gibbs, shaking his head.  "I'm going out
to the trial.  I'll take along that newspaper guy and
some witnesses for the others.  I'll get 'em a
mouthpiece.  Maybe we can spring 'em."

But, as Marriott learned several days later, Gibbs
could not spring them.  He went to the trial with an
entourage of miserable witnesses, but he did not take
Wales, for Wales's newspaper would not give him
leave of absence, and there was no process to compel
his attendance.  But Kouka and Quinn went, and they
gave Gibbs such a reputation that his testimony was
impeached.  He could not, of course, take Dean.  Dean's
business, like McDougall's, was unfortunately of such
a nature that it did not stand investigation, and he did
not make the best witness in the world.  Mason and
Dillon and Mandell and Squeak were sentenced to
the penitentiary at Fort Leavenworth for five years.
At about the same time Archie Koerner pleaded guilty
to stealing the revolver and was sentenced to prison for
a year.

Marriott left at last for his vacation, but he could
not forget Mason taking his unjust fate so calmly and
philosophically.  He had great pity for him, just as he
had for Archie, though one was innocent and the other
guilty.  He had pity for Dillon, too, and, yes, for
Mandell and Squeak.  He thought of it all, trying to find
some solution, but there was no solution.  It was but
one more knot in the tangle of injustice man has made
of his attempts to do justice; a tangle that Marriott
could not unravel, nor any one, then or ever.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`2-X`:

.. class:: center large

   X

.. vspace:: 2

Like most of the great houses along Claybourne
Avenue, the dwelling of the Wards wore an air of
loneliness and desolation all that summer.  With
Mrs. Ward and Elizabeth in Europe, the reason for
maintaining the establishment ceased to be; and the
servants were given holidays.  Barker was about for a
while each day looking after things, and Gusta came
to set the house in order.  But these transient
presences could not give the place its wonted life; the
curtains were down, the furniture stood about in linen
covers, the pictures were draped in white cloth.  At
evening a light showed in the library, where Ward sat
alone, smoking, trying to read, and, as midnight drew
on, starting now and then at the strange, unaccountable
sounds that are a part of the phenomena of the
stillness of an empty house.  He would look up from
his book, listen, wait, sigh, listen again, finally give up,
go to bed, worry a while, fall asleep, be glad when
morning came and he could lose himself for another
day in work.  Dick never came in till long after
midnight, and Ward seldom saw him, save on those few
mornings when the boy was up early enough to take
breakfast with him at the club.  Such mornings made
the whole day happy for Ward.

But the few hours she spent each day in the empty
house were happy hours for Gusta Koerner.  She was
not, of course, a girl in whom feeling could become
thought, or sensation find the relief of expression; she
belonged to the class that because it is dumb seems not
to suffer, but she had a sense of change in the
atmosphere.  She missed Elizabeth, she missed the others,
she missed the familiar figures that once had made the
place all it had been to her.  But she loved it,
nevertheless, and if it seemed to hold no new experiences for
her, there were old experiences to be lived over again.

At first the loneliness and the emptiness frightened
her, but she grew accustomed; she no longer started
at the mysterious creakings and tappings in the
untenanted rooms, and each morning, after her work was
done, she lingered, and wandered idly about, looked at
herself in the mirrors, gazed out of the windows into
Claybourne Avenue, sometimes peeped into the books
she could so little understand.

Occasionally she would have chats with Barker, but
she did not often see him; he was always busy in the
stables.  Ward and Dick were gone before she got
there.  But the peace and quiet of the deserted
mansion were grateful, and Gusta found there a sense of
rest and escape that for a long time she had not known.
She found this sense of escape all the more grateful
after Archie's trouble.  He had not been at home in a
long time, and they had heard nothing of him; then,
one evening she learned of his latest trouble in those
avid chroniclers of trouble, the newspapers.  Her
father, who would not permit the mention of his son's
name, nevertheless plainly had him on his mind, for he
grew more than ever gloomy, morose and irritable.
And then, to make matters worse, one Saturday
evening Charlie Peltzer threw it up to Gusta, and they
parted in anger.  On Sunday afternoon she went to
see Archie at the jail, and stayed so late that it was
twilight before she got to the Wards'.  She had never
had the blues so badly before; her quarrel with Peltzer,
her father's scolding, her mother's sighs and furtive
tears, her own visit to the prison, all combined to
depress her, and now, in the late and lonesome Sunday
afternoon she did her work hurriedly, and was just
about to let herself out of the door when it opened
suddenly, and Dick Ward, bolting in, ran directly against her.

"Hello!  Beg pardon--is that you, 'Gusta?" he said.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, leaning against the wall, "you
scared me!"

Dick laughed.

"Well, that's too bad; I had no idea," he said.

She had raised her clasped hands to her chin, and
still kept the shrinking attitude of her fright.  Dick
looked at her, prettier than ever in her sudden alarm,
and on an impulse he seized her hands.

"Don't be scared," he said.  "I wouldn't frighten
you for the world."

She was overwhelmed with weakness and confusion.
She shrank against the wall and turned her head aside;
her heart was beating rapidly.

"I--I'm late to-day," she said.  "I ought to have
been here this morning."

"I'm glad you weren't," said Dick, looking at her
with glowing eyes.

"I must hurry"---she tried to slip away.  "I--must
be going home, it's getting late; you--you must let me go."

She scarcely knew what she was saying; she spoke
with averted face, her cheeks hot and flaming.  He
gazed at her steadily a moment; then he said:

"Never mind.  I'll take you home in my machine.
May I?"

She looked at him in wonderment.  What did he
mean?  Was he in earnest?

"May I?" he pressed her hands for emphasis, and
gazed into her eyes irresistibly.

"Yes," she said, "if you'll--let me--go now."

Suddenly he kissed her on the lips; there was a
rustle, a struggle, he kissed her again, then released
her, left her trembling there in the hall, and bounded
up the stairs.

"Wait a minute!" he called.  "I came home to get
something.  You'll wait?"

Gusta was dazed, her mind was in a whirl, she felt
utterly powerless; but instinctively she slipped through
the door and out on to the veranda.  The air reassured
and restored her.  She felt that she should run away,
and yet, there was Dick's automobile in the driveway;
she had never been in an automobile, and--  She
thought of Charlie Peltzer--well, it would serve him
right.  And then, before she could decide, Dick was
beside her.

"Jump in," he said, glancing up and down the
avenue, now dusky in the twilight.  They went swiftly
away in the automobile, but they did not go straight
to Bolt Street--they took a long, roundabout course
that ended, after all, too suddenly.  The night was
warm and Gusta was lifted above all her cares; she
had a sensation as of flying through the soft air.  Dick
stopped the machine half a block from the house, and
Gusta got out, excited from her swift, reckless ride.
But, troubled as she was, she felt that she ought to
thank Dick.  He only laughed and said:

"We'll go again for a longer ride.  What do you
say to to-morrow night?"

She hesitated, tried to decide against him, and
before she could decide, consented.

"Don't forget," he said, "to-morrow evening."  He
leaned over and whispered to her.  He was shoving a
lever forward and the automobile was starting.

"Don't forget," he said, and then he was gone and
Gusta stood looking at the vanishing lights of the
machine.  Just then Charlie Peltzer stepped out of the
shadows.

"So!" he said, looking angrily into her face.  "So
that's it, is it?  Oh--I saw you!"

"Go away!" she said.

He snatched at her, caught her by the wrist.

"Go away, is it?" he exclaimed fiercely.  "I've caught
you this time!"

"Let me alone!"

"Yes, I will!  Oh, yes, I'll let you alone!  And him,
too; I'll fix him!"

"Let me go, I tell you!" she cried, trying to escape.
"Let me go!"  She succeeded presently in wrenching
her wrist out of his grasp.  "You hurt me!"  She
clasped the wrist he had almost crushed.  "I hate you!
I don't want anything more to do with you!"

She left him standing there in the gloom.  She
hurried on; it was but a few steps to the door.

"Gusta!" he called.  "Gusta!  Wait!"

But she hurried on.

"Gusta!  Wait a minute!"

She hesitated.  There was something appealing in
his voice.

"Oh, Gusta!" he repeated.  "Won't you wait?"

She felt that he was coming after her.  Then
something, she knew not what, got into her, she felt ugly
and hateful, and hardened her heart.  She cast a glance
back over her shoulder and had a glimpse of Peltzer's
face, a pale, troubled blur in the darkness.  She ran
into the house, utterly miserable and sick at heart.

Gusta could not thereafter escape this misery; it was
with her all the time, and her only respite was found
in the joy that came to her at evening, when regularly,
at the same hour, under the same tree, at the same dark
spot in Congress Street, she met Dick Ward.  And so
it began between them.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`2-XI`:

.. class:: center large

   XI

.. vspace:: 2

The way from the station to the penitentiary was
long, but Sheriff Bentley, being a man of small
economies, had decided to walk, and after the long journey
in the smoking-car, Archie had been glad to stretch his
legs.  The sun lay hot on the capital city; it was nearly
noon, and workmen, tired from their morning's toil,
were thinking now of dinner-buckets and pipes in the
shade.  They glanced at Archie and the sheriff as they
passed, but with small interest.  They saw such sights
every day and had long ago grown used to them, as
the world had; besides, they had no way of telling
which was the criminal and which the custodian.

Archie walked rapidly along, his head down, and a
little careless smile on his face, chatting with the
sheriff.  On the way to the capital, Bentley had given
him cigars, let him read the newspapers, and told him
a number of vulgar stories.  He was laughing then at
one; the sheriff had leaned over to tell him the point
of it, though he had difficulty in doing so, because he
could not repress his own mirth.  They were passing
under a viaduct on which a railroad ran over the street.
A switch-engine was going slowly along, and the
fireman leaned out of the cab window.  He wore, oddly
enough, a battered old silk hat; he wore it in some
humorous conceit that caricatured the grandeur and
dignity the hat in its day had given some other man, whose
face was not begrimed as was the comical face of this
fireman, whose hands were not calloused as was the
hand that slowly, almost automatically, pulled the
bell-cord.  That old plug hat gave the fireman unlimited
amusement and consolation, as he thrust it from his
cab window while he rode up and down the railroad
yards.  Archie looked up and caught the fireman's eye;
the fireman winked drolly, confidentially, and waved
his free arm with a graceful, abandoned gesture that
conveyed a salutation of brotherliness and comradeship;
Archie smiled and waved his free arm in recognition.

And then they stepped out of the shade of the
viaduct into the sun again, and Archie's smile went
suddenly from his face.  They were at the penitentiary.
The long wall stretched away, lifting its gray old
stones twelve feet above their heads.  Along its coping
of broad overhanging flags was an iron railing;
coming to the middle of a man, and at every corner, and
here and there along the wall, were the sentry-boxes,
black and weather-beaten, and sinister because no
sentry was anywhere in sight.  Archie looked, and he did
not hear the dénouement of the sheriff's story, which,
after all, was just as well.

Midway of the block the wall jutted in abruptly and
joined itself to a long building of gray stone, with
three tiers of barred windows, but an ivy vine had
climbed over the stones and hidden the bars as much
as it could.  A second building lifted its Gothic towers
above the center of the grim facade, and beyond was
another building like the first, wherein the motive of
iron bars was repeated; then the climbing ivy and the
gray wall again, stretching away until it narrowed in
the perspective.  Before the central building were
green lawns and flower-beds, delightful to the eyes of
the warden's family, whose quarters looked on the free
world outside; delightful, too, to the eyes of the
legislative committees and distinguished visitors who came
to preach and give advice to the men within the walls,
who never saw the flowers.

Archie and the sheriff turned into the portico.  In
the shade, several men were lounging about.  They
wore the gray prison garb, but their clothes had
somehow the effect of uniforms; they were clean, neatly
brushed, and well fitted.  They glanced up as Archie
and the sheriff entered, and one of them sprang to his
feet.  On his cap Archie saw the words, "Warden's
Runner."  He was young, with a bright though pale
face, and he stepped forward expectantly, thinking of
a tip.  He was about to speak, but suddenly his face
fell, and he did not say what had been on his lips.  He
uttered, instead, a short, mistaken,

"Oh!"

The sheriff laughed, and then with the knowledge
and familiarity men love so much to display, he went on:

"Thought we wanted to see the prison, eh?  Well,
I've seen it, and the boy here'll see more'n he wants."

The warden's runner smiled perfunctorily and was
about to turn away, when Bentley spoke again:

"How long you in for?" he asked.

"Life," said the youth, and then went back to his
bench.  He did not look up again, though Archie
glanced back at him over his shoulder.

"Trusties," Bentley explained.  "They've got a snap."

In the office, where many clerks were busy, they
waited; presently a sallow young man came out from
behind a railing.  The sheriff unlocked his handcuffs
and blew on the red bracelet the steel had left about
his wrist.

"Hot day," said the sheriff, wiping his brow.  The
sallow clerk, on whom the official air sat heavily,
ignored this and said:

"Let's have your papers."

He looked over the commitments with a critical
legal scowl that seemed to pass finally on all that the
courts had done, and signaled to a receiving guard.

"Good-by, Archie."  Bentley held out his hand.

"Good-by," said Archie.

"Come on," said the receiving guard, tossing his
long club to his shoulder in a military way.  The great
steel door in the guard-room swung open; the guard
sitting lazily in a worn chair at the double inner gates
threw back the lever, and the receiving guard and
Archie entered the yard.

It was a large quadrangle, surrounded by the ugly
prison houses, with the chapel and the administration
building in the center.  Archie glanced about, and
presently he discerned in the openings between the buildings
companies of men, standing at ease.  A whistle blew
heavily, the companies came to attention, and then
began to march across the yard.  They marched in sets of
twos, with a military scrape and shuffle, halted now and
then to dress their intervals, marked time, then went
on, massed together in the lock-step.  As they passed,
the men looked at Archie, some of them with strange
smiles.  But Archie knew none of them; not Delaney,
with the white hair; not the Pole, who had been
convicted of arson; not the Kid, nor old Deacon Sammy,
who still wore his gold-rimmed glasses, nor Harry
Graves.  Their identity was submerged, like that of all
the convicts in that prison, like that of all the forgotten
prisoners in the world.  The men marched by,
company after company, until enough to make a regiment,
two regiments, had passed them.  A guard led Archie
across the yard to the administration building.  As
they entered, a long, lean man, whose lank legs
stretched from his easy chair half-way across the
room, it seemed, to cock their heels on a desk, turned
and looked at them.  He was smoking a cigar very
slowly, and he lifted his eyelids heavily.  His eyes
were pale blue--for some reason Archie shuddered.

"Here's a fresh fish, Deputy," said the guard.

The deputy warden of the prison, Ball, flecked the
ashes from his cigar.

"Back again, eh?" he said.

Archie stared, and then he said:

"I've never stirred before."

"The hell you haven't," said the deputy.  "The bull
con don't go in this dump!  I know you all!"  The
receiving guard looked Archie over, trying to recall him.

The deputy warden let his heavy feet fall to the
floor, leaned forward, took a cane from his desk, got
up, hooked the cane into the awkward angle of his left
elbow, and shambled into the rear office, his long legs
unhinging with a strange suggestion of the lock-step
he was so proud of being able to retain in the prison
by an evasion of the law.  A convict clerk heaved an
enormous record on to his high desk, then in a mechanical
way he dipped a pen into the ink, and stood waiting.

"What's your name?" asked the deputy.

Archie told him.

"Age?"

"Twenty-three."

"Father and mother living?"

"Yes."

"Who shall we notify if you die while you're with us?"

Archie started; and the deputy laughed.

"Notify them."

"Ever convicted before?  No?  Why, Koerner, you
really must not lie to me like that!"

When the statistical questions were finished the
deputy said:

"Now, Koerner, you got a stretch in the sentence;
you'll gain a month's good time if you behave
yourself; don't talk; be respectful to your superiors; mind
the rules; you can write one letter a month, have
visitors once a month, receive all letters of proper
character addressed to you.  Your number is 48963.  Take
him and frisk him, Jimmy."

The deputy warden hooked his cane over his arm
and shambled out.  Archie watched him, strangely
fascinated.  Then the guard touched him on the shoulder,
tossed a bundle of old clothing over his arm, and said:

"This way."

They made him bathe, then the barber shaved him,
and he donned his prison clothes, which were of gray
like those worn by the trusties he had seen at the gate
of the prison.  But the clothes did not fit him; the
trousers were too tight at the waist and far too long,
and they took a strange and unaccountable shape on
him, the shape, indeed, of the wasted figure of an old
convict who had died of consumption in the hospital
two days before.

The guard took Archie to the dining-room, deserted
now, and he sat down at one of the long tables and ate
his watery soup and drank the coffee made of toasted
bread--his first taste of the "boot-leg" he had heard
his late companions talk about.

And then the idle house, stark and gloomy, with
silent convicts ranged around the wall.  On an elevated
chair at one end, where he might have the scant light
that fell through the one high window, an old convict,
who once had been a preacher, read aloud.  He read
as if he enjoyed the sound of his own voice, but few of
the prisoners listened.  They sat there stolidly, with
heavy, hardened faces.  Some dozed, others whispered,
others, whom the prison had almost bereft of reason,
simply stared.  The idle house was still, save for the
voice of the reader and the constant coughing of a
convict in a corner.  Archie, incapable, like most of them,
of concentrated attention, sat and looked about.  He
was dazed, the prison stupor was already falling
heavily on his mind, and he was passing into that state of
mental numbness that made the blank in his life when
he was in the workhouse with Mason.  He thought of
Mason for a while, and wondered what his fate and
that of Dillon had been; he thought of Gusta, and of
his mother and father, of Gibbs and Curly, wondering
about them all; wondered about that strange life,
already dim and incredible, he had so lately left in
what to convicts is represented by the word "outside."  He
wished that he had been taken with Mason and
Dillon.  Then he thought of Kouka--thought of everything
but the theft of the revolver, which bore so small
a relation to his real life.

The entrance of a contractor brought diversion.
The contractor, McBride, a man with a red face and
closely-cropped white hair, smoking a cigar the aroma
of which was eagerly sniffed in by the convicts, came
with the receiving guard.  At the guard's command,
Archie stood up, and the contractor, narrowing his
eyes, inspected him through the smoke of his cigar.
After a while he nodded and said:

"He'll do--looks to me like he could make bolts.
Ever work at a machine?" he suddenly asked.

Archie shook his head.

"Put him on Bolt B," said the contractor; "he can
learn."

The day ended, somehow; the evening came, with
supper in the low-ceiled, dim dining-hall, then the cells.

"You'll lock in G6," said the guard.

Archie marched to the cell-house, where, inside the
brick shell, the cells rose, four tiers of them.  The door
locked on Archie, and he looked about the bare cell
where he was to spend a year.  For an hour, certain
small privileges were allowed; favored convicts, in
league with officials, peddled pies and small fruits at
enormous commissions; somewhere a prisoner scraped
a doleful fiddle.  Near by, a guard haggled with a
convict who worked in the cigar shop and stole cigars for
the guard to sell on the outside.  The guard, it seemed,
had recently raised his commission from fifty to sixty
per cent., and the convict complained.  But when the
guard threatened to report him for his theft, the
convict gave in.

At seven o'clock the music ceased, and hall permits
expired.  Then there was another hour of the lights,
when some of the convicts read.  Then, at eight, it
grew suddenly dark and still.  Presently Archie heard
the snores of tired men.  He could not sleep himself;
his pallet of straw was alive with vermin; the stillness
in the great cell-house was awful and oppressive; once
in a while he heard some one, somewhere, from a
near-by cell, sigh heavily.  Now, he thought, he was doing
his bit at last; "buried," the guns called it.  Finally,
when the hope had all gone from his heart, he fell
asleep.

The summer night fell, and the prison's gray wall
merged itself in the blackness; but it still shut off the
great world outside from the little world inside.  The
guards came out and paced the walls with their rifles,
halting now and then with their backs to the black
forms of the cell-houses, and looked out over the city,
where the electric lights blazed.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`2-XII`:

.. class:: center large

   XII

.. vspace:: 2

Elizabeth had gone abroad feeling that she might
escape the dissatisfaction that possessed her.  This
dissatisfaction was so very indefinite that she could not
dignify it as a positive trouble, but she took it with her
over Europe wherever she went, and she finally
decided that it would give her no peace until she took it
home again.  She could not discuss it with her mother,
for Mrs. Ward was impatient of discussion.  She could
do no more than feel Elizabeth's dissatisfaction, and
she complained of it both abroad and at home.  She
told her husband and her son that Elizabeth had
practically ruined their trip, that Elizabeth hadn't enjoyed
it herself, nor allowed her to enjoy it.  Elizabeth,
however, if unable to realize the sensations she had
anticipated in their travels, gave her mother unexpected
compensation by recalling and vivifying for her after
they had returned in the fall, all their foreign
experiences, so that they enjoyed them in retrospect.  Ward,
indeed, said that Elizabeth had seen everything there
was to see in Europe.  He only laughed when Elizabeth
declared that, now she was at home again, she intended
to do something; just what, she could not determine.

"Perhaps I'll become a stenographer or a trained nurse."

"The idea!" exclaimed Mrs. Ward.  "To talk like
that!  You should pay more attention to your social
duties."

"Why?" demanded Elizabeth, looking at her mother
with clear, sober eyes.

Mrs. Ward, in her habitual avoidance of reasons,
could not think of one instantly.

"You owe it to your station," she declared presently,
and then, as if this were, after all, a reason, she added,
"that's why."

Dick showed all the manly indignation of an elder
brother.

"You don't know what you're talking about, Bess,"
he said in the husky voice he had acquired.  He had
not changed; he bore himself importantly, wore a
scowl, dressed extravagantly, and always in the
extreme of the prevailing fashion; he seemed to have an
intuition in such matters; he wore a new collar or a
new kind of cravat two weeks in advance of the other
young men in town, and they did not seem to follow
him so much as he seemed to anticipate them.  He
lunched at the club, and Elizabeth divined that he spent
large sums of money, and yet he was constant in his
work; he was always at the Trust Company's office
early; he did not miss a single day.  No, Dick had not
changed; nothing had changed, and this thought only
increased Elizabeth's discontent, or vague uneasiness,
or vague dissatisfaction, or whatever it was.

"I don't know what it is," she confided to Marriott
the first time she saw him.  "I ought to be of some use
in the world, but I'm not--Oh, don't say I am," she
insisted when she caught his expression; "don't make
the conventional protest.  It's just as I told you before
I went away, I'm useless."  She glanced over the
drawing-room in an inclusive condemnation of the
luxury represented by the heavy furniture, the costly
bric-à-brac, and all that.  Her face wore an expression of
weariness.  She knew that she had not expressed
herself.  What she was thinking, or, rather, what she was
feeling was, perhaps, the disappointment that comes
to a spirited, imaginative, capable girl, who by
education and training has developed ambitions and
aspirations toward a real, full, useful life, yet who can
do nothing in the world because the very conditions of
that existence which give her those advantages forbid
it.  Prepared for life, she is not permitted to live; an
artificial routine called a "sphere" is all that is allowed
her; she may not realize her own personality, and, in
time, is reduced to utter nothingness.

"By what right--" she resumed, but Marriott interrupted her.

"Don't take that road; it will only make you unhappy."

"Before I went abroad," she went on, ignoring the
warning, "I told you that I would do something when
I came back--something to justify myself.  That's
selfish, isn't it?"  She ended in a laugh.  "Well, anyway,"
she resumed, "I can look up the Koerners.  You see
the Koerners?"

"I haven't tried that case yet," Marriott said with a
guilty expression.

"How dreadful of you!"

"Reproach me all you can," he said.  "I must pay
some penance.  But, you know--I--well, I didn't try
it at the spring term because Ford wanted to go to
Europe, and then--well--I'm going to try it right
away--soon."

The next morning, as Marriott walked down town,
he determined to take up the Koerner case
immediately.  It was one of those mild and sunny days of
grace that Nature allows in the mellow autumn,
dealing them out one by one with a smile that withholds
promise for another, so that each comes to winter-dreading
mortals as a rare surprise.  The long walk
in the sun filled Marriott with a fine delight of life;
he was pleased with himself because at last he was to
do a duty he had long neglected.  He sent for Koerner,
and the old man came on a pair of new yellow crutches,
bringing his wife and his enormous pipe.

"Well, Mr. Koerner," said Marriott, "I'm glad
you're about again.  How are you getting along?"

"Vell, ve get along; I bin some goodt yet, you bet.  I
can vash--I sit up to dose tubs dere undt help der oldt
voman."

Marriott's brows knotted in a perplexity that took
on the aspect of a mild horror.  It required some effort
for him to realize this old man sitting with a wash-tub
between his knees; the thought degraded the leonine
figure.  He wished that Koerner had not told him, and
he hastened to change the subject.

"Your case will come on for trial now," he said; "we
must talk it over and get our evidence in shape."

"Dot bin a long time alreadty, dot trial."

"Yes, it has," said Marriott, "but we'll get to it now
in two weeks."

"Yah, dot's vat you say."

He puffed at his pipe a moment, sending out the thin
wreaths of smoke in sharp little puffs.  The strong face
lifted its noble mask, the white hair--whiter than
Marriott remembered it the last time--glistening like frost.

"You vait anoder year and I grow out anoder leg,
maybe," Koerner smoked on in silence.  But presently
the thin lips that pinched the amber pipe-stem began
to twitch, the blue eyes twinkled under their
shaggy-white brows; his own joke about his leg put him in
good humor, and he forgot his displeasure.  Marriott
felt a supreme pity for the old man.  He marveled at
his patience, the patience everywhere exhibited by the
voiceless poor.  There was something stately in the old
man, something dignified in the way in which he
accepted calamity and joked it to its face.

Marriott found relief in turning to the case.  As he
was looking for the pleadings, he said carelessly:

"How's Gusta?"

And instantly, by a change in the atmosphere, he felt
that he had made a mistake.  Koerner made no reply.
Marriott heard him exchange two or three urgent
sentences with his wife, in his harsh, guttural German.
When Marriott turned about, Koerner was smoking in
stolid silence, his face was stone.  Mrs. Koerner cast
a timid glance at her husband, and, turning in
embarrassment from Marriott, fluttered her shawl about her
arms and gazed out the windows.  What did it mean?
Marriott wondered.

"Well, let's get down to business," he said.  He
would ask no more questions, at any rate.  But as he
was going over the allegations of the petition with
Koerner, finding the usual trouble in initiating the
client into the mysteries of evidence, which are as often
mysteries to the lawyers and the courts themselves, he
was thinking more of Gusta than of the case.  Poor
Gusta, he thought, does the family doom lie on her, too?





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   XIII

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Elizabeth kept to her purpose of doing something
to justify her continuing in existence, as she put it to
her mother, and there was a period of two or three
weeks following a lecture by a humanitarian from
Chicago, when she tortured the family by considering a
residence in a social settlement.  But Mrs. Ward was
relieved when this purpose realized itself in a way so
respectable as joining the Organized Charities.  The
Organized Charities was more than respectable, it was
eminently respectable, and when Mrs. Russell consented
to become its president, it took on a social rank of
the highest authority.  The work of this organization
was but dimly understood; it was incorporated, and so
might quite legally be said to lack a soul, which gave
it the advantage of having the personal equation
excluded from its dealings with the poor.  Business men,
by subscribing a small sum might turn all beggars over
to the Organized Charities, and by giving to the
hungry, who asked for bread, the stone of a blue ticket,
secure immediate relief from the disturbing sense of
personal responsibility.  The poor who were thus
referred might go to the bureau, file their applications, be
enrolled and indexed by the secretary, and have their
characters and careers investigated by an agent.  All
this was referred to as organized relief work, and it
had been so far successful as to afford relief to those
who were from time to time annoyed by the spectacles
of poverty and disease that haunted their homes and
places of business.

When the Organized Charities resumed in the fall
the monthly meetings that had been discontinued
during the heated term, Elizabeth was on hand.
Mrs. Russell was in the president's chair, and promptly at
three o'clock, consulting the tiny jeweled watch that
hung in the laces at her bosom, she called the meeting
to order.  After the recording secretary had read the
minutes of the last meeting, held in the spring, and
these had been approved, the corresponding secretary
read a report, and a list of the new members.
Then a young clergyman, with a pale, ascetic face, and
a high, clerical waistcoat against which a large cross of
gold was suspended by a cord, read his report as
treasurer, giving the names of the new members already
reported by the corresponding secretary, but adding the
amount subscribed by each, the amount of money in
the treasury, the amount expended in paying the
salaries of the clerks, the rent of the telephone, printing,
postage, and so on.  Then the agents of the organization
reported the number of cases they had investigated,
arranging them alphabetically, and in the form
of statistics.  Then the clerk reported the number of
meal tickets that had been distributed and the smaller
number that had been gastronomically redeemed.  After
that there were reports from standing committees,
then from special committees, and when all these had
been read, received and approved, they were ordered
to be placed on file.  These preliminaries occupied
an hour, and Elizabeth felt the effect to be
somewhat deadening.  During the reading of the reports,
the members, of whom there were about forty, mostly
women, had sat in respectful silence, decorously
coughing now and then.  When all the reports had been read
a woman rose, and addressing Mrs. Russell as
"Madame President," said that she wished again to move
that the meetings of the society be opened with prayer.
At this the faces of the other members clouded with an
expression of weariness.  The woman who made the
motion spoke to it at length, and with the only zeal
that Elizabeth had thus far observed in the proceedings.
Elizabeth was not long in discerning that this
same woman had made this proposal at former
meetings; she knew this by the bored and sometimes angry
expressions of the other members.  The young curate
seemed to feel a kind of vicarious shame for the
woman.  When the woman had finished, the matter was put
to a vote, and all voted no, save the woman who had
made the proposal, and she voted "aye" loudly, going
down to defeat in the defiance of the unconvinced.

Then another woman rose and said that she had a
matter to bring before the meeting; this matter related
to a blind woman who had called on her and complained
that the Organized Charities had refused to
give her assistance.  Now that the winter was coming
on, the blind woman was filled with fear of want.
Elizabeth had a dim vision of the blind woman, even
from the crude and inadequate description; she felt a
pity and a desire to help her, and, at the same time,
with that condemnation which needs no more than
accusation, a kind of indignation with the Organized
Charities.  For the first time she was interested in the
proceedings, and leaned forward to hear what was to
be done with the blind woman.  But while the description
had been inadequate to Elizabeth, so that her own
imagination had filled out the portrait, it was,
nevertheless, sufficient for the other members; a smile went
round, glances were exchanged, and the secretary,
with a calm, assured and superior expression, began to
turn over the cards in her elaborate system of indexed
names.  There was instantly a general desire to speak,
several persons were on their feet at once, saying
"Madame President!" and Mrs. Russell recognized
one of them with a smile that propitiated and promised
the others in their turn.  From the experiences that
were then related, it was apparent that this blind
woman was known to nearly all of the charity workers in
the city; all of them spoke of her in terms of
disparagement, which soon became terms of impatience.
One of the ladies raised a laugh by declaring the blind
woman to be a "chronic case," and then one of the men
present, a gray-haired man, with a white mustache
stained yellow by tobacco, rose and said that he had
investigated the "case" and that it was not worthy.  This
man was the representative of a society which cared
for animals, such as stray dogs, and mistreated horses,
and employed this agent to investigate such cases, but
it seemed that occasionally he concerned himself with
human beings.  He spoke now in a professional and
authoritative manner, and when he declared that the
case was not worthy, the blind woman, or the blind
case, as it was considered, was disposed of.  Some one
said that she should be sent to the poorhouse.

When the blind woman had been consigned, so far
as the bureau was concerned, to the poorhouse,
Mrs. Russell said in her soft voice:

"Is there any unfinished business?"

Elizabeth, who was tired and bored, felt a sudden
hope that this was the end, and she started up hopefully;
but she found in Mrs. Russell's beautiful face a
quick smile of sympathy and patience.  And Elizabeth
was ashamed; she was sorry she had let Mrs. Russell
see that she was weary of all this, and she felt a new
dissatisfaction with herself.  She told herself that she
was utterly fickle and hopeless; she had entered upon
this charity work with such enthusiasm, and here she
was already tiring of it at the first meeting!  Elizabeth
looked at Mrs. Russell, and for a moment envied her
her dignity and her tact and her patience, all of which
must have come from her innate gentleness and
kindness.  The face of this woman, who presided so
gracefully over this long, wearying session, was marked
with lines of character, her brow was serene and calm
under the perfectly white hair massed above it.  The
eyes were large, and they were sad, just as the mouth
was sad, but there dwelt in the eyes always that same
kindness and gentleness, that patience and consideration
that gave Mrs. Russell her real distinction, her
real indisputable claim to superiority.  Elizabeth forgot
her impatience and her weariness in a sudden speculation
as to the cause of the sadness that lay somewhere
in Mrs. Russell's life.  She had known ease and luxury
always; she had been spared all contact with that
world which Elizabeth was just beginning to
discover beyond the confines of her own narrow and
selfish world.  Mrs. Russell surely never had known the
physical hunger which now and then was at least
officially recognized in this room where the bureau met;
could there be a hunger of the soul which gave this
look to the human face?  Elizabeth Ward had not yet
realized this hunger, she had not yet come into the full
consciousness of life, and so it was that just at a
moment, when she seemed very near to its recognition,
she lost herself in the luxury of romanticizing some
sorrow in Mrs. Russell's life, some sorrow kept
hidden from the world.  Elizabeth thought she saw this
sorrow in the faint smile that touched Mrs. Russell's
lips just then, as she gave a parliamentary recognition
to another woman--a heavy, obtrusive woman who
was rising to say:

"Madame President."

Elizabeth had hoped that there would be no unfinished
business for the society to transact, but she had
not learned that there was one piece of business which
was always unfinished, and that was the question of
raising funds.  And this subject had no interest for
Elizabeth; the question of money was one she could
not grasp.  It affected her as statistics did; it had
absolutely no meaning for her; and now, when she was
forced to pay attention to the heavy, obtrusive woman,
because her voice was so strong and her tone so
commanding, she was conscious only of the fact that she
did not like this woman; somehow the woman
over-powered Elizabeth by mere physical proportions.  But
gradually it dawned on Elizabeth that the discussion
was turning on a charity ball, and she grew interested
at once, for she felt herself on the brink of solving the
old mystery of where charity balls originate.  She
had attended many of them, but it had never occurred
to her that some one must have organized and
promoted them; she had found them in her world as an
institution, like calls, like receptions, like the church.
But now a debate was on; the little woman, who had
urged the society to open its sessions with prayer, was
opposing the ball, and Elizabeth forgot Mrs. Russell's
secret romance in her interest in the warmth with
which the project of a charity ball was being discussed.





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   XIV

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The debate over the charity ball raged until twilight,
and it served for unfinished business at two special
sessions.  The spare little woman who had proposed
that the meetings be opened with prayer led the
opposition to the charity ball, and, summoning all her
militant religion to her aid, succeeded in arraying most of
the evangelical churches against it.  In two weeks the
controversy was in the newspapers, and when it had
waged for a month, and both parties were exhausted,
they compromised on a charity bazaar.

The dispute had been distressing to Mrs. Russell,
whose nature was too sensitive to take the relish most
of the others seemed to find in the controversy, and
it was through her tact that peace was finally
established.  Even after the bazaar was decided on, the
peace was threatened by dissension as to where the
bazaar should be held.  The more sophisticated and
worldly-minded favored the Majestic Theater, and this
brought the spare little woman to her feet again,
trembling with moral indignation.  To her the idea of a
bazaar in a theater was even more sacrilegious than a
ball.  But Mrs. Russell saved the day by a final
sacrifice--she offered her residence for the bazaar.

"It was beautiful in you!" Elizabeth exclaimed as
they drove homeward together in the graying
afternoon of the November day.  "To think of throwing
your house open for a week--and having the whole
town tramp over the rugs!"

"Oh, I'll lay the floors in canvas," said Mrs. Russell,
with a little laugh she could not keep from ending in a
sigh.

"You'll find it no light matter," said Elizabeth; "this
turning your house inside out.  Of course, the fact that
it is your house will draw all the curious and vulgar
in town."

This was not exactly reassuring and Elizabeth felt
as much the moment she had said it.

"You must help me, dear!" Mrs. Russell said,
squeezing Elizabeth's hand in a kind of desperation.
Elizabeth had never known her to be in any wise
demonstrative, and her own sympathetic nature
responded immediately.

"Indeed I shall!" she said.

The bazaar was to be held the week before Christmas,
and the ladies forgot their differences to unite in
one of those tremendous and exhausting labors they
seem ever ready to undertake, though the end is
always so disproportionate to the sacrifice and toil that
somehow bring it to pass.  Elizabeth was almost
constantly with Mrs. Russell; they were working early
and late.  Mrs. Russell appointed her on the
committee on arrangements, and the committee held almost
daily meetings at the Charities.  And here Elizabeth at
last found an opportunity of seeing some of the poor
for whom she was working.

The fall had prolonged itself into November; the
weather was so perfect that Dick could daily speed his
automobile, and the men who, like Marriott, still clung
to golf, could play on Saturdays and Sundays at the
Country Club.  But December came, and with it a
heavy rain that in three days became a sleet; then the
snow and a cold wave.  The wretched winter weather,
which seems to have a spite almost personal for the
lake regions, produced its results in the lives of
men--there were suicides and crimes for the police, and for
the Organized Charities, the poor, now forced to
emerge from the retreats where in milder weather they
could hide their wretchedness.  They came forth, and
when Elizabeth and Mrs. Russell entered the Charities
one morning, there they were, ranged along the wall.
They sat bundled in their rags, waiting in dumb
patience for the last humiliation of an official
investigation, making no sound save as their ailments
compelled them to sneeze or to cough now and then;
and as Elizabeth and Mrs. Russell passed into the
room, they were followed by eyes that held no reproach
or envy, but merely a mild curiosity.  The poor sat
there, perhaps glad of the warmth and the rest; willing
to spend the day, if necessary; with hopes no higher
than some mere temporary relief that would help them
to eke out their lives a few hours longer and until
another day, which should be like this day, repeating all
its wants and hardships.  The atmosphere of the room
was stifling, with an odor that sickened Elizabeth, the
fetor of all the dirt and disease that poverty had
accumulated and heaped upon them.

At the desk Mrs. Rider, the clerk, and the two agents
of the society were interrogating a woman.  The
woman was tall and slender, and her pale face had some
trace of prettiness left; her clothing was better than
that of the others, though it had remained over from
some easier circumstance of the summer.

The woman was hungry, and she was sick.  She had
reported her condition to the agent of the Society for
the Prevention of Cruelty, but as this man could think
of nothing better than to arrest somebody and have
somebody punished, he had had the woman's husband
sent to the workhouse for six months, thus removing
the only hope she had.

To Elizabeth it seemed that the three inquisitors
were trying, not so much to discover some means of
helping this woman, as to discover some excuse for
not helping her; they took turns in putting to her, with
a professional frankness, the most personal
questions,--questions that made Elizabeth blush and burn with
shame, even as they made the woman blush.  But just
then a middle-aged woman appeared, and Elizabeth
instantly identified her when Mrs. Rider pleasantly
addressed her by a name that appeared frequently in the
newspapers in connection with deeds that took on the
aspect of nobility and sacrifice.

"I'm so glad you dropped in, Mrs. Norton," said
Mrs. Rider.  "We have a most perplexing case."

The clerk lifted her eyebrows expressively, and
somehow indicated to Mrs. Norton the woman she
had just had under investigation.  Mrs. Norton
glanced at the hunted face and smiled.

"You mean the Ordway woman?  Exactly.  I know
her case thoroughly.  Mr. Gleason 'phoned me from
the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty and I looked
her up.  You should have seen her room--the filthiest
place I ever saw--and those children!"  She raised her
hands, covered with gloves, and her official-looking
reticule slid up her forearm as if to express an
impossibility.  "The woman was tired of farm life--determined
to come to town--fascinated by city life--she
complained of her husband, and yet--what do you
think?--she wanted me to get him out of the work-house!"

Mrs. Norton stopped as if she had made an
unanswerable argument and proved that the woman should
not be helped; and Mrs. Rider and the two agents
seemed to be relieved.  Presently Mrs. Rider called
the woman, and told her that her case was not one
that came within the purview of the society's objects,
and when the hope was dying out of the woman's
face Mrs. Norton began to lecture her on the care of
children, and to assure her the city was filled with
pitfalls for such as she.  The woman, beaten into
humility, listened a while, and then she turned and
dragged herself toward the door.  The eyes of the
waiting paupers followed her with the same impersonal
curiosity they had shown in the entrance of Mrs. Russell
and Elizabeth and Mrs. Norton.

The limp retreating figure of the woman filled
Elizabeth with distress.  When, at the door, she saw the
woman press to her eyes the sodden handkerchief she
had been rolling in her palm during the interview, she
ran after her; in the hall outside, away from others,
she called; the woman turned and gazed at her suspiciously.

"Here!" said Elizabeth fearfully.

She opened her purse and emptied from it into the
woman's hand all the silver it held.

"Where do you live?" she asked, and as the woman
gave her the number of the house where she rented
a room, Elizabeth realized how inappropriate the word
"live" was.  Elizabeth returned to the office with a glow
in her breast, though she dreaded Mrs. Norton, whom
she feared she had affronted by her deed.  But
Mrs. Norton received her with a smile.

"It seemed hard to you, no doubt," Mrs. Norton
said, and Mrs. Rider and the two agents looked up with
smiles of their own, as if they were about to shine in
Mrs. Norton's justification, "but you'll learn after a
while.  We must discriminate, you know; we must not
pauperize them.  When you've been in the work as
long as I have,"--she paused with a superior lift of
her eyebrows at the use of this word "work,"--"you'll
understand better."

Elizabeth felt a sudden indignation which she
concealed, because she had her own doubts, after all.  The
ladies were gathering for the committee meeting and
just then Mrs. Russell beckoned her into an inner room.

"The air is better in here," she said.





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   XV

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Every day Elizabeth went to the Organized Charities.
The committee on arrangements divided itself
into subcommittees, and these, with other committees
that were raised, must have meetings, make reports,
receive instructions, and consider ways and means.
The labor entailed was enormous.  The women were
exhausted before the first week had ended; the rustling
of their skirts as they ran to and fro, their incessant
chatter---they all spoke at once--their squealing at
each other as their nerves snapped under the strain,
filled the rooms with clamor.  But all this endless
confusion and complication were considered necessary in
order to effect an organization.  If any one doubted or
complained, it was only necessary to speak the word
"organization," and criticism was immediately silenced.

It had been discovered very early in the work of
this organization that Mrs. Russell's great house
would be too small for the bazaar, and it had been a
relief to her when a certain Mrs. Spayd offered to
place at the disposal of the committee the new mansion
her husband had just built on Claybourne Avenue and
named with the foreign-sounding name of
"Bellemere."  Mrs. Spayd privately conveyed the
information that the young people might have the ball-room
at the top of the house, where the most exclusive, if
they desired, could dance, and she commissioned a
firm of decorators to transform Bellemere into a
bazaar.  Mrs. Spayd was to bear the entire expense, and
her charity was lauded everywhere, especially in the
society columns of the newspapers.  The booths were
to represent different nations, and it was suddenly
found to be desirable to dress as peasants.  The women
who were to serve in these booths flew to costumers to
have typical clothing made.  And this occasioned still
greater conflict and confusion, for each woman wished
to represent that country whose inhabitants were
supposed to wear the most picturesque costumes.

Meanwhile the cold weather held and the poor
besieged the Charities.  No matter how early Elizabeth
might arrive, no matter how late she might leave, they
were always there, a stolid, patient row along the wall,
or crowding up to the railing, or huddling in the hall
outside.  For a while Elizabeth, regarding them in the
mass, thought that the same persons came each day,
but she discovered that this was not the case.  As she
looked she noted a curious circumstance: the faces
gradually took on individuality, slight at first, but
soon decided, until each stood out among the others
and developed the sharpest, most salient characteristics.
She saw in each face the story of a single life,
and always a life of neglect and failure, as if the misery
of the world had been distributed in a kind of ironical
variation.  These people all were victims of a common
doom, presenting itself each time in a different aspect;
they were all alike--and yet they were all different,
like leaves of a tree.

One afternoon Elizabeth suddenly noted a face that
stood out in such relief that it became the only face
there for her.  It was the face of a young man, and it
wore a strange pallor, and as Elizabeth hurried by she
was somehow conscious that the young man's eyes
were following her with a peculiar searching glance.
When she sat down to await the women of the
committee with which she was to meet, the young man
still gazed at her steadily; she grew uncomfortable,
almost resentful.  She felt this continued stare to be a
rudeness, and then suddenly she wondered why any
rudeness of these people should be capable of affecting
her; surely they were not of her class, to be judged by
her standards.  But she turned away, and determined
not to look that way again, for fear that the young man
might accost her.

And yet, though she persistently looked away, the
face had so impressed her that she still could see it.
In her first glimpse it had been photographed on her
mind; its pallor was remarkable, the skin had a damp,
dead whiteness, as if it had bleached in a cave, curls
of thin brown hair clung to the brows; on the boy's
neck was a streak of black where the collar of his coat
had rubbed its color.  In his thin hands he held a
plush cap.  And out of his pale face his wan eyes
looked and followed her; she could not escape them,
and for relief she finally fled to the inner room.

"We have made arrangements," said one of the
women, "to hold our committee meetings hereafter at
Mrs. Spayd's.  She has kindly put her library at our
disposal.  This place is unbearable!"

She flung up a window and let the fresh air pour in.

"Yes," sighed another woman, "the air is sickening.
It gives me a headache.  If the poor could only be
taught that cleanliness is akin to godliness!"

Elizabeth's head ached, too; it would be a relief to
be delivered out of this atmosphere.  But still the face
of the young man pursued her.  She could not follow
the deliberations of the committee; she could think of
nothing but that face.  Where, she continually asked
herself, had she seen it before?  She sat by a window,
and looked down into the street, preoccupied by the
effort to identify it.  She gave herself up to the pain
of the process, as one does when trying to remember
a name.  Now and then she caught phrases of the
sentences the women began, but seemed never able to
finish:--"Oh, I hardly think that--"  "As a class, of
course--"  "Oriental hangings would be
best--"  "Cheese-cloth looks cheap--"  "Of course,
flags--"  "We could solicit the merchants--"  "My husband was
saying last night--"

But where had she seen that face before?  Why
should it pursue and worry her?  What had she ever
done?  Finally, after two hours of the mighty effort
and patience that are necessary to bring a number of
minds to grasp a subject and agree even on the most
insignificant detail, two hours in which thoughts
hovered and flitted here and there, and could not find
expression, when minds held back, and continually
balked at the specific, the certain, the definite, and
sought refuge from decision in the general and the
abstract, the committee exhausted itself, and decided
to adjourn.  Then, although it had reached no conclusions
whatever, the matron who presided smiled and said:

"Well, I feel that we're making progress."

"I don't feel as if we'd done much," some one else
said.  "And I can not come on Friday."

"Do you know, I really haven't got a single one of
my Christmas presents yet."

"I have to give sixty-seven!  Just think!  What a
burden it all is!"

Elizabeth dreaded the sight of that boy's face again,
but it was growing late, the early winter twilight was
expanding its gloom in the room.  She made haste,
and walked swiftly through the outer office.  The
young man was no longer there.  But though this was
a relief, his face still followed her.  Who could he be?

The air out of doors was grateful.  It soothed her
hot cheeks, and, though her head throbbed more
violently for an instant from the exertion of coming down
the steps, she drew in great drafts of the winter air
with a comforting sense that it was cleansing her
lungs of all that foul atmosphere of poverty she had
been breathing for two days.  She walked hurriedly to
the corner, to wait for a car; beside her, St. Luke's, as
with an effort, lifted its Gothic arches of gray stone into
the dark sky; across the street the City Hall loomed,
its windows bright with lights.  The afternoon crowds
were streaming by on the sidewalk, wagons and heavy
trucks jolted and rumbled along the street; she saw the
drivers of coal-wagons, the whites of their eyes
flashing under the electric lights against faces black as
negroes with the grime.  Politicians were coming from
the City Hall; here and there, in and out of the crowd,
newsboys darted, shouting "All 'bout the murder!"  The
shops were ablaze, their windows tricked out for the
holidays; throngs of people hurried by, intent,
preoccupied, selfish.  As Elizabeth stood there, the constant
stream of faces oppressed her with an intolerable
gloom; the blazing electric lights, signs of theaters
and restaurants, were mere mockeries of pleasure and
comfort.  And always the roar of the city.  It was the
hour when the roar became low and dull, a deep, ugly
note of weariness and discontent was in it, the grumble
of a city that was exhausted from its long day of
confusion and wearing, complicated effort.  On the City
Hall corner, a man with the red-banded cap of the
Salvation Army stood beside an iron kettle suspended
beneath a tripod, swaying from side to side, stamping
his huge feet in the cold, jangling a little hand-bell,
and constantly crying in a bass voice:

"Remember the poor!  Remember the poor!"

She recalled, suddenly, that the outcasts at the
Charities invariably sneered whenever the Salvation Army
was suggested, and she was impatient with this man in
the cap with the red band, his enormous sandy
mustache frozen into repulsive little icicles.  Why must he
add his din to this tired roar of the worn-out city?

Her car came presently, jerking along, stopping and
starting again in the crowded street.  The crowd
sweeping by brushed her now and then, but suddenly
she felt a more personal contact--some one had
touched her.  She shrank; she shuddered with fear,
then she ran out to her car.  Inside she began again
that study of faces.  She tried not to do so, but she
seemed unable to shake off the habit--that face seemed
always to be looking out at her from all other faces,
white and sensitive, with the black mark on the neck
where the coat collar had rubbed its color.  And the
eyes more and more reproached her, as if she had been
responsible for the sadness that lay in them.  The car
whirred on, the conductor opened the door with
monotonous regularity, and called out the interminable
streets.  The air in the car, overheated by the little
coal-stove, took on the foul smell of the air at the Charities.
Elizabeth's head ached more and more, a sickness came
over her.  At last she reached the street which led
across to Claybourne Avenue, and got off.  She crossed
the little triangular park.  The air had suddenly taken
on a new life, it was colder and clearer.  The dampness
it had held in suspense for days was leaving it.  Looking
between the black trunks of the trees in the park she
saw the western sky, yellow and red where the sun had
gone down; and she thought of her home, with its
comfort and warmth and light, and the logs in the
great fireplace in the library.  She hastened on, soothed
and reassured.  In the sense of certain comfort she
now confidently anticipated, she could get the poor out
of her mind, and feel as she used to feel before they
came to annoy her.  The clouds were clearing, the sky
took on the deep blue it shows at evening; one star
began to sparkle frostily, and, just as peace was
returning, that young man's face came back, and she
remembered instantly, in a flash, that it was the face of
Harry Graves.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`2-XVI`:

.. class:: center large

   XVI

.. vspace:: 2

Elizabeth was right; it was Harry Graves.  Four
weeks before he had been released from the penitentiary.
On the day that he was permitted to go forth
into the world again as a free man, the warden gave
him a railroad ticket back to the city, a suit of
prison-made clothes, a pair of prison-made brogans, and a
shirt.  These clothes were a disappointment and a
chagrin to Graves.  When he went into the prison, the
fall before, he had an excellent suit of clothes and a
new overcoat, and during the whole year he had looked
forward to the pleasure he would experience in
donning these again.  He had felt a security in returning
to the world well-habited and presentable.  But one of
the guards had noticed Graves's clothes when he
entered the penitentiary and had stolen them, so that
when he was released, Graves was forced to go back
wearing a suit of the shoddy clothes one of the
contractors manufactured in the prison, and sold to the
state at a profit sufficient to repay him and to provide
certain officials of the penitentiary with a good income
as well.  These clothes were of dull black.  A detective
could recognize them anywhere.  Before Graves had
reached the city, the collar had rubbed black against
his neck.

Things, of course, had changed while he was in
prison.  His mother had died and he had no home to
go to.  Besides this, he had contracted tuberculosis in
the penitentiary, as did many of the convicts unless
they were men of exceptionally strong constitutions.
Nevertheless Graves was glad to be free on any terms,
and glad to be back in the city in which he had been
born and reared.  And yet, no sooner was he back than
the fear of the city lay on him.  He dreaded to meet
men; he felt their eyes following him curiously.  He
knew that he presented an uncouth figure in those
miserable clothes and the clumsy prison brogans.
Besides, he had so long walked in the lock-step that his
gait was now constrained, awkward and unnatural;
having been forbidden to speak for more than a year,
and having spoken at all but surreptitiously, he found
it impossible to approach men with his old
frankness; having been compelled to keep his gaze on
the ground, he could not look men in the eyes, and so
he seemed to be a surly, taciturn creature with a
hang-dog air.

During the three weeks Graves had been confined in
jail, prior to his plea and sentence, he had thought
over his misdeeds, recognized his mistakes and formed
the most strenuous resolutions of betterment.  He was
determined, then, to live a better life; but as he could
not live while in prison, but merely "do time," he was
compelled, of course, to wait a year before he could
begin life anew.  During the eleven months he spent
in the penitentiary he had tried to keep these
resolutions fresh, strong and ever clear before him.  This
was a difficult thing to do, for his mind was weakened
by the confinement, and his moral sense was constantly
clouded by the examples that were placed before him.
On Sundays, in the chapel, he heard the chaplain
preach, but during the week the guards stole the
comforts his mother sent to him before she died, the
contractors and the prison officials were grafting and
stealing from the state provisions, household furniture,
liquors, wines, and every other sort of thing; one
of the prison officials supplied his brother's drug store
with medicines and surgical appliances from the prison
hospital.  Besides all this, the punishments he was
compelled at times to witness--the water-cure, the paddle,
the electric battery, the stringing up by the wrists, not
to mention the loathsome practices of the convicts
themselves--benumbed and appalled him, until he
shuddered with terror lest his mind give way.  But all
these things, he felt, would be at an end if he could
keep his reason and his health, and live to the end of
his term.  Then he could leave them all behind and go
out into the world and begin life anew.

Graves came back to town during those last glorious
days of the autumn, and the fact that he had no place
to go was not so much a hardship.  He did not care
to show himself to his old friends until he had had
opportunity to procure new clothes, and he felt that
he was started on the way to this rehabilitation when
almost immediately he found a place trucking
merchandise for a wholesale house in Front Street.  He
felt encouraged; his luck, he told himself, was good,
and for three days he was happy in his work.  Then,
one morning, he noticed a policeman; the policeman
stood on the sidewalk, watching Graves roll barrels
down the skids from a truck.  The policeman stood
there a good while, and then he spoke to the driver,
admired the magnificent horses that were hitched to
the truck, patted their glossy necks, picked up some
sugar that had been spilled from a burst barrel and let
the horses lick the sugar from the palm of his hand.
The horses tossed their heads playfully as they did
this, and, meanwhile, the policeman glanced every few
minutes at Graves.  Presently, he went into the
wholesale house, and through the window Graves saw him
talking to the manager.  That evening the manager
paid Graves for his three days' work and discharged him.

On this money, four dollars and a half, Graves lived
for a week, meanwhile hunting another job.  He could
do nothing except manual labor, for he was not
properly clothed for any clerical employment.  He walked
along the entire river front, seeking work on the
wharves as a stevedore, but no one could work there
who was not a member of the Longshoremen's Union,
and no one could be a member of the Longshoremen's
Union who did not work there; so this plan failed.  He
visited employment bureaus, but these demanded fees
and deposits.  Graves read the want advertisements in
the newspapers, but none of these availed him; each
prospective employer demanded references which
Graves could not give.

The snow-storm brought him a prosperity as fleeting
as the snow itself; he went into the residence
district--where as yet he had not had the heart to go
because of memories that haunted it--and cleaned the
sidewalks of the well-to-do.  After a day or so, the
sidewalks of the well-to-do were all cleaned,--that is,
the sidewalks of those who respected the laws sufficiently
to have their sidewalks cleaned.  Then the rain
came, and Graves tramped the slushy streets.  His
prison-made shoes were as pervious to water as paper,
of which substance, indeed, they were made; he
contracted a cold, and his cough grew rapidly worse.  He
had no place to sleep.  He spent a night in each of the
two lodging-houses in the city, then he "flopped" on
the floor of a police station.  In this place he became
infested with vermin, though this was no new experience
to him after eleven months in the cells of the
penitentiary.  Meanwhile, he had little to eat.  Once or
twice, he visited hotel kitchens and the chefs gave him
scraps from the table; then he did what for days he
had been dreading--he tried to beg.  After allowing
twenty people to go by, he found the courage to hold
out his hand to the twenty-first; the man passed
without noticing him; a dozen others did likewise.  Then
a policeman saw him and arrested him on a charge of
vagrancy.  At the police station the officers, recognizing
his prison clothes, held him for three days as a
suspicious character.  Then he was arraigned before
Bostwick, who scowled and told him he would give
him twenty-four hours in which to leave the city.

It was now cold.  The wind cut through Graves's
clothing like a saw; he skulked and hid for two days;
then, intolerably hungry, he went to the Organized
Charities.  He sat there for two hours that afternoon,
glad of the delay because the room was warm.  He
thought much during those two hours, though his
thoughts were no longer clear.  He was able, however,
to recall a belief he had held before coming out of the
penitentiary,--a belief that he had paid the penalty for
his crime, that, having served the sentence society had
imposed on him, his punishment was at an end.  This
view had seemed to be confirmed by the certificate that
had been issued to him, under the Great Seal of State
and signed by the governor, restoring him to citizenship.
But now he realized that this belief had been
erroneous, that he had not at all paid the penalty, that
he had not served his sentence, that his punishment
was not at an end, and that he had not been restored
to citizenship.  The Great Seal of State had attested
an hypocrisy and a lie, and the governor had signed
his name to this lie with a conceited flourish at the end
of his pen.  Graves formulated this conclusion with an
effort, but he grasped it finally, and his mind clung to
it and revolved about it, finding something it could
hold to.

And then, suddenly, Elizabeth Ward entered the
room.  He knew her instantly, and his heart leaped
with a wild desperate hope.  He watched her; she was
beautiful in the seal-skin jacket that fitted her slender
figure so well; her hat with its touch of green became
her dark hair.  He noted the flush of her cheek, the
sparkle of her eyes behind the veil.  He remembered
her as he had seen her that last day she came into her
father's office; he remembered how heavy his own
heart had been under its load of guilty fears.  He
recalled the affection her father had shown, how his tired
face had smiled when he saw her.  Graves remembered
that the smile had filled him with a pity for
Ward; he seemed once more to see Ward fondly take
her little gloved hand and hold it while he looked
up at her, and how he had laughed and evidently joked
her as he swung about to his desk and wrote out a
check.  And then, as she went out, she had smiled at
the clerks and spoken to them; she had smiled on him
and spoken to him; would she smile now, this day?
The hope leaped wild in his heart.  If she did!  She
was the apple of her father's eye--he would do
anything for her; if she would but see and recognize him
now, give him the least hint of encouragement or
permission, he would tell her, she would speak to her
father and he would help him.  His whole being seemed
to melt within him--he half started from his chair--his
eyes were wide with the excitement of this hope.  He
never once took them from her; he must not permit
an instant to escape him, lest she look his way.  He
watched her as she sat by the window; she made a
picture he never could forget.  Once she turned.  Ah! it
was coming now!--but no--yes, she was moving!  She
had gone into the other room.  He hoped now that his
case would be one of the last.  He must see her.  After
a while the agent beckoned him, looked at him
suspiciously, and said:

"How long have you been out?"

"A month," said Graves.

"Well, I haven't got no use for convicts," said the
agent.

Graves waited in the hall.  He waited until it was
dark, but not so dark that the agent could not
recognize him.

"You needn't hang around," he said; "there's
nothing to steal here."

Graves waited, then, outside.  He feared he would
miss Elizabeth in the dark, or confuse her among the
other women.  The thought made him almost frantic.
The women came out, and finally--yes, it was
Elizabeth!  He could nowhere mistake that figure.  He
pressed up, he spoke, he put forth a hand to touch
her--she turned with a start of fright.  He saw a
policeman looking at him narrowly.  And then he gave up,
slunk off, and was lost in the crowd.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`2-XVII`:

.. class:: center large

   XVII

.. vspace:: 2

Seated in the library at the Wards', Eades gave
himself up to the influences of the moment.  The open
fire gave off the faint delicious odor of burning wood,
the lamp filled the room with a soft light that gleamed
on the gilt lettering of the books about the walls, the
pictures above the low shelves--a portrait of Browning
among them--lent to the room the dignity of the great
souls they portrayed.  Eades, who had just tried his
second murder case, was glad to find this refuge from
the thoughts that had harassed him for a week.  Elizabeth
noticed the weariness in his eyes, and she had a
notion that his hair glistened a little more grayly at
his temples.

"You've been going through an ordeal this week,
haven't you?"  She had expressed the thought that lay
on their minds.  He felt a thrill.  She sympathized,
and this was comfort; this was what he wanted!

"It must have been exciting," Elizabeth continued.
"Murder trials usually are, I believe.  I never saw one;
I never was in a court-room in my life.  Women do go,
I suppose?"

"Yes--women of a certain kind."  His tone deprecated
the practice.  "We've had big audiences all the
week; it would have disgusted you to see them
struggling and scrambling for admission.  Now I suppose
they'll be sending flowers to the wretch, and all that."

Eades chose to forget how entirely the crowd had
sympathized with him, and how the atmosphere of the
trial had been wholly against the wretch.

"Well, I'll promise not to send him any flowers,"
Elizabeth said quickly.  "He'll have to hang?"

"No, not hang; we don't hang people in this state
any more; we electrocute them.  But I forgot; Gordon
Marriott told me I mustn't say 'electrocute'; he says
there is no such word."

"Gordon is particular," Elizabeth observed with a laugh.

Eades thought she laughed sympathetically; and he
wanted all her sympathy for himself just then.

"He calls it killing."  Eades grasped the word boldly,
like a nettle.

"Gordon doesn't believe in capital punishment."

"So I understand."

"I don't either."

Her tone startled him.  He glanced up.  She was
looking at him steadily.

"Did you read of this man's crime?" he asked.

"No, I don't read about crimes."

"Then I'll spare you.  Only, he shot a man down in
cold blood; there were eye-witnesses; there is no doubt
of his guilt.  He made no defense."

"Then it couldn't have been hard to convict him."

"No," Eades admitted, though he did not like this
detraction from his triumph.  "But the responsibility
is great."

"I should imagine so."

He did not know exactly what she meant; he
wondered if this were sarcasm.

"It is indeed," he insisted.

"Yes," she went on, "I know it must be.  I couldn't
bear it myself.  I'm glad women are not called to such
responsibilities.  I believe it is said--isn't it?--that
their sentimental natures unfit them."  She was smiling.

"You're guying now," he said, leaning back in his chair.

"Oh, indeed, no!  Of course, I know nothing about
such things--save that you men are superior to your
emotional natures, and rise above them and control
them."

"Well, not always.  We become emotional, but our
emotions are usually excited on the side of justice."

"What is that?"

"Justice?  Why--well--"

"You mean 'an eye for an eye,' I suppose, and 'a life
for a life.'"  Elizabeth looked at him steadily, and he
feared she was making him ridiculous.

"I'm not sure that I believe in capital punishment
myself," he said, seeing that she would not, after all,
sympathize with him, "but luckily I have no choice; I
have only my duty to do, and that is to enforce the
laws as I find them."  He settled back as if he had
found a sure foundation and placed his fingers tip to
tip, his polished nails gleaming in the firelight as if
they were wet.  "I can only do my duty; the jury, the
judge, the executioner, may do theirs or not.  My
personal feelings can not enter into the matter in the
least.  That's the beauty of our system.  Of course, it's
hard and unpleasant, but we can't allow our sentiments
to stand in the way."  Plainly he enjoyed the nobility
of this attitude.  "As a man, I might not believe in
capital punishment--but as an official--"

"You divide yourself into two personalities?"

"Well, in that sense--"

"How disagreeable!"  Elizabeth gave a little shrug.
"It's a kind of vivisection, isn't it?"

"But something has to be done.  What would you
have me do?"  He sat up and met her, and she shrank
from the conflict.

"Oh, don't ask me!  I don't know anything about it,
I'm sure!  I know but one criminal, and I don't wish
to dream about him to-night."

"It is strange to be discussing such topics," said
Eades.  "You must pardon me for being so disagreeable
and depressing."

"Oh, I'll forgive you," she laughed.  "I'd really like
to know about such things.  As I say, I have known
but one criminal."

"The one you dream of?"

"Yes.  Do you ever dream of your criminals?"

"Oh, never!  It's bad enough to be brought into
contact with them by day; I put them out of my mind
when night comes.  Except this Burns--he insists on
pursuing me more or less.  But now that he has his
just deserts, perhaps he'll let me alone.  But tell me
about this criminal of yours, this lucky one you dream
of.  I'd become a criminal myself--"

"You know him already," Elizabeth said hastily, her
cheeks coloring.

"I?"

"Yes.  Do you remember Harry Graves?"

Eades bent his head and placed his knuckles to his chin.

"Graves, Graves?" he said.  "It seems to me--"

"The boy who stole from my father; you had him
sent to the penitentiary for a year--and papa--"

"Oh, I remember; that boy!  To be sure.  His term
must be over now."

"Yes, it's over.  I've seen him."

"You!" he said in surprise.  "Where?"

"At the Charity Bureau, before Christmas."

"Ah, begging, of course."  Eades shook his head.
"I was in hopes our leniency would do him good; but
it seems that it's never appreciated.  I sometimes
reproach myself with being too easy with them; but they
do disappoint us--almost invariably.  Begging!  Well,
they don't want to work, that's all.  What became of
him?"

"I don't know," said Elizabeth.  "I saw him there,
but didn't recognize him.  After I had come away, I
recalled him.  I've reproached myself again and again.
I wonder what has become of him!"

"It's sad, in a way," said Eades, "but I shouldn't
worry.  I used to worry, at first, but I soon learned to
know them.  They're no good, they won't work, they
have no respect for law, they have no desire but to
gratify their idle, vicious natures.  The best thing is
just to shut them up where they can't harm any one.
This may seem heartless, but I don't think I'm
heartless."  He smiled tolerantly for himself.  "I have no
personal feeling in the matter, but I've learned from
experience.  As for this Graves--I had my doubts at
the time.  I thought then I was making a mistake in
recommending leniency.  But, really, your father was
so cut up, and I'd rather err on the side of mercy."  He
paused a moment, and then said: "He'll turn up in
court again some day.  You'll see.  I shouldn't lose any
more sleep over him."

Elizabeth smiled faintly, but did not reply.  She sat
with her elbow on the arm of her chair, her delicate
chin resting on her hand, and Eades was content to
let the subject drop, if it would.  He wished the silence
would prolong itself.  His heart beat rapidly; he felt
a new energy, a new joy pulsing within him.  He sat
and looked at her calmly, her gaze bent on the fire, her
profile revealed to him, her lashes sweeping her cheek,
the lace in her sleeve falling away from her slender
arm.  Should he tell her then?  He longed to--but
this was not, after all, the moment.  The moment
would come, and he must be patient.  He must wait
and prove himself to her; she must understand him;
she should see him in time as the modern ideal of
manhood, doing his duty courageously and without fear or
favor.  Some day he would tell her.

"Your charity bazaar was a success, I hope?" he
said presently, coming back to the lighter side of their
last topic.

"I don't know," Elizabeth said.  "I never inquired."

"You never inquired?"

"No."

"How strange!  Why not?"

"I lost interest."

"Oh!" he laughed.  "Well, we all do that."

"The whole thing palled on me--struck me as ridiculous."

Eades was perplexed.  He could not in the least
understand this latest attitude.  Surely, she was a girl of
many surprises.

"I shouldn't think you would find charity ridiculous.
A hard-hearted and cruel being like me might--but
you--oh, Miss Ward!  To think that helping the poor
was ridiculous!"

"But it isn't to help the poor at all."

He was still more perplexed.

"It's to help the rich.  Can't you see that?"

She turned and faced him with clear, sober gray
eyes.

"Can't you see that?" she asked again.  "If you
can't, I wish I knew how to make you.

|  "'The organized charity, scrimped and iced,
|  In the name of a cautious, statistical Christ'--
|

"Do you know Boyle O'Reilly's poetry?"

Eades showed the embarrassment of one who has
not the habit of reading, and she saw that the words
had no meaning for him.

"Don't take it all so seriously," he said, leaning over
as if he might plead with her.  "'The poor,' you know,
'we have always with us.'"  He settled back then as
one who has said the thing proper to the occasion.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`2-XVIII`:

.. class:: center large

   XVIII

.. vspace:: 2

Although Marriott had promised Koerner early in
the fall that his action against the railroad would be
tried at once, he was unable to bring the event to pass.
In the first place, Bradford Ford, the attorney for the
railroad, had to go east in his private car, then in the
winter he had to go to Florida to rest and play golf,
and because of these and other postponements it was
March before the case was finally assigned for trial.

"So that's your client back there, is it?" said Ford,
the morning of the trial, turning from the window and
the lingering winter outdoors to look at Koerner.

Koerner was sitting by the trial table, his old wife
by his side.  He was pale and thin from his long winter
indoors; his yellow, wrinkled skin stretched over his
jaw-bones, hung flabby at his throat.  As Ford and
Marriott looked at him, a troubled expression appeared
in Koerner's face; he did not like to see Marriott so
companionable with Ford; he had ugly suspicions; he
felt that Marriott should treat his opponent coldly and
with the enmity such a contest deserved.  But just at
that minute Judge Sharlow came in and court was
opened.

The trial lasted three days.  The benches behind the
bar were empty, the bailiff slept with his gray chin on
his breast, the clerk copied pleadings in the record,
pausing now and then to look out at the flurries of
snow.  Sharlow sat on the bench, trying to write an
opinion he had been working on for weeks.  The jury
sat in the jury-box, their eyes heavy with drowsiness,
breathing grossly.  Long ago life had paused in these
men; they had certain fixed opinions, one of which was
that any man who sued a corporation was entitled to
damages; and after they had seen Koerner, with the
stump of his leg sticking out from his chair, they were
ready to render a verdict.

Marriott knew this, and Ford knew it, and consequently
they gave attention, not to the jury, but to the
stenographer bending over the tablet on which he
transcribed the testimony with his fountain pen.
Marriott and Ford were concerned about the record; they
saw not so much this trial, as a hearing months or
possibly years hence in the Appellate Court, and still
another hearing months or years hence in the Supreme
Court.  They knew that just as the jurymen were in
sympathy with Koerner, and by any possible means
would give a verdict in his favor, so the judges in the
higher courts would be in sympathy with the railroad
company, and by any possible means give judgment in
its favor; and, therefore, while Marriott's efforts were
directed toward trying the case in such a way that the
record should be free from error, Ford's efforts were
directed toward trying the case in such a way that the
record should be full of error.  Ford was continually
objecting to the questions Marriott asked his witnesses,
and compelling Sharlow to drop his work and pass on
these objections.  One of Marriott's witnesses, a
stalwart young mechanic, unmarried and with no
responsibilities, testified positively that the frog in which
Koerner had caught his foot had no block in it; he had
examined it carefully at the time.  Another, a man of
middle age with a large family, an employe of the
railroad company, had the most unreliable memory--he
could remember nothing at all about the frog; he could
not say whether it had been blocked or not; he had not
examined it; he had not considered it any of his
business.  While giving his testimony, he cast fearful and
appealing glances at Ford, who smiled complacently,
and for a while made no objections.  Another witness
was Gergen, the surgeon, a young man with eye-glasses,
a tiny gold chain, and a scant black beard
trimmed closely to his pale skin and pointed after the
French fashion.  He retained his overcoat and kept
on his glasses while he testified, as if he must get
through with this business and return to his practice
as quickly as possible.  With the greatest care he
couched all his testimony in scientific phrases.

"I was summoned to the hospital," he said, "at
seven-sixteen on that evening and found the patient
prostrated by hemorrhage and shock.  I supplemented the
superficial examination of the internes and found that
there were contusions on the left hip, and severe bruises
on the entire left side.  The most severe injury,
however, developed in the right foot.  The tibiotarsal
articulation was destroyed, the calcaneum and astragalus
were crushed and inoperable, the metatarsus and
phalanges, and the internal and external malleolus were
also crushed, and the fibula and tibia were splintered to
the knee."

"Well, what then?"

"I gave orders to have the patient prepared, and
proceeded to operate.  My assistant, Doctor Remack,
administered the anesthetic, and I amputated at the
lower third."

Doctor Gergen then explained that what he had said
meant that he had found Koerner's foot, ankle and
knee crushed, and that he had cut off his leg above the
knee.  After this he told what fee he had charged; he
did this in plain terms, calling dollars dollars, and cents
cents.

But Koerner himself was a sufficient witness in his
own behalf.  Sitting on the stand, his crutches in the
hollow of his arm, the stump of his leg thrust straight
out before him and twitching now and then, he told of
his long service with the railroad, pictured the blinding
snow-storm, described how he had slipped and caught
his foot in the unblocked frog--then the switch-engine
noiselessly stealing down upon him.  The jurymen
roused from their lethargy as he turned his white and
bony face toward them; the atmosphere was suddenly
charged with the sympathy these aged men felt for
him.  Sharlow paused in his writing, the clerk ceased
from his monotonous work, and Mrs. Koerner, whose
expression had not changed, wiped her eyes with the
handkerchief which, fresh from the iron, she had held
all day without unfolding.

When Ford began his cross-examination, Koerner
twisted about with difficulty in his chair, threw back
his head, and his face became hard and obdurate.  He
ran his stiff and calloused hand through his white hair,
which seemed to bristle with leonine defiance.  Ford
conducted his cross-examination in soft, pleasant tones,
spoke to Koerner kindly and with consideration,
scrupulously addressed him as "Mr. Koerner," and had him
repeat all he had said about his injury.

"As I understand it, then, Mr. Koerner," said Ford,
"you were walking homeward at the end of the day
through the railroad yards."

"Yes, sir, dot's right."

"You'd always gone home that way?"

"Sure; I go dot vay for twenty year, right t'rough
dose yards dere."

"Yes.  Was that a public highway, Mr. Koerner?"

"Vell, everybody go dot vay home all right; dot's so."

"But it wasn't a street?"

"No."

"Nor a sidewalk?"

"You know dot alreadty yourself," said Koerner,
leaning forward, contracting his bushy white eyebrows
and glaring at Ford.  "Vot you vant to boder me mit
such a damn-fool question for?"

The jurymen laughed and Ford smiled.

"I know, of course, Mr. Koerner; you will pardon
me--but what I wish to know is whether or not you
know.  You had passed through those yards frequently?"

"Yah, undt I knows a damn-sight more about dose
yards dan you, you bet."

Again the jurymen laughed in vicarious pleasure at
another's profanity.

"I yield to you there, Mr. Koerner," said Ford in
his suave manner.  "But let us go on.  You say your
foot slipped?"

"Yah, dot's right."

"Slipped on the frozen snow?"

"Yah.  I bedt you shlip on such a place as dot."

"No doubt," said Ford, who suddenly ceased to
smile.  He now leaned forward; the faces of the two
protagonists seemed to be close together.

"And, as a result, your foot slid into the frog, and
was wedged there so that you could not get it out?"

"Yah."

"And the engine came along just then and ran over it?"

"Yah."

Ford suddenly sat upright, turned away, seemed to
have lost interest, and said:

"That's all, Mr. Koerner."

And the old man was left sitting there, suspended as
it were, his neck out-thrust, his white brows gathered
in a scowl, his small eyes blinking.

Sharlow looked at Marriott, then said, as if to hurry
Koerner off the stand:

"That's all, Mr. Koerner.  Call your next."

When all the testimony for the plaintiff had been
presented Ford moved to arrest the case from the jury;
that is, he wished Sharlow to give judgment in favor
of the railroad company without proceeding further.
In making this motion, Ford stood beside his table, one
hand resting on a pile of law-books he had had borne
into the court-room that afternoon by a young attorney
just admitted to the bar, who acted partly as clerk and
partly as porter for Ford, carrying his law-books for
him, finding his place in them, and, in general,
relieving Ford from all that manual effort which is thought
incompatible with professional dignity.  As he spoke,
Ford held in his hand the gold eye-glasses which
seemed to betray him into an age which he did not look
and did not like to admit.  Marriott had expected this
motion and listened attentively to what Ford said.  The
Koerners, who did not at all understand, waited
patiently.  Meanwhile, Sharlow excused the jury, sank
deeper in his chair and laid his forefinger learnedly
along his cheek.

Ford's motion was based on the contention that the
failure to block the frog--he spoke of this failure,
perfectly patent to every one, as an alleged failure, and
was careful to say that the defendant did not admit that
the frog had not been blocked--that the alleged failure
was not the proximate cause of Koerner's injury, but
that the real cause was the ice about the frog on which
Koerner, according to his own admission, had slipped.
The unblocked frog, he said--admitting merely for the
sake of argument that the frog was unblocked--was
the remote cause, the ice was the proximate cause; the
question then was, which of these had caused Koerner's
injury?  It was necessary that the injury be the effect
of a cause which in law-books was referred to as a
proximate cause; if it was not referred to as a
proximate cause, but as a remote cause, then Koerner could
not recover his damages.  After elaborating this view
and many times repeating the word "proximate," which
seemed to take on a more formidable and insuperable
sound each time he uttered it, Ford proceeded to
elucidate his thought further, and in doing this, he used a
term even more impressive than the word proximate;
he used the phrase, "act of God."  The ice, he said,
was an "act of God," and as the railroad company was
responsible, under the law, for its own acts only, it
followed that, as "an act of God" was not an act of the
railroad company, but an act of another, that is, of
God, the railroad company could not be held
accountable for the ice.

Having, as he said, indicated the outline of his
argument, Ford said that he would pass to a second
proposition; namely, that the motion must be granted for
another reason.  In stating this reason, Ford used the
phrases, "trespass" and "contributory negligence," and
these phrases had a sound even more ominous than the
phrases "proximate" and "act of God."  Ford declared
that the railroad yards were the property of the
railroad company, and therefore not a thoroughfare, and
that Koerner, in walking through them, was a
trespasser.  The fact that Koerner was in the employ of the
railroad, he said, did not give him the right to enter in
and upon the yards--he had the lawyer's reckless
extravagance in the use of prepositions, and whenever it
was possible used the word "said" in place of "the"--for
the reason that his employment did not necessarily
lead him to said yard and, more than all, when Koerner
completed his labors for the day, his right to remain in
and about said premises instantly ceased.  Therefore,
he contended, Koerner was a trespasser, and a
trespasser must suffer all the consequences of his trespass.
Then Ford began to use the phrase "contributory
negligence."  He said that Koerner had been negligent in
continuing in and upon said premises, and besides, had
not used due care in avoiding the ice and snow on and
about said frog; that he had the same means of
knowing that the ice was there that the railroad company
had, and hence had assumed whatever risk there was
in passing on and over said ice, and that then and
thereby he had been guilty of contributory negligence; that
is, had contributed, by his own negligence, to his own
injury.  In fact, it seemed from Ford's argument that
Koerner had really invited his injury and purposely
had the switch-engine cut off his leg.

"These, in brief, if the Court please," said Ford, who
had spoken for an hour, "are the propositions I wish to
place before your Honor."  Ford paused, drew from
his pocket a handkerchief, pressed it to his lips, passed
it lightly over his forehead, and laid it on the table.
Then he selected a law-book from the pile and opened
it at the page his clerk had marked with a slip of paper.
Sharlow, knowing what he had to expect, stirred
uneasily and glanced at the clock.

During Ford's argument Sharlow had been thinking
the matter over.  He knew, of course, that the same
combination of circumstances is never repeated, that
there could be no other case in the world just like this,
but that there were hundreds which resembled it, and
that Ford and Marriott would ransack the law libraries
to find these cases, explain them to him, differentiate
them, and show how they resembled or did not resemble
the case at bar.  And, further, he knew that before he
could decide the question Ford had raised he would
have to stop and think what the common law of
England had been on the subject, then whether that law
had been changed by statute, then whether the statute
had been changed, and, if it was still on the statute
books, whether it could be said to be contrary to the
Constitution of the United States or of the State.  Then
he would have to see what the courts had said about
the subject, and, if more than one court had spoken,
whether their opinions were in accord or at variance
with each other.  Besides this he would have to find
out what the courts of other states had said on similar
subjects and whether they had reversed themselves;
that is, said at one time something contrary to what
they had said at another.  If he could not reconcile
these decisions he would have to render a decision
himself, which he did not like to do, for there was always
the danger that some case among the thousands reported
had been overlooked by him, or by Ford or Marriott,
and that the courts which would review his decision,
in the years that would be devoted to the search, might
discover that other case and declare that he had not
decided the question properly.  And even if the courts
had decided this question, it might be discovered that
the question was not, after all, the exact question
involved in this case, or was not the exact question the
courts had meant to decide.  It would not do for
Sharlow to decide this case according to the simple rule of
right and wrong, which he could have found by looking
into his own heart; that would not be lawful; he
must decide it according to what had been said by
other judges, most of whom were dead.  Though if
Sharlow did decide, his decision would become law for
other judges to be guided by, until some judge in the
future gave a different opinion.

Considering all this, Sharlow determined to postpone
his decision as long as possible, and told Ford that he
would not then listen to his authorities, but would hear
what Marriott had to say.

And then Marriott spoke at length, opposing all that
Ford had said, saying that the unblocked frog must be
the proximate cause, for if it had been blocked, Koerner
could not have caught his foot in it and could have
got out of the way of the switch-engine.  Furthermore,
he declared that the yards had been used by the
employes as a thoroughfare so long that a custom had
been established; that the unblocked frog, according to
the statute, was *prima facie* negligence on the part of
the defendant.  And he said that if Ford was to
submit authorities, he would like an opportunity to submit
other authorities equally authoritative.  At this
Sharlow bowed, said he would adjourn court until two
o'clock in order to consider the question, recalled the
jury and cautioned them not to talk about the case.
This caution was entirely worthless, because they
talked of nothing else, either among themselves or with
others; being idle men, they had nothing else to talk
about.

Koerner had listened with amazement to Ford and
Marriott, wondering how long they could talk about
such incomprehensible subjects.  He had tried to follow
Ford's remarks and then had tried to follow Marriott's,
but he derived nothing from it all except further
suspicions of Marriott, who seemed to talk exactly
as Ford talked and to use the same words and phrases.
He felt, too, that Marriott should have spoken in louder
tones and more vehemently, and shown more antipathy
to Ford.  And when they went out of the court-house,
he asked Marriott what it all meant.  But Marriott,
who could not himself tell as yet what it meant, assured
Koerner that an important legal question had arisen
and that they must wait until it had been fully argued,
considered and decided by the court.  Koerner swung
away on his crutches, saying to himself that it was all
very strange; the switch-engine had cut off his leg,
against his will, no one could gainsay that, and the
only important question Koerner could see was how
much the law would make the railroad company pay
him for cutting off his leg.  It seemed silly to him that
so much time should be wasted over such matters.  But
then, as Marriott had said, it was impossible for
Koerner to understand legal questions.

By the time he opened court in the afternoon,
Sharlow had decided on a course of action, one that would
give him time to think over the question further.  He
announced that he would overrule the motion, but that
counsel for defense might raise the question again at
the close of the evidence, and, should a verdict result
unfavorably to him, on the motion for a new trial.

Ford took exceptions, and began his defense,
introducing several employes of the railroad to give
testimony about the ice at the frog.  When his evidence was
in, Ford moved again to take the case from the jury,
but Sharlow, having thought the matter over and
found it necessary for his peace of mind to reach some
conclusion, overruled the motion.

Then came the arguments, extending themselves into
the following day; then Sharlow must speak; he must
charge the jury.  The purpose of the charge was to
lay the law of the case before the jury, and for an
hour he went on, talking of "proximate cause," of
"contributory negligence," of "measure of damages," and
at last, the jury having been confused sufficiently to
meet all the requirements of the law, he told them they
might retire.

It was now noon, and the court was deserted by all
but Koerner and his wife, who sat there, side by side,
and waited.  It was too far for them to go home, and
they had no money with which to lunch down town.
The bright sun streamed through the windows with
the first promise of returning warmth.  Now and then
from the jury room the Koerners could hear voices
raised in argument; then the noise would die, and for
a long time it would be very still.  Occasionally they
would hear other sounds, the scraping of a chair on the
floor, once a noise as of some one pounding a table;
voices were raised again, then it grew still.  And
Koerner and his wife waited.

At half-past one the bailiff returned.

"Any sign?" he asked Koerner.

"Dey was some fightin'."

"They'll take their time," said the bailiff.

"Vot you t'ink?" Koerner ventured to ask.

"Oh, you'll win," said the bailiff.  But Koerner was
not so sure about that.

At two o'clock Sharlow returned and court began
again.  Another jury was called, another case opened,
Koerner gave place to another man who was to
exchange his present troubles for the more annoying ones
the law would give him; to experience Koerner's
perplexity, doubt, confusion, and hope changing constantly
to fear.  Other lawyers began other wrangles over
other questions of law.

At three o'clock there was a loud pounding on the
door of the jury room.  Every one in the court-room
turned with sudden expectation.  The bailiff drew out
his keys, unlocked the door, spoke to the men inside,
and then went to telephone to Marriott and Ford.
After a while Marriott appeared, but Ford had not
arrived.  Marriott went out himself and telephoned;
Ford had not returned from luncheon.  He telephoned
to Ford's home, then to his club.  Finally, at four
o'clock, Ford came.

After the verdict Marriott went to the Koerners and
whispered:

"We can go now."

The old man got up, his wife helped him into his
overcoat, and he swung out of the court-room on his
crutches.  He had tried to understand what the clerk
had read, but could not.  He thought he had lost his
case.

"Well, I congratulate you, Mr. Koerner," said
Marriott when they were in the corridor.

"How's dot?" asked the old man harshly.

"Why, you won."

"Me?"

"Yes; didn't you know?"

"I vin?"

"Certainly, you won.  You get eight thousand dollars."

The old man stopped and looked at Marriott.

"Eight t'ousandt?"

"Yes, eight thousand."

"I get eight t'ousandt, huh?"

"Yes."

A smile transfigured the heavy, bony face.

"Py Gott!" he said.  "Dot's goodt, hain't it?"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`2-XIX`:

.. class:: center large

   XIX

.. vspace:: 2

Late in April they argued the motion for a new trial,
and on the last day of the term Sharlow announced his
decision, overruling the motion, and entered judgment
in Koerner's favor.  Though Marriott knew that Ford
would carry the case up on error, he had, nevertheless,
won a victory, and he felt so confident and happy that
he decided to go to Koerner and tell him the good
news.  The sky had lost the pale shimmer of the early
spring and taken on a deeper tone.  The sun was warm,
and in the narrow plots between the wooden sidewalks
and the curb, the grass was green.  The trees wore a
gauze of yellowish green, the first glow of living color
they soon must show.  A robin sprang swiftly across a
lawn, stopping to swell his ruddy breast.  Marriott
made a short cut across a commons, beyond which the
spire of a Polish Catholic church rose into the sky.
The bare spots of the commons, warmed by the sun,
exhaled the strong odor of the earth, recalling
memories of other springs.  Some shaggy boys, truants,
doubtless, too wise to go to school on such a day, were
playing a game of base-ball, writhing and contorting
their little bodies, raging and screaming and swearing
at one another in innocent imitation of the profanity of
their fathers and elder brothers.

Koerner, supported by one crutch, was leaning over
his front gate.  He was recklessly bareheaded; his
white, disordered hair maintained its aspect of
fierceness, and, as Marriott drew near, he turned on him his
great, bony face, without a change of expression.

"Well, Mr. Koerner, this is a fine day, isn't it?" said
Marriott as he took the old man's hand.  "I guess the
spring's here at last."

Koerner took his constant pipe from his lips, raised
his eyes and made an observation of the heavens.

"Vell, dot veat'er's all right."  As he returned the
amber stem to his yellow teeth, Marriott saw that the
blackened bowl of the pipe was empty.  The old man
let Marriott in at his gate, then swinging about, went
to the stoop, lowered himself from his crutches and sat
down, with a grunt at the effort.

"Aren't you afraid for your rheumatism?" asked
Marriott, sitting down beside him.

"Vot's up now again, huh?" demanded Koerner,
ignoring this solicitude for his health.

"Nothing but good news this time," Marriott was
glad to say.

"Goodt news, huh?"

"Yes, good news.  The judge has refused the motion
for a new trial."

"Den I vin for sure dis time, ain't it?"

"Yes, this time," said Marriott.

"I get my money now right avay?"

"Well, pretty soon."

The old man turned to Marriott with his blue eyes
narrowed beneath the white brush of his eyebrows.

"Vot you mean by dot pretty soon?"

"Well, you see, Mr. Koerner, as I explained to
you,"--Marriott set himself to the task of explaining the
latest development in the case; he tried to present the
proceedings in the Appellate Court in their most
encouraging light, but he was conscious that Koerner
understood nothing save that there were to be more
delays.

"But we must be patient, Mr. Koerner," he said.  "It
will come out all right."

Koerner made no reply.  To Marriott his figure was
infinitely pathetic.  He looked at the great face, lined
and seamed; the eyes that saw nothing--not the little
yard before them where the turf was growing green,
not the blackened limbs of a little maple tree struggling
to put forth its leaves, not the warm mud glistening in
the sun, not the dirty street piled with ashes, not the
broken fence and sidewalk, the ugly little houses across
the street, nor the purple sky above them--they were
gazing beyond all this.  Marriott looked at the old
man's lips; they trembled, then they puckered themselves
about the stem of his pipe and puffed automatically.
Marriott, hanging his head, lighted a cigarette.

"Mis'er Marriott," Koerner began presently, "I been
an oldt man.  I been an hones' man; py Gott!  I vork
hardt efery day.  I haf blenty troubles.  I t'ink ven I
lose dot damned oldt leg, I t'ink, vell, maybe I get
some rest now bretty soon.  I say to dot oldt leg: 'You
bin achin' mit der rheumatiz all dose year, now you haf
to kvit, py Gott!'  I t'ink I get some rest, I get some
dose damages, den maybe I take der oldt voman undt
dose childer undt I go out to der oldt gountry; I go
back to Chairmany, undt I haf some peace dere.
Vell--dot's been a long time, Mis'er Marriott; dot law, he's
a damn humpug; he's bin fer der railroadt gompany;
he's not been fer der boor man.  Der boor man, he's
got no show.  Dot's been a long time.  Maybe, by undt
by I die--dot case, he's still go on, huh?"

The old man looked at Marriott quizzically.

"Vell, I gan't go out to der oldt gountry now any
more.  I haf more drouble--dot poy Archie--vell, he
bin in drouble too, and now my girl, dot Gusta--"

The old man's lips trembled.

"Vell, she's gone, too."

A tear was rolling down Koerner's cheek.  Marriott
could not answer him just then; he did not dare to
look; he could scarcely bear to think of this old man,
with his dream of going home to the Fatherland--and
all his disappointments.  Suddenly, the spring had
receded again; the air was chill, the sun lost its warmth,
the sky took on the pale, cold glitter of the days he
thought were gone.  He could hear Koerner's lips
puffing at his pipe.  Suddenly, a suspicion came to him.

"Mr. Koerner," he asked, "why aren't you smoking?"

The old man seemed ashamed.

"Tell me," Marriott demanded.

"Vell--dot's all right.  I hain't--chust got der tobacco."

The truth flashed on Marriott; this was deprivation--when
a man could not get tobacco!  He thought an
instant; then he drew out his case of cigarettes, took
them, broke their papers and seizing Koerner's hand said:

"Here, here's a pipeful, anyway; this'll do till I can
send you some."

And he poured the tobacco into Koerner's bare palm.
The old man took the tobacco, pressed it into the bowl
of his pipe, Marriott struck a match, Koerner lighted
his pipe, and sat a few moments in the comfort of
smoking again.

"Dot's bretty goodt," he said presently.  He smoked
on.  After a while he turned to Marriott with his old
shrewd, humorous glance, his blue eyes twinkled, his
white brows twitched.

"Vell, Mis'er Marriott, you nefer t'ought you see der
oldt man shmokin' cigarettes, huh?"

Marriott laughed, glad of the relief, and glad of the
new sense of comradeship the tobacco brought.

"Now tell me, Mr. Koerner," he said, "are you in
want--do you need anything?"

Koerner did not reply at once.

"Come on now," Marriott urged, "tell me--have you
anything to eat in the house?"

"Vell," Koerner admitted, "not much."

"Have you anything at all to eat?"

Koerner hung his head then, in the strange,
unaccountable shame people feel in poverty.

"Vell, I--undt der oldt voman--ve hafn't had
anyt'ing to eat to-day."

"And the children?"

"Ve gif dem der last dis morning alreadty."

Marriott closed his eyes in the pain of it.  He
reproached himself that he who argued so glibly that
people in general lack the cultured imagination that would
enable them to realize the plight of the submerged
poor, should have had this condition so long under his
very eyes and not have seen it.  He was humbled, and
then he was angry with himself--an anger he was
instantly able to change into an anger with Koerner.

"Well, Mr. Koerner," he said.  "I don't know that I
ought to sympathize with you, after all.  You might
have told me; you might have known I should be glad
to help you; you might have saved me--"

He was about to add "the pain," but he recognized
the selfishness of this view, and paused.

"I'll help you, of course," he went on.  "My God,
man, you mustn't go hungry!  Won't the grocer trust you?"

The old man was humbled now, and this humility,
this final acquiescence and submission, this rare spirit
beaten down and broken at last, this was hardest of all
to bear, unless it were his own self-consciousness in this
presence of humiliated age--these white hairs and he
himself so young!  He felt like turning from the
indignity of this poverty, as if he had been intruding on
another's unmerited shame.

"I'll go and attend to it," said Marriott, rising at once.

"No, you vait," said Koerner, "chust a minute.  You
know my boy, Mis'er Marriott, Archie?  Vell, I write
him aboudt der case, but I don't get a answer.  He used
to write eff'ry two veeks, undt now--he don't write no
more.  Vot you t'ink, huh?"  The old man looked up
at him in the hunger of soul that is even more dreadful
than the hunger of body.

"I'll attend to that, too, Mr. Koerner; I'll write down
and find out, and I'll let you know."

"Undt Gusta," the old man began as if, having
opened his heart at last, he would unburden it of all
its woes--but he paused and shook his head slowly.
"Dot's no use, I guess.  De veat'er's getting bedder
now, undt maybe I get out some; maybe I look her up
undt find her."

"You don't know where she is?"

The white head shook again.

"She's go avay--she's got in trouble, too."

In trouble!  It was all the same to him--poverty,
hunger, misfortune, guilt, frailty, false steps, crime,
sin--to these wise poor, thought Marriott, it was all just
"trouble."

"But it will be all right," he said, "and I'll advance
you what money you need.  I'll write to the warden
about Archie, we'll find Gusta, and we'll win the
case."  He thought again--the old man might as well have his
dream, too.  "You'll go back to Germany yet, you'll see."

Koerner looked up, clutching at hope again.

"You t'ink dot?  You t'ink I vin, huh?"

"Sure," said Marriott heartily, determined to drag
joy back into the world.

"Py Gott, dot's goodt!  I guess I beat dot gompany.
I vork for it dose t'irty-sefen year; den dey turn me
off.  Vell, I beat him, yet.  Chust let dot lawyer Ford
talk; let him talk his damned headt off.  I beat
him--some day."

"I'll go now, Mr. Koerner.  I'll speak to the grocer,
and I'll send you something so you can have a little
supper.  No, don't get up."

Koerner stretched forth his hand.

"You bin a goodt friendt, Mis'er Marriott."

Marriott went to the grocery on the corner.  The
grocer, a little man, very fat, ran about filling his
orders, sickening Marriott with his petty sycophancy.

"Some bacon?  Yes, sir.  Sugar, butter, bread?  Yes,
sir.  Coffee?  Here you are, sir.  Potatoes--about a
peck, sir?"

Marriott, with no notion of what he should buy,
bought everything, and added some tobacco for
Koerner and some candy for the children.  And when he
had arranged with the grocer for an extension of credit
to Koerner on his own promise to pay--a promise the
canny grocer had Marriott indorse on the card he gave
him--Marriott went away with some of the satisfaction
of his good deed; but the grace of spring had gone out
of the day and would not now return.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`2-XX`:

.. class:: center large

   XX

.. vspace:: 2

The reason why Archie had not answered his father's
letter was a simple one.  On that spring afternoon
while Koerner and Marriott were sitting on the stoop,
Archie, stripped to the waist, was hanging by his wrists
from the ceiling of a dungeon, called a bull cell, in the
cellar under the chapel, his bare feet just touching the
floor.  He had been hanging there for three days.  At
night he was let down and given a piece of bread and
a cup of water, and allowed to lie on the floor, still
handcuffed.  At morning guards came, raised Archie,
lifted him up, and chained his wrists to the bull rings.
Later, Deputy Warden Ball sauntered by with his cane
hooked over his arm, peered in through the bars,
smiled, and said, in his peculiar soft voice:

"Well, Archie, my boy, had enough?"

.. vspace:: 2

McBride, the contractor, who had picked Archie out
of the group of new convicts in the idle house the day
after he arrived at the prison, had set him to work in a
shop known as "Bolt B."  His work was to make iron
bolts, and all day long, from seven in the morning until
five in the afternoon, he stood with one foot on the
treadle, sticking little bits of iron into the maw of the
machine and snatching them out again.  At dinner-time
the convicts marched out of the shop, stood in
close-locked ranks until the whistle blew, and then
marched across the yard to the dining-room for their
sky-blue, their bread, their molasses and their boot-leg.
Archie had watched the seasons change in this yard,
he had seen its grass-plot fade and the leaves of its
stunted trees turn yellow, he had seen it piled with
snow and ice; now it was turning green with spring,
just like the world outside.  Sometimes, as they passed,
he caught a glimpse of the death-squad--the men who
were being kept until they could be killed in the electric
chair--taking their daily exercise, curiously enough,
for the benefit of their health.  This squad varied in
numbers.  Sometimes there were a dozen, then there
would come a night of horror when the floor of the
cell-house was deadened with saw-dust.  The next day
one would be missing; only eleven would be exercising
for their health.  Then would come other nights of
horror, and the squad would decrease until there were but
six.  But soon it would begin to increase again, and
the number would run up to the normal.  Sometimes,
in summer, the Sunday-school excursionists had an
opportunity to see the death-squad.  Archie had seen the
children, held by a sick, morbid interest, shrink when
the men marched by, as if they were something other
than mere people.

Each evening Archie and the other convicts marched
again to the dining-room, and ate bread and molasses;
then they sat in their cells for an hour while the
cell-house echoed with the twanging of guitars and banjos,
mouth-organs, jews'-harps, accordeons, and the
raucous voices of the peddlers--a hideous bedlam.  Those
who had hall-permits talked with one another, or with
friendly guards.  Sometimes, if the guard were
"right," he gave Archie a candle and permitted him to
read after the lights were out.

All week-days were alike.  On Sunday they went to
chapel and listened to the chaplain talk about Christ,
who, it was said, came to preach deliverance to the
captives.  The chaplain told the convicts they could save
their souls in the world to which they would go when
they died, if they believed on Christ.  Archie did not
understand what it was that he was expected to believe,
any more than he had when the sky-pilot at the works
had said very much the same thing.  It could not be that
they expected him to believe that Christ came to preach
deliverance to captives such as he.  So he paid no
attention to the sky-pilot.  He found it more interesting to
watch the death-squad, who, as likely to go to that
world before any of the others, were given seats in the
front pews.  Near the death-squad were several
convicts in chains.  They were considered to be extremely
bad and greatly in need of religion.  The authorities,
it seemed, were determined to give them this religion,
even if they had to hold them in chains while they did
so.  In the corners of the chapel, behind protecting iron
bars, were guards armed with rifles, who vigilantly
watched the convicts while the chaplain preached to
them the religion of the gentle Nazarene.  The chaplain
said it was the religion of the gentle Nazarene, but
in reality it was the religion of Moses, or sometimes
that of Paul, and even of later men that he preached to
the convicts rather than the religion of Jesus.  The
convicts did not know this, however.  Neither did the
chaplain.

Yes, the days were exactly alike, especially as to
the work, for Archie was required to turn out hundreds
of bolts a day; a minimum number was fixed, and this
was called a "task."  If he did not do this task, he was
punished.  It was difficult to perform this task; only by
toiling incessantly every minute could he succeed.  And
even then it was hard, for in addition to keeping his
eye on his machine, he had to keep his eye on the pile
of bolts beside him, for the other convicts would rat;
that is, steal from his pile in order to lessen their own
tasks.  For those bolts that were spoiled, Archie was
given no credit; every hour an inspector came around,
looked the bolts over and threw out those that were
defective.  For this toil, which was unpaid and in which
he took no pride and found no joy because it was ugly
and without any result to him, Archie felt nothing but
loathing.  This feeling was common among all the men
in the shop; they resorted to all sorts of devices to
escape it; some of them allowed the machines to snip
off the ends of their fingers so they could work no
more; others found a friend in Sweeny, the confidence
man who was serving a five-year sentence and was
detailed as a steward in the hospital.  When they were
in the hospital, Sweeny would burn the end of a finger
with acid, rub dirt on it, and when it festered, amputate
the finger.

Belden, who worked a machine next to Archie, did
that; but only as a last resort.

"It's no use for me to learn this trade," he said to
Archie one day when the guard was at the other end
of the shop.

"Why not?"

"'Cause I'll be on the street in two months; my
mouthpiece's going to take my case to the Supreme
Court, and he's sure to have it reversed.  All I got to
do's to raise a hundred and fifty case; I've written
my mother, and she's already saved up seventy-eight.
There's nothing to it.  Me learn to make these damned
bolts for McBride?  I guess not!"

Belden talked a great deal about his case in the
Supreme Court.  Many of the convicts did that.  They
did everything to raise money for their lawyers.  After
Belden's attorney had taken the case up, and failed,
Belden made application for pardon; and this required
more money.  His mother was saving up again.  But
this failed also; then Belden feigned sickness, was sent
to the hospital; and they all admired him for his success.

Archie was sick once, and after three sick calls--he
was, in reality, utterly miserable and suffered
greatly--the physician, who, like every one else in the
penitentiary, was controlled by the contractors, gave in and
sent him to the hospital.  Though the hospital was a
filthy place, Archie for two days enjoyed the rest he
found there.  Then Sweeny told him that the bed he
occupied had not been changed since a consumptive
had died in it the day before Archie arrived.

"You stick to that pad," said Sweeny, "and the
croakers'll be peddling your stiff in a month."

Sweeny was accounted very wise, as indeed he was;
for he held his position by reason of his discovery that
the doctor was supplying his brother, who kept a
drugstore outside, with medicines, silk bandages, plasters
and surgical instruments.

Archie recovered then and went back to Bolt B.

After his return things went better for a while,
because, to his surprise, the Kid, of whom he had heard
in the jail at home, was there working at the machine
next to his.  The Kid had been transferred to that
shop because he had utterly demoralized Bolt A, where
he had been working.  The little pickpocket, indeed,
had been tried on all kinds of work--in the broom
factory, in the cigar factory, in the foundry, everywhere,
but he could not long be tolerated anywhere.  His
presence was too diverting.  He was taken from the broom
shop because he amused himself at the expense of
a country boy sent up for grand larceny, whom, as the
country boy thought, he was teaching to be a prowler.
In the cigar shop he made another unsophisticated boy
think that he could teach him the secret of making
"cluck," or counterfeit money; and he went so far as to
give him a can of soft gray earth, which the convict
thought was crude silver, and some broken glass to
give the metal the proper ring.  The convict hid this
rubbish in his cell and jealously guarded it; he was
to be released in a month.  For a while the warden
employed the Kid about the office, but one day he said
to one of the trusties, an old life man who had been in
the prison twenty years, until his mind had weakened
under the confinement:

"What do you want to stay around here for?  Ain't
there other countries besides this?"

The old man sniggered in his silly way, then he went
to the warden, and hanging his head with a demented
leer said:

"Warden, the Kid said there's other countries
besides this."

He stood, swaying like a doltish school-boy from
side to side, grinning, with his tongue lolling over his
lips.

The warden summoned the Kid.

"What do you mean," he said, "putting notions in
old Farlow's head?"

The Kid was surprised.

"Oh, come off," said the warden impatiently.  "You
know--telling him there were other countries besides
this?"

"Oh!" said the Kid with sudden illumination.  "Oh,
now I know what you mean!"  And he laughed.  "He
asked me where I was from and I told him Canada.
Then he wanted to know if Canada was in this country,
and I told him there were other countries besides this."

"You're too smart, Willie," said the warden.  "You'd
better go back to the shops."

They tried all the punishments, the paddle, the battery,
the water-cure, the bull rings, but nothing availed
to break the Kid's spirit.  Then he was put on a bolt
machine.

There was a convict named Dalton working near
Archie and the Kid.  Dalton had but one thought left in
his mind, and this was that when he got out he would
go to where he had concealed a kit of burglar tools.  He
had been the victim of some earlier practical jokers in
the penitentiary, and had had a locksmith fashion for
him tools such as no burglar ever needed or used in a
business in which a jimmy, a piece of broom-stick and
creepers are all the paraphernalia necessary.  Dalton
still had fourteen years to serve.

"Well, Jack, how's everything this morning?" the
Kid would ask as soon as the guard went down to the
other end of the shop.

"Oh, all right," Dalton would reply.  Then he would
grow serious, grit his teeth, clench his fist for emphasis
and say: "Just wait till I get home!  By God, if any
one springs that kit of mine, I'll croak him!"

"Where's the plant?" the Kid would ask.  "In the jungle?"

"Oh, you'll never find out!" Dalton would reply warily.

"Some of the hoosiers or the bulls are likely to
spring it," the Kid would suggest.

The possibility tortured Dalton.

"By God," he could only say, "if they do--I'll croak 'em!"

"I wouldn't do that," said the Kid.  "Get Dutch
here to take you out with a tribe of peter men; he can
teach you to pour the soup.  Can't you get a little soup
and some strings and begin with him now, Archie?"

"Sure," said Archie, grinning, proud to be thus
recognized.

"That's the grift; we'll nick the screw; and when
you go home you'll be ready to--"

"No," said Dalton determinedly, "I've got them tools
planted--but--"

"Why don't you take him out with a swell mob of
guns?" suggested Archie.

"Think he could stall for the dip?" asked the Kid.
"What do you think, Jack?"

"I'll stick to prowlin'," said Dalton, shaking his head
and muttering to himself.

"He's stir simple," remarked the Kid, not without pity.

But the Kid was tired of his new occupation.

"I don't believe I'm a very good bolt-maker," he
said to Archie.

"You might cut off a finger, or get Sweeny--"

"Nix," said the Kid.  "Not for Willie.  I'll need my
finger.  I'd do a nice job of reefing a kick with a finger
gone, wouldn't I?"  He looked at his fingers, rapidly
stiffening under the rough, hard work.

"Didn't I tell you to stop that spieling?" demanded
a guard who had slipped up behind him.

The Kid gave the guard a look that expressed the
contempt he felt for him better than any words.

"I'll report you for insolence," said the guard angrily.

"For what?" said the Kid.

"Insolence."

"How could you?" asked the Kid calmly.  "You
couldn't spell the word."

The guard made a mark on his card.

"You'll be stood out for that," said the guard.  The
Kid's face darkened, but he controlled himself.  For
he had another plan.

A few days later he said to Archie:

"Are you on to that inspector?"

"What for?" asked Archie.

"He's boostin' bolts."

Archie thought of this for a long time.  It took
several days for him to realize a new idea.  The inspector,
in pretending to throw out defective bolts, threw out
quite as many perfect ones.  These were boxed, shipped
and sold by the contractor, who pocketed the entire
proceeds without reporting them to the authorities.
The Kid had discovered this system after a week of
experience in having his labor stolen from him, and
the inspector, more and more greedy, had grown
bolder, until now he was stealing large quantities of
bolts; and the tasks of Archie and the Kid were
becoming more and more impossible of performance.  The
Kid was silent for days; his brows contracted as he
jumped nimbly up and down before his clanking
machine.  Then one day when McBride was in the shop
the Kid obtained permission to speak to him.

"Mr. McBride," he said, "I want a thousand dollars."

McBride took his cigar from his lips, flecked some
dust from his new top-coat, and a laugh spread over
his rough red face.

"What's the kid this time, Willie?"

"This is on the square," said the Kid.  "I want a
thousand case, that's all."

McBride saw that he was serious for once.

"I'll blow it off, if you don't," said the Kid.

"Blow what off?"

"The graft."

"What graft?"

"The defectives--oh, you know!"

McBride turned ashen, then his face blazed suddenly
with rage.

"I'll report you for this insolence!"

"All right," said the Kid, "I'll report you for
stealing.  It ain't moral, the sky-pilot says."

Archie saw the Kid no more after that evening; he
was "stood out" at roll-call; and in the way the news
of the little insular world inclosed in the prison walls
spreads among its inmates, he heard that the Kid had
been given the paddle and had been hung up in the
cellar.  When his punishment was ended, he was
transferred to the shoe shop and set to work making paper
soles for shoes.  But he did not work long.  He soon
conceived a plan which for two years was to baffle all
the prison authorities, especially the physicians.  He
developed a disease of the nerves; he said it was the
result of running a bolt machine and of his subsequent
punishment.  The theory he imparted to the doctors,
in his innocent manner, was that the blows of the
paddle with the hanging had bruised and stretched his
spine.

The symptoms of the Kid's strange affliction were
these: he could not stand still for an instant; his nerves
seemed entirely demoralized, his muscles beyond
control.  He would stand before the doctors and twitch
and spasmodically shuffle his feet for hours, while the
doctors, those on the prison staff and those from
outside, held consultations.  Opinions differed widely.
Some said that the Kid was malingering, others that
his spine was really affected.  Day after day the
doctors examined him; they tested the accommodation of
the pupils of the eyes, they had him walk blindfolded,
they tested his extremities with heat and cold, with
needles, and with electricity.  Then they seated him,
had him cross his legs and struck him below the
knee-cap, testing his reflex action.  Strangely enough, his
reflexes were defective.

"Bum gimp, eh, Doc?" he would say mournfully.

For a while, after the Kid had gone, Archie found
it easier to accomplish his daily task, for the reason
that the inspector did not throw out so many defective
bolts.  But McGlynn, the guard on Archie's contract,
disliked him and was ever ready to report him, and
Archie, while he did not at all realize it and could not
analyze it, developed the feeling within him that the
system which the people, and the legislature, and the
committee on penal and reformatory institutions, and
the state board of charities had devised and were so
proud of, was not a system at all, for the simple
reason that it depended solely on men and had nothing
else to depend on.  And just as the judge, the
jury-men, the prosecutor and the policemen were swayed by
a thousand whims and prejudices and moved by
countless influences of which they were unconscious, so
the guards who held power over him were similarly
swayed.  For each demerit he lost standing, and
demerits depended not on his conduct, but on the
feelings of the guards.  McGlynn disliked Archie because
he was German.  He gave him demerits for all sorts
of things, and it was not long before Archie realized
that he had already lost all his good time and would
have to serve out the whole year.  And then the
inspector grew reckless and bold.  McBride was greedy
for profits, and in a few weeks the bolts under Archie's
machine were again disappearing as rapidly as ever,
and his task was wholly beyond him.  And then a dull,
sullen stubbornness seized him, and one morning, in a
fit of black rage, seeing the inspector throw out a dozen
perfect bolts, he stopped work.  The inspector looked
up, then signaled the guard.  McGlynn came.

"Get to work, you!" he said in a rage.

Archie looked at him sullenly.

"You hear?" yelled McGlynn, raising his voice
above the din of the machines.

Archie did not move.

McGlynn took a step toward him, but when he saw
the look in Archie's eyes, he paused.

"Stand out, you toaster," he said.

.. vspace:: 2

The next morning at seven o'clock Archie stood,
with forty other convicts who had broken rules or were
accused of breaking rules, in the prison court.  This
court was held every morning in the basement of the
chapel to try infractions of the prison discipline.  This
basement of the chapel was known about the penitentiary
as "the cellar," and as the word was spoken it
took on indeed a dark and sinister, one might almost
say a subterranean significance.  For in the cellar were
the solitary, the bull rings, the ducking tub, the
paddle,--all the instruments of torture.  And in the cellar,
too, was the court.  Externally, it might have reminded
Archie somewhat of the police court at home, as it
reminded other convicts of other police courts.  It was
a small room made of wooden partitions, and in it,
behind a rail, was a platform for the deputy warden.  It
may have reminded the convicts, too, of other courts
in its pitiable line of accused, in its still more pitiable
line of accusers.  For there were guards grinning in
petty triumph, awaiting the revenge they could
vicariously and safely enjoy for the infractions which never
could seem to their primitive, brutal minds other than
personal slights and affronts.

This strange and amazing court, based on no law and
owning no law, this court from which there was no
appeal, whose judgments could not be reviewed, this
court which could not err, was presided over by Deputy
Warden Ball.  He lay now loosely in his chair behind
the railing, his long legs stretched before him, the
soles of his big shoes protruding, his long arms
hanging by his sides, rolling a cigar round and round
between his long teeth blackened by nicotine.  He lay
there as if he had fallen apart, as if the various pieces
of him, his feet and legs, his arms and hands, would
have to be assembled before he could move again.  But
this impression of incoherence was wholly denied by
his face.  The lines about his mouth were those of a
permanent smile that never knew humor; the eyes at
the top of his long nose were small and glistened
coldly, piercing through the broken, dry skin of his cheeks
and eyelids like the points of daggers through leather
scabbards.  Such was the deputy warden, the real
executive of the prison, the judge who could pronounce
any sentence he might desire, decreeing medieval
tortures and slow deaths, dooming bodies to pain, and the
remnants of souls to hell, and, when he willed,
inventing new tortures.  Ball was at once the product and
the unconscious victim of the system in which he was
the most invaluable and indispensable factor.  He had
been deputy in the prison for twenty years, and he
stood far above the mutations of politics.  He might
have been said to live in the protection of a civil
service law of his own enactment.  He ruled, indeed, by
laws that were of his own enactment, and he enacted
or repealed them as occasion or his mood suggested.
He ruled this prison, whether on the bench in the
court or scuffing loose-jointedly about the yard, the
shops, or the cell-houses, with his cane dangling from
the crotch of his elbow, speaking in a low, soft, almost
caressing voice, the secret, perhaps, of his power.  For
his slow and passive demeanor and his slow, soft voice
seemed to visiting boards, committees and officials all
kindness; and he used it with the convicts, sometimes
drawing them close to him, and laying his great hand
on their shoulders or their heads, and speaking in a
low tone of pained surprise and gentle reproach, just
as he was speaking now to a white-haired and aged
burglar, wearing the dirty stripes of the fourth grade.

"Why, Dan, what's this I hear?  I didn't think it of
you, old chap, no I didn't.  A little of the solitary, eh?
What say?  All right--if it must be."

It took Ball half an hour to doom the men this
morning, and even at the last, when Archie went forward,
when Ball had glanced at the card whereon McGlynn's
report was written in his illiterate hand, he said:

"Ah, the Dutchman!  Well, Archie, this is very
bad.  Down to the fourth grade, bread and water
to-day,--and to-morrow back to work, my lad.  Mind now!"

Archie changed his gray suit for the reddish brown
and white stripes, he ate his bread and drank his
water, and he went back to the bolt-shop.  But he did
not work.  He would not answer McGlynn when he
spoke to him.  He set his jaw and was silent.

"What, again!" said Ball the next day.  "Well, well,
well!  If you insist; give him the paddle, Jim."

When court had adjourned, they took Archie into
a small room near by.  Across one end of this room
was a huge bath-tub of wood; this, and all the utensils
of torture, which in a kind of fiendish ingenuity of
economy were concentrated in it, were water-worn and
white.  On the floor at the base of the tub were iron
stocks.  In these, when he had been stripped naked,
perhaps for additional shame, Archie's ankles were
clamped.  Then he was forced to bend forward, over
the bath-tub, and was held there by guards while Ball
stood by smoking.  A burly negro, Jim, a convict with
privileges--this privilege among others--beat him on
the bare skin with a paddle of ashwood that had been
soaked in hot water and dipped in white sand.

But Archie would not work.

The next morning Ball patted him on the head, and said:

"My dear boy!  You are certainly foolish.  He
wants the water, Jim."

Again they stripped him and forced him into the
bath-tub.  This tub had many and various devices,
among them a block of wood, hollowed out on one
side to fit a man's chest if he sat in the tub, and as it
could be moved back and forth in grooves along the
top of the tub and fastened wherever need be, it could
be made to fit any man and hold him in its vise
against the end of the tub, in which quality of adjusting
itself to the size of its victim it differed from the
bed of Procrustes.  And now they handcuffed Archie,
fastened him in the tub, pressed the block against his
broad, white, muscular chest, and while Ball and the
guards stood by, the negro with the privileges,
arrayed now in rubber coat and boots, turned a fierce
slender stream of water from a short rubber hose in
Archie's face.  Archie gasped, his mouth opened, and
deftly the negro turned the fierce gushing stream into
his mouth, where it hissed and foamed and gurgled,
filling his throat and lungs, streaming down over his
chin and breast.  Archie's lips turned blue; soon his
face was blue.

"I guess that'll do, Jim," said Ball.

When Archie regained consciousness they sent him
back to the bolt-shop.

But he would not work.

The next morning Ball showed again that tenderness
that appealed so strongly to the humane gentlemen
on the Prison Board.

"Why, Archie!" he said.  "Why, Archie!"  Then he
paused, rolled his cigar about and said: "String him
up, boys, until he's ready to go back to work."

After the guards had fastened his hands above his
head in the bull rings, closed and locked the door of
the cell and left him, Archie's first thought was of
Curly, who had gone through this same ordeal in
another prison, and Archie found a compensation in
thinking that he would have an experience to match
Curly's when next they met and sat around the fire in
the sand-house or the fire in the edge of the woods.
And then his thoughts ran back to the day when Curly
had first told him of the bull rings; and he could see
Curly as he told it--his eyes glazing, his face growing
gray and ugly, his teeth clenching.

Archie remembered more; somehow, vividly, he saw
Curly tying a rope to the running board on top of the
freight-car, dangling it over the side and then letting
himself down on it until he hung before the car door,
the seal of which he quickly broke and unlocked; and
the train running thirty miles an hour!  No one else
could "bust tags" this way; no one else had the nerve
of Curly.

At first Archie found relief in changing his position.
By raising himself on tiptoe he could ease the strain
on his wrists; by hanging his weight from his wrists
he could ease the strain on his feet.  He did this many
times; but he found no rest in either position.  The
handcuffs grew tight; they cut into his wrists like
knives.  His hands were beginning to go to sleep;
they tingled, the darting needles stung and pricked and
danced about.  Then his hands seemed to have
enlarged to a preposterous size, and they were icy cold.
Presently he was filled with terror; he lost all sense of
feeling in his arms.  Rubbing his head against them,
he found them cold; they were no longer his arms, but
the arms of some one else.  They felt like the arms of
a corpse.  An awful terror laid hold of him.  In his
insteps there was a mighty pain; his biceps ached; his
neck ached, ached, ached to the bones of it; his back
was breaking.  The pain spread through his whole
body, maddening him.  With a great effort he tore
and tugged and writhed, lifting one foot, then the
other, then stamped.  At last he hung there numb,
limp, inert.  In the cell it was dark and still.  No
sound could reach him from the outer world.

Some time--it was evening, presumably, for time
was not in that cell--they came and let him down.  A
guard gave him a cup of water.  He held forth his
hand, groping after it; and he could not tell when his
hand touched it.  The cup fell, jangled against his
handcuffs; the water was spilled, the tin cup rolled and
rattled over the cement floor.  And Archie wept, wild
with disappointment.  The guard, who was merciful,
brought another cup and held it to Archie's lips, and
he drank it eagerly, the water bubbling at his lips as it
had once, years ago, when he was a baby and his
mother held water to his lips to drink.

Presently Ball came and stood looking at him
through the little grated wicket in the door.

"Well, Archie, how goes it?" he said.  "Had
enough?  Ready to go back to work?"

Archie looked at him a moment.  His eyeballs, still
protruding from the effects of the ducking-tub,
gleamed in the light of the guard lantern.  He looked
at Ball, finally realized, and began to curse.  At last
he managed to say:

"I'll croak you for this."

Ball laughed.

"Well, good night, my lad," he said.

Archie lay on a plank, the handcuffs still on him,
all the night.  In the morning they hung him up again.

.. vspace:: 2

The next day, and the next, and the next,--for seven
days,--Archie hung in the bull rings.  In the middle
of the eighth day, after his head had been rolling and
lolling about on his shoulders between his cold,
swollen, naked arms, he suddenly became frantic, put forth
a mighty effort, lifted himself, and began to bite his
hands and his wrists, gnashing his teeth on the steel
handcuffs, yammering like a maniac.

.. vspace:: 2

That evening, the evening of the eighth day, when
the guard came and flashed his lamp on him, Archie's
body was hanging there, still, his chin on his breast.
Down his arms the blood was trickling from the
wounds he had made with his teeth.  The guard set
down his lantern, ran down the corridor, returned
presently with Ball, and Jeffries, the doctor.

They lowered his body.  The doctor bent his head
to the white breast and listened.

"Take him to the hospital," he said.  "I guess he's
had about all he can stand."

"God, he had nerve!" said Ball, looking at the body.
"He wouldn't give in."

He shambled away, his head bent.  He was perplexed.
He had not failed since--when was it?--since
number 13993 had--died of heart failure, in the
hospital, five years before.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`2-XXI`:

.. class:: center large

   XXI

.. vspace:: 2

It was at Bradford Ford's that night of the wedding
that Eades made his proposal of marriage to Elizabeth
Ward.  It was June, court had adjourned, his work
was done, the time seemed to him auspicious; he had
thought it all out, arranged the details in his mind.
The great country house, open to the summer night,
was thronged, the occasion, just as the newspapers had
predicted in their hackneyed phrase, was a brilliant
one, as befitted the marriage of Ford's youngest
daughter, Hazel, to Mr. Henry Wilmington Dodge, of
Philadelphia.  Eades moved about, greeting his friends,
smiling automatically, but his eyes were discreetly
seeking their one object.  At last he had a glimpse of
her, through smilax and ribbons; it was during the
ceremony; she was in white, and her lips were drawn
as she repressed the emotions weddings inspire in
women.  He waited, in what patience he could, until
the service was pronounced; then he must take his
place in the line that moved through the crowd like a
current through the sea; the bestowal of the felicitations
took a long time.  Then the supper; Elizabeth
was at the bride's table, and still he must wait.  He
went up-stairs finally, and there he encountered Ford
alone in a room where, in some desolate sense of
neglect, he had retired to hide the sorrow he felt at this
parting with his child, and to combat the annoying
feeling the wedding had thrust on him--the feeling
that he was growing old.  Ford sat by an open
window, gazing out into the moonlight that lay on the
river by which he had built his colossal house.  He was
smoking, in the habit which neither age nor sorrow
could break.

"Come in, come in," said Ford.  "I'm glad to see
you.  I want some one to talk to.  Have a cigar."

But Eades declined, and Ford glanced at him in the
suspicion which was part of the bereaved and jealous
feeling that was poisoning this evening of happiness
for him.  He knew that Eades smoked, and he
wondered why he now refused.  "He declines because I'm
getting old; he wishes to shun my society; he feels
that if he accepts the cigar, he will have to stay long
enough to smoke it.  It will be that way now.  Yes,
I'm getting old.  I'm out of it."  So ran Ford's
thoughts.

Eades had gone to the window and stood looking
out across the dark trees to the river, swimming in the
moonlight.  Below him were the pretty lights of
Japanese lanterns, beyond, at the road, the two lamps on
the gate-posts.  The odors of the June night came to
him and, from below, the laughter of the wedding-guests
and the strains of an orchestra.

"What a beautiful place you have here, Mr. Ford!"
Eades exclaimed.

"Well, it'll do for an old--for a man to spend his
declining years."

"Yes, indeed," mused Eades.

Ford winced at this immediate acquiescence.

"And what a night!" Eades went on, "Ideal for a
wedding."

Ford looked at him a moment, then decided to
change the subject.

"Well, I see you struck pay-dirt in the grand jury,"
he said.

"Yes," replied Eades, turning away from night and
nature when such subjects were introduced.

"You're doing a good work there," said Ford; "a
good work for law and order."

He used the stereotyped phrase in the old belief that
"law" and "order" are synonyms, though he was not
thinking of law or of order just then; he was thinking
of the radiant girl in the drawing-room below.

Eades turned to the window again.  The night
attracted him.  He did not care to talk.  He, too, was
thinking of a girl in the drawing-room below;
thinking how she had looked in that moment during the
ceremony when he had had the glimpse of her.  He
must go at once and find her.  He succeeded presently
in getting away from Ford, and left in a manner that
deepened Ford's conviction that he was out of it.

He met her at the foot of the staircase, and they went
out of doors.

"Oh," exclaimed Elizabeth, "how delicious it is out
here!"

In silence they descended the wide steps from the
veranda and went down the walk.  The sky was purple,
the stars trembled in it, and the moon filled all the
heavens with a light that fell to the river, flowing
silently below them.  They went on to the narrow strip
of sward that sloped to the water.  On the dim farther
shore they could see the light in some farm-house; far
down the river was the city, a blur of light.

"What a beautiful place the Fords have here!" said
Eades.

"Yes," said Elizabeth, "it's ideal."

"It's my ideal of a home," said Eades, and then after
a silence he went on.  "I've been thinking a good deal
of home lately."

He glanced at the girl; she had become still almost
to rigidity.

"I am so glad our people are beginning to appreciate
our beautiful river," she said, and her voice had a
peculiar note of haste and fear in it.  "I'm so glad.
People travel to other lands and rave over scenery, when
they have this right at home."  She waved her hand
in a little gesture to include the river and its dark
shores.  She realized that she was speaking unnaturally,
as she always did with him.  The realization irritated
her.  "The Country Club is just above us, isn't
it?" she hurriedly continued, consciously struggling to
appear unconscious.  "Have you--"

He interrupted her.  "I've been thinking of you a
good deal lately," he said.  His voice had mastery in
it.  "A good deal," he repeated, "for more than a year
now.  But I've waited until I had something to offer
you, some achievement, however small, and now--I
begin to feel that I need help and--sympathy in the
work that is laid on me.  Elizabeth--"

"Don't," she said, "please don't."  She had turned
from him now and taken a step backward.

"Just a minute, Elizabeth," he insisted.  "I have
waited to tell you--that I love you, to ask you to be my
wife.  I have loved you a long, long time.  Don't deny
me now--don't decide until you can think--I can wait.
Will you think it over?  Will you consider
it--carefully--will you?"

He tried to look into her face, which she had turned
away.  Her hands were clasped before her, her fingers
interlocked tightly.  He heard her sigh.  Then with
an effort she looked up at him.

"No," she began, "I can not; I--"

He stopped her.

"Don't say no," he said.  "You have not considered,
I am sure.  Won't you at least think before deciding
definitely?"

She had found more than the usual difficulty there
is in saying no to anything, or to any one; now she
had strength only to shake her head.

"You must not decide hastily," he insisted.

"We must go in."  She turned back toward the house.

"I can wait to know," Eades assured her.

They retraced their steps silently.  As they went up
the walk she said:

"Of course, I am not insensible of the honor, Mr. Eades."

The phrase instantly seemed inadequate, even silly,
to her.  Why was it she never could be at ease with
him?

"Don't decide, I beg," he said, "until you have
considered the matter carefully.  Promise me."

"You must leave me now," she said.

He bowed and stood looking after her as she went
up the steps and ran across the veranda in her
eagerness to lose herself in the throng within the house.
And Eades remained outside, walking under the trees.

Half an hour later Elizabeth stood with Marriott in
the drawing-room.  Her face was pale; the joy, the
spirit that had been in it earlier in the evening had
gone from it.

"Ah," said Marriott suddenly, "there goes John
Eades.  I hadn't seen him before."

Elizabeth glanced hurriedly at Eades and then
curiously at Marriott.  His face wore the peculiar smile
she had seen so often.  Now it seemed remote, to
belong to other days, days that she had lost.

"He's making a great name for himself just now,"
said Marriott.  "He's bound to win.  He'll go to
Congress, or be elected governor or something, sure."

She longed for his opinion and yet just then she felt
it impossible to ask it.

"He's a--"

"What?"  She could not forbear to ask, but she put
the question with a little note of challenge that made
Marriott turn his head.

"One of those young civilians."

"One of what young civilians?"

"That Emerson writes about."

"He's not so very young, is he?"  Elizabeth tried to
smile.

"The young civilians are often very old; I have
known them to be octogenarians."

He looked at her and was suddenly struck by her
pallor and the drawn expression about her eyes.  She
had met his gaze, and he realized instantly that he had
made some mistake.  They were standing there in the
drawing-room, the canvas-covered floor was littered
with rose-leaves.  It was the moment when the guests
had begun to feel the first traces of weariness, when
the laughter had begun to lose its spirit and the talk its
spontaneity, when the older people were beginning to
say good night, leaving the younger behind to shower
the bride and groom with rice and confetti.  Perplexed,
excited, self-conscious after Eades's declaration, feeling
a little fear and some secret pride, suddenly Elizabeth
saw the old, good-humored, friendly expression fade
from Marriott's eyes, and there came a new look, one
she had never seen before, an expression of sudden,
illuminative intelligence, followed by a shade of pain
and regret, perhaps a little reproach.

"Where does Emerson say--that?" she asked.

"You look it up and see," he said presently.

She looked at him steadily, though it was with a
great effort, tried to smile, and the smile made her
utterly sick at heart.

"I--must look up father," she said, "it's time--"

She left him abruptly, and he stood there, the smile
gone from his face, his hands plunged deep in his
pockets.  A moment he bit his lips, then he turned and
dashed up the stairs.

"I'm a fool," he said to himself.

Elizabeth had thought of love, she had imagined its
coming to her in some poetic way, but this--somehow,
this was not poetic.  She recalled distinctly every word
Eades had spoken, but even more vividly she recalled
Marriott's glance.  It meant that he thought she loved
Eades!  It had all become irrevocable in a moment;
she could not, of course, undertake to explain; it was
all ridiculous, too ridiculous for anything but tears.

Looking back on her intimacy with Marriott, she
realized now that what she would miss most was the
good fellowship there had been between them.  With
him, though without realizing it at the time, she had
found expression easy, her thoughts had been clear,
she could find words for them which he could
understand and appreciate.  Whenever she came across
anything in a book or in a poem or in a situation there was
always the satisfying sense that she could share it with
Marriott; he would apprehend instantly.  There was
no one else who could do this; with her mother, with
her father, with Dick, no such thing was possible;
with them she spoke a different language, lived in
another world.  And so it was with her friends; she
moved as an alien being in the conventional circle of
that existence to which she had been born.  One by
one, her friends had ceased to be friends, they had
begun to shrink away, not consciously, perhaps, but
certainly, into the limbo of mere acquaintance.  She
thought of all this as she rode home that night, and
after she had got home; and when it all seemed clear,
she shrank from the clarity; she would not, after all,
have it too clear; she must not push to any conclusion
all these thoughts about Gordon Marriott.  She chose
to decide that he had been stupid, and his stupidity
offended her; it was not pleasant to have him sneer at a
man who had just told her he loved her, no matter who
the man was, and she felt, with an inconsistency that
she clung to out of a sense of self-preservation, that
Marriott should have known this; he might have let
her enjoy her triumph for a little, and then--but this
was dangerous; was he to conclude that she loved him?

What was it, she wondered, that made her weak and
impotent in the presence of Eades?  She did not like
to own a fear of him, yet she felt a fear; would she
some day succumb?  The fear crept on her and
distressed her; she knew very well that he would pursue
her, never waver or give up or lose sight of his
purpose.  In some way he typified for her all that was
fixed, impersonal, irrefragable--society on its solid
rocks.  He had no doubts about anything, his opinions
were all made, tested, tried and proved.  Any
uncertainty, any fluidity, any inconsistency was impossible.
And she felt more and more inadequate herself; she
felt that she had nothing to oppose to all this.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`BOOK III`:
.. _`3-1`:

.. class:: center large

   BOOK III

.. vspace:: 3

.. class:: center large

   I

.. vspace:: 2

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.

.. vspace:: 2

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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`3-II`:

.. class:: center large

   II

.. vspace:: 2

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 portières 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 portières 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."

.. vspace:: 2

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 Café"--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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`3-III`:

.. class:: center large

   III

.. vspace:: 2

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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`3-IV`:

.. class:: center large

   IV

.. vspace:: 2

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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`3-V`:

.. class:: center large

   V

.. vspace:: 2

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.

.. vspace:: 2

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.

.. _`Archie looked about with a white, defiant face`:

.. figure:: images/img-384.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: Archie looked about with a white, defiant face

   Archie looked about with a white, defiant face

"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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`3-VI`:

.. class:: center large

   VI

.. vspace:: 2

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--





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`3-VII`:

.. class:: center large

   VII

.. vspace:: 2

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."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`3-VIII`:

.. class:: center large

   VIII

.. vspace:: 2

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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`3-IX`:

.. class:: center large

   IX

.. vspace:: 2

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.





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   X

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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."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`3-XI`:

.. class:: center large

   XI

.. vspace:: 2

"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."

.. _`"She's sat that way ever since she came"`:

.. figure:: images/img-432.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "She's sat that way ever since she came"

   "She's sat that way ever since she came"

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 antennæ, 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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`3-XII`:

.. class:: center large

   XII

.. vspace:: 2

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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`3-XIII`:

.. class:: center large

   XIII

.. vspace:: 2

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."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`3-XIV`:

.. class:: center large

   XIV

.. vspace:: 2

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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`3-XV`:

.. class:: center large

   XV

.. vspace:: 2

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 dénouement 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."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`3-XVI`:

.. class:: center large

   XVI

.. vspace:: 2

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, attachés, 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 attachés 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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`3-XVII`:

.. class:: center large

   XVII

.. vspace:: 2

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?"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`3-XVIII`:

.. class:: center large

   XVIII

.. vspace:: 2

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 attachés 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."

.. vspace:: 2

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.

.. vspace:: 2

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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`3-XIX`:

.. class:: center large

   XIX

.. vspace:: 2

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.

.. vspace:: 2

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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`3-XX`:

.. class:: center large

   XX

.. vspace:: 2

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 attachés, 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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`3-XXI`:

.. class:: center large

   XXI

.. vspace:: 2

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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`3-XXII`:

.. class:: center large

   XXII

.. vspace:: 2

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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`3-XXIII`:

.. class:: center large

   XXIII

.. vspace:: 2

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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`3-XXIV`:

.. class:: center large

   XXIV

.. vspace:: 2

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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`3-XXV`:

.. class:: center large

   XXV

.. vspace:: 2

"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-à-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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`3-XXVI`:

.. class:: center large

   XXVI

.. vspace:: 2

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,

.. _`"I want you to let my brother go," she said`:

.. figure:: images/img-550.jpg
   :align: center
   :alt: "I want you to let my brother go," she said

   "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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`3-XXVII`:

.. class:: center large

   XXVII

.. vspace:: 2

Elizabeth let the note fall in her lap.  A new
happiness suddenly enveloped her.  She felt the relief of an
escape.  The note ran:

.. vspace:: 2

.. class:: noindent

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

.. vspace:: 1

.. class:: noindent white-space-pre-line

Your sincere
    JOHN EADES.

.. vspace:: 2

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!

.. vspace:: 2

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!"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`3-XXVIII`:

.. class:: center large

   XXVIII

.. vspace:: 2

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:

.. vspace:: 2

"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."

.. vspace:: 2

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.'"





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`3-XXIX`:

.. class:: center large

   XXIX

.. vspace:: 2

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.

.. vspace:: 2

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."





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`3-XXX`:

.. class:: center large

   XXX

.. vspace:: 2

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.

.. vspace:: 2

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.

.. vspace:: 2

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.

.. vspace:: 2

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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`3-XXXI`:

.. class:: center large

   XXXI

.. vspace:: 2

"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.

.. vspace:: 2

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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`3-XXXII`:

.. class:: center large

   XXXII

.. vspace:: 2

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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`3-XXXIII`:

.. class:: center large

   XXXIII

.. vspace:: 2

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.

.. vspace:: 2

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.





.. vspace:: 4

.. _`3-XXXIV`:

.. class:: center large

   XXXIV

.. vspace:: 2

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 reënacted 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.

.. vspace:: 2

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!"

.. vspace:: 2

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.

.. vspace:: 4

.. class:: center medium

   THE END

.. vspace:: 6

.. pgfooter::