Produced by Al Haines.




[Illustration: Cover]




[Illustration: Gordon Marriott  Page 38]




                        THE TURN OF THE BALANCE


                                   By

                             BRAND WHITLOCK



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



                         With Illustrations by
                              JAY HAMBIDGE



                              INDIANAPOLIS
                       THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
                               PUBLISHERS




                             COPYRIGHT 1907
                       THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY

                                 MARCH




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




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.

_From_ "A BOY’S TOWN"
       _By_ WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS




                        THE TURN OF THE BALANCE



                                 BOOK I



                        THE TURN OF THE BALANCE


                                   I


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!"


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.




                                   II


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.




                                  III


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.




                                   IV


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.

[Illustration: Elizabeth]




                                   V


"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."




                                   VI


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.




                                  VII


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.




                                  VIII


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!"




                                   IX


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.




                                   X


"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."




                                   XI


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.




                                  XII


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.

[Illustration: 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!"




                                  XIII


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.




                                  XIV


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.




                                   XV


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.




                                  XVI


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."




                                  XVII


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.




                                 XVIII


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!"




                                  XIX


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.




                                BOOK II



                                   I


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.




                                   II


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.




                                  III


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.




                                   IV


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:


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.

Yours in durance vile,
       SLIM.


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.




                                   V


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.

[Illustration: 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!"




                                   VI


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.




                                  VII


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.




                                  VIII


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.




                                   IX


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.




                                   X


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.




                                   XI


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.




                                  XII


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?




                                  XIII


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.




                                  XIV


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.




                                   XV


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.




                                  XVI


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.




                                  XVII


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.




                                 XVIII


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?"




                                  XIX


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.




                                   XX


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?"


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.


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.


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.


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.




                                  XXI


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.




                                BOOK III



                                   I


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

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

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

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

The knocking was repeated.

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

The knocking sounded again, louder, more insistent.

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

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


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

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




                                   II


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

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

"Where’s Dan?" asked Archie.

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

"He’s not here."

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

The bartender looked at him blankly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Elbow, eh?" said Archie.

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

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

"Oh, yes."

"Flyin’?"

"Yep."

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

"Tell Dan I was here."

"Who shall I say?" inquired the bartender.

"Dutch."

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

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

"Hello, Archie!  Back again?"

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

"Hold on a minute," he said.

"What’s the rap?" asked Archie.

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

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

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

"Mr. Marriott," said Archie.

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

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

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

"Yes, sir."

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

"I understand, sir."

"All right," said Bostwick.

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

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

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

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

The place wore its morning quiet.  The young bartender, with a stupid,
pimpled face, was moping sleepily at the end of the bar; at Archie’s
step, he looked up.  The step was heard also in the "parlor" behind the
bar, revealing through chenille 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."


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.




                                  III


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cleary looked at him with an expression of unutterable scorn.

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

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

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

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

"No," said Cleary bluntly.

"Have you any clue?"

Cleary thought a moment.

"We’ll have the men to-morrow."

The reporters stepped eagerly forward.

"Any details, Chief?"

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

"But--"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




                                   IV


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Vat de hell ails you fellers?"

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

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

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

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

"Vat you want mit him, huh?"

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

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

"Yes."

"You got some bapers for him?"

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

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

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

Kouka stopped, considered, then changed his mind.

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

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

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

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

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

The men suddenly halted and stepped back.

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

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

"No one there," they reported in relief.

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

"He’s been kidding us."

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

"Here they went!" cried Kouka.




                                   V


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

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

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

"Come on, Archie," he said.

Archie turned in surprise.

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

"Why?"

"The bulls--"

"Where?"

"Across the street--an elbow."

"Him?"

"Yes."

"The hell!"

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

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

"Don’t be a chump," said Curly.

"We’re heeled."

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

"They can’t.  We can bust the bulls."

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

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

"Besides, you’ve got orders."

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

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

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

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

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

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

He relaxed and slouched over to where Archie stood.

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

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

"How far from the spill?"

"About three blocks."

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

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

"How did you know the bulls was there?"

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

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

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

"How do you suppose he’d spotted us?"

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

"What do you think of that now!"

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

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

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

"Now’s our chance," said Curly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"By God!"

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

"Marooned!" said Curly, and he laughed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Stand back!"

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

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

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

Curly looked into Archie’s white face.

"Are the bulls tailing on?" he asked.

"They’re coming strong!  Listen!"

"We’d better cave!" urged Curly.

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

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

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

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

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


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

"The pie wagon," said Curly.

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

"Surrender in the name of the law!"

Curly looked a question at Archie.

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

"I haven’t lost my nut."

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

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

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

"All right, then we’ll cave."

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

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

[Illustration: 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.




                                   VI


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

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

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

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

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

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

"Well, I’ll see him anyway."

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

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

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

"Well?" he said presently.

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

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

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

"I got your message only this morning."

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

"Well, they didn’t."

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

"They told me you had seen others."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Can we be ready by then?"

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

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

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

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

"Yes, I know that."

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

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

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

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

"Have you talked to the police?"

Archie laughed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"I don’t know."

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

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

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

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

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

Marriott owned that he had not.

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

He stopped.

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

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

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

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

Archie laughed.

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

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




                                  VII


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Take him down!" shouted Cleary angrily.

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

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




                                  VIII


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

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

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

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

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

"Oh, Archie!  Archie!  _Archie!_"

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

"Say you didn’t do it, Archie."

"Do what?"

"You know--"

"You mean Kouka?"

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

"That Flanagan job?"

She nodded rapidly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"He’s well,--I guess."

"He knows, does he?"

"I--don’t know."

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

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

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

"Oh!" said Archie coldly.

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

"Oh, Archie!  Don’t!  Don’t!"

He was hard with her.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"This way, young woman."

She looked at him a moment.

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

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

"Hold on," he said.

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

"I guess you’d better stay here."

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

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

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

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

"But what for?"

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

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

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

"Come with me."

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




                                   IX


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

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

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

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

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

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

"I came with a message from--"

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

He saw his mistake, and grieved for it.

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

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

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

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

"You’d never guess," he said.

"I’ll not try.  Tell me."

"Gusta."

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

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

"In prison."

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

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

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

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

He sneered out the word.

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

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

"Horrible!" he echoed.

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

She leaned forward earnestly.

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

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

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

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

Elizabeth stared at him blankly.

"To come to her?"

"Yes."

"In prison?"

"Yes."

Her brows contracted, her eyes winked rapidly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Well, then, that you _couldn’t_."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Were they such bad faces?"

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

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

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

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

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

"Ashamed!  Of the Organized Charities?"

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

"I just can’t go, Gordon."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"But you have a criminal practice."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Not _him_!" said Modderwell.

Eades started suddenly forward.

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

"His sister!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Only when necessary."

"But you do, Mr. Modderwell?"

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

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

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

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

"That’s entirely different," said Modderwell.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They all looked up expectantly.

"--to go," she concluded.

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




                                   X


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Well," Mrs. Ward qualified.

"In all except one thing."

Mrs. Ward looked her question.

"I’m not getting married very fast."

"No," said Mrs. Ward.

Elizabeth laughed for the first time that morning.

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

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

"But never mind," Elizabeth went on:

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


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

"I’m twenty-seven already!"

"Who wrote that?" asked Mrs. Ward.

"Alma-Tadema."

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

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

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

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

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

Elizabeth gave a little start of irritability.

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

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

"Not necessarily," said Elizabeth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Think what people would say!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What’s the excitement?"

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes," said Elizabeth calmly.

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

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

"Who is your friend?"

"Gusta."

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

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

"Yes."

"Well, mother’s right."

Mrs. Ward looked her gratitude.

"Of course, you can’t go."

"I can’t?"

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

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

"Why not?"

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

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

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

"Yes, I do."

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

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

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

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

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

"Bess!  Bess!"

She stopped.

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

He was quite beside himself.

"You seem greatly excited," she said.

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

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

"But why--_why_?" she insisted.

"Because I say so."

"Humph!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




                                   XI


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

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

"Yes, I know, but I can’t help it."

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

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

"Yes?"

"--just to go."

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oh, yes, I was there once."

"When?"

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

"Yes, I remember."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

[Illustration: "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.




                                  XII


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

He had shaken his head.

"Why not?"

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

"But can’t Archie tell it?"

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

"Why?"

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

"And if he doesn’t?"

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

"What mob?"

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

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

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

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

"Clever?"

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

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

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


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

"Koerner!" called out Danner’s voice.

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

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

"Good luck!" came the chorus.

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

"Fine day," he said.

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




                                  XIII


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

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

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

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

"How did you sleep last night?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"We are ready, your Honor."

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

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

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

"William C. McGiffert."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Oi’m retired, sor."

"Were you ever on the police force?"

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

He looked up now with a nonchalant air.

"How long were you on the force?"

"Twinty-wan years, sor."

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

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

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

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

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

"George Holden," called the clerk.

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

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

"Machinist."

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

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

"Are you opposed to capital punishment?"

"Yes, sir, I am."

"Are your scruples conscientious ones?"

"Yes, sir."

"And not to be overcome?"

"They are not to be overcome."

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

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

"No, sir."

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

"No, sir."

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

"I’m out of a job now, sir."

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

Holden flushed.

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

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

"I understand perfectly, sir."

"Well, what do you say?"

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

The atmosphere became tense.

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

"I wouldn’t take such an oath."

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

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

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

"That’s just what I mean."

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

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

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

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

"Samuel Walker," called Gard.

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

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

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

Eades repeated the question and the fellow nodded.

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

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

"William A. Broadwell."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Yes."

"Did you read all of them?"

"I believe so."

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

"Yes."

"Read the editorials in the _Courier_?"

"Yes."

"You respect its opinions?"

"I do, yes."

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

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

"Quite edifying, of course?"

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

"And all these things influenced you?"

"Yes."

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

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

"Yes."

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

"I presume it would."

"You know it would, don’t you?"

"Yes."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Mere impressions I should say, your Honor."

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

"Hardly, your Honor."

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

"Certainly, your Honor."

Glassford turned away.

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

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

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

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

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

Gard was repeating the oath:

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

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




                                  XIV


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

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

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

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

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

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




                                   XV


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

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

"Why, Archie, my boy."

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

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

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

"What do you suppose--"

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

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

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

"Detective Quinn!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

"The Friday morning before the Flanagan murder."

"Where did you meet him?"

"In Kentucky Street near Cherokee."

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

"Another man was with him."

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

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

"What do you mean by an ’old-timer’?"

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

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

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

"What did he say?"

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

Eades scowled and hitched up his chair.

"Did he say anything about Kouka?"

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

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

"What further, if anything, was said?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Well, listen to that, will you!"

"Sh!" said Marriott.

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

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

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

"What did you do after that?"

"I placed him under arrest."

"Why?"

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

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

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

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

"On the next Tuesday after that."

"Where?"

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

"Who was with you, if any one?"

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

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

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

"And why were you chasing them?"

"We had orders."

"From whom?"

"Inspector McFee."

"What were those orders?"

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

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

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

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

"Object!"

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

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

"What is your objection?" asked Glassford.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Eades flushed angrily.

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

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

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

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




                                  XVI


The instant Marriott entered the court-house the next morning he was
sensible of a change; it was as palpable as the heavy, overheated
atmosphere indoors after the cool air outdoors.  He could not account
for this change; he knew only that it had come in the night, and that it
boded some calamity in the world. Already it seemed to have had its
effect on the men he met, clerks, 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.




                                  XVII


At six o’clock on the evening of the day the State rested, Marriott
found himself once more at the jail. He passed the series of grated
cells from which their inmates peered with the wistful look common to
prisoners, and paused before Archie’s door.  He could see only the boy’s
muscular back bowed over the tiny table, slowly dipping chunks of bread
into his pan of molasses, eating his supper silently and humbly.  The
figure was intensely pathetic to Marriott.  He gazed a moment in the
regret with which one gazes on the dead, struck down in an instant by
some useless accident. "And yet," he thought, "it is not done, there is
still hope.  He must be saved!"

"Hello, Archie!" he said, forcing a cheerful tone.

Archie started, pushed back his chair, drew his hand across his mouth to
wipe away the crumbs, and thrust it through the bars.

"Don’t let me keep you from your supper," said Marriott.

Archie smiled a wan smile.

"That’s all right," he said.  "It isn’t much of a supper, and I ain’t
exactly hungry."

Archie grasped the bars above his head and leaned his breast against the
door.

"Well, what do you think of it, Mr. Marriott?"

"I don’t know, Archie."

"Looks as if I was the fall guy all right."

Marriott bit his lip.

"We have to put in our evidence in the morning, you know."

"Yes."

"And we must decide whether you’re going on the stand or not."

"I’ll leave it to you, Mr. Marriott."

Marriott thought a moment.

"What do you think about it?" he asked presently.

"I don’t know.  You see, I’ve got a record."

"Yes, but they already know you’ve been in prison."

"Sure, but my taking the stand would make the rap harder.  That fellow
Eades would tear me to pieces."

Marriott was silent.

"And then that old hixer on the jury, that wise guy up there in the
corner."  Archie shook his head in despair.  "Every time he pikes me
off, I know he’s ready to hand it all to me."

"You mean Broadwell?"

"Yes.  He’s one of those church-members.  That’s a bad sign, a bad
sign."  Archie shook his head sadly. "No, it’s a kangaroo all right,
they’re going to job me."  Archie hung his head.  "Of course, Mr.
Marriott, I know you’ve done your best.  You’re the only friend I got,
and I wish--I wish there was some way for me to pay you.  I can’t
promise you, like some of these guys, that I’ll work and pay you when I
get--"  He looked up with a sadly humorous and appreciative smile.  "Of
course, I--"

"Don’t, Archie!" said Marriott.  "Don’t talk that way.  That part of
it’s all right.  Cheer up, my boy, cheer up!"  Marriott was trying so
hard to cheer up himself.  "We haven’t played our hand yet; we’ll give
’em a fight.  There are higher courts, and there’s always the governor."

Archie shook his head.

"Maybe you won’t believe me, Mr. Marriott, but I’d rather go to the
chair than take life down there.  You don’t know what that place is, Mr.
Marriott."

"No," said Marriott, "but I can imagine."

Then he changed his tone.

"We’ve plenty of time to talk about all that," he went on.  "Now we must
talk about to-morrow.  Look here, Archie.  Why can’t you go on the stand
and tell your whole story--just as you’ve told it to me a hundred times?
It convinced me the first time I heard it; maybe it would convince the
jury.  They’d see that you had cause to kill Kouka!"

"Cause!" exclaimed the boy.  "Great God!  After the way he hounded me--I
should say so!  Why, Mr. Marriott, he made me do it, he made me what I
am. Don’t you see that?"

"Of course I do.  And why can’t you tell them so?"  Marriott was
enthusiastic with his new hope.

"Oh, well," said Archie with no enthusiasm at all, "with you it’s
different.  You look at things different; you can see things; you know
there’s some good in me, don’t you?"

It was an appeal that touched Marriott, and yet he felt powerless to
make the boy see how deeply it touched him.

"And then," Archie went on--he talked with an intense earnestness and he
leaned so close that Marriott could smell the odor of coffee on his
breath--"when I talk to you, I know somehow that--well--you believe me,
and we’re sitting down, just talking together with no one else around.
But there in that court-room, with all those people ready to tear my
heart out and eat it, and the beak--Glassford, I mean--and the blokes in
the box, and Eades ready to twist everything I say; well, what show have
I got?  You can see for yourself, Mr. Marriott."

Archie spread his hands wide to show the hopelessness of it all.

"Well, I think you’d better try, anyhow.  Will you think it over?"




                                 XVIII


Marriott heard the commotion as he entered the elevator the next
morning, and as the cage ascended, the noise increased.  He heard the
click of heels, the scuff of damp soles on the marble, and then the
growl of many men, angry, beside themselves, possessed by their lower
natures.  The chorus of rough voices had lost its human note and sunk to
the ugly register of the brutish.  Drawing nearer, he distinguished
curses and desperate cries.  And there in the half-light at the end of
the long corridor, the crowd swayed this way and that, struggling,
scrambling, fighting.  Hats were knocked off and spun in the air; now
and then an arm was lifted out of the mass; now and then a white fist
was shaken above the huddle of heads.  Two deputy sheriffs, Hersch and
Cumrow, were flattened against the doors of the criminal court, their
faces trickling with sweat, their waistcoats torn open; and they
strained mightily.  The crowd surged against them, threatening to press
the breath out of their bodies. They paused, panting from their efforts,
then tried again to force back the crowd, shouting:

"Get back there, damn you!  Get back!"

Marriott slipped through a side door into the judge’s chamber.  The room
was filled.  Glassford, Eades, Lamborn, all the 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."


The following morning, the defense having put in its evidence and
rested, Lamborn began the opening argument for the State.  It had long
been Lamborn’s ambition to make a speech that would last a whole day.
He had made copious notes, and when he succeeded in speaking a full
half-hour without referring to them, he was greatly encouraged.  When he
was compelled finally to succumb, and consult his notes, he began to
review the evidence, that is, he repeated what the witnesses had already
told.  After that he began to fail noticeably in ideas and frequently
glanced at the clock, but he thought of the statutes, and he read to the
jury the laws defining murder in the first degree, murder in the second
degree, and manslaughter, and then declaring that the crime Archie had
committed was clearly murder in the first degree, he closed by urging
the jury to find him guilty of this crime.

In the afternoon Pennell opened the arguments for the defense.  Having
won the oratorical contest at college, and having once been spoken of in
print as the silver-tongued, Pennell pitched his voice in the highest
key, and soon filled the court-room with a prodigious noise; he had not
spoken fifteen minutes before he had lashed himself into a fury, and
with each new, fresh burst of enthusiasm, he raised his hoarse voice
higher and higher, until the throats of his hearers ached in sympathy.
But at the end of two hours he ceased to wave his arms, no longer struck
the bar of the jury-box with his fist, the strain died away, and he sank
into his chair, his hair disheveled, his brow and neck and wrists
glistening with perspiration, utterly exhausted, but still wearing the
oratorical scowl.

All this time Eades and Marriott were lying back in their chairs, in the
attitudes of counsel who are reserving themselves for the great and
telling efforts of the trial, that is, the closing arguments.  When
Marriott arose the next morning to begin his address, the silence was
profound.  He looked about him, at Glassford, at Eades, at the crowd,
straining with curious, gleaming eyes.  In the overflowing line of men
within the bar on either side of the jury-box he recognized several
lawyers; their faces were white against the wall; they seemed strange,
unnatural, out of place. The jury were uneasy and glanced away, and
though Broadwell lifted his small eyes to him, it was without response
or sympathy.  Marriott was chilled by the patent opposition.  Then,
somehow, he detected old man Reder stealing a glance at Archie; he kept
his eye on Reder.  What was Reder thinking of?  "Thinking, I suppose,"
thought Marriott, "that this settles it, and that there is nothing to do
now but to send Archie to the chair."

Reder, however, in that moment was really thinking of his boyhood in
Germany, where his father had been a judge like Glassford; one day he
had found among the papers on his father’s desk the statement of a case.
An old peasant had accidentally set fire to a forest on an estate and
burned up wood to the value of forty marks, for this he was being tried.
He felt sorry for the peasant and had begged his father to let him go.
When he came home at night he asked his father--

Marriott made an effort, mastered himself; he thought of Archie, leaning
forward eagerly, his eyes fixed on him with their last hope.  He had a
vision of Archie as he had seen him in the jail--he saw again the supple
play of his muscles under the white skin of his breast, full of health,
of strength, of life--kill him? It was monstrous!  A passion swelled
within him; he would speak for him, he would speak for old man Koerner,
for Gusta, for all the voiceless, submerged poor in the world....  He
began....  Some one was sobbing....  He glanced about.  It was old Mrs.
Koerner, in tears, the first she had shed during the trial....  Archie
was looking at her....  He was making an effort, but tears were
glistening in the corners of his eyes....

It was over at last.  He had done all he could.  Men were crowding about
him, congratulating him--Pennell, Bentley, his friends among the
lawyers, Glassford, and, yes, even Eades.

"I never heard you do better, Gordon," said Eades.

Marriott thanked him.  But then Eades could always be depended on to do
the correct thing.


All that afternoon Archie sat there and listened to Eades denouncing
him.  When Marriott had finished his speech, Archie had felt a happiness
and a hope--but now there was no hope.  Eades was, indeed, tearing him
to pieces.  How long must he sit there and be game, and endure this
thing?  Would it never end? Could Eades speak on for ever and for ever
and never cease his abuse and denunciation?  Would it end with
evening--if evening ever came?  No; evening came, but Eades had not
finished.  Morning came, and Eades spoke on and on.  He was speaking
some strange words; they sounded like the words the mission stiffs used;
they must be out of the Bible.  He noticed that Broadwell was very
attentive.

"He’ll soon be done now, Archie," whispered Marriott, giving him a
little pat on the knee; "when they quote Scripture, that’s a sign--"

Yes, he had finished; this was all; soon it would be over and he would
know.

The jurymen were moving in their seats; but there was yet more to be
done.  The judge must deliver his charge, and the jurors settled down
again to listen to Glassford with even greater respect than they had
shown Eades.

During the closing sentences of Eades’s speech Glassford had drawn some
papers from a drawer and arranged them on his desk.  These papers
contained portions of charges he had made in other criminal cases.
Glassford motioned to the bailiff, who bore him a glass of iced water,
from which Glassford took a sip and set it before him, as if he would
need it and find it useful in making his charge.  Then he took off his
gold eye-glasses, raised his eyebrows two or three times, drew out a
large handkerchief and began polishing his glasses as if that were the
most important business of his life.  He breathed on the lenses, then
polished them, then breathed again, and polished again.

Glassford had selected those portions of the charges he kept in stock,
which assured the jury of the greatness of the English law, told how
they must consider a man innocent until he had been proved guilty beyond
a reasonable doubt, that they must not draw any conclusions unfavorable
to the prisoner at the bar from the fact that he had not taken the
witness-stand, and so on.  These instructions were written in long,
involved sentences, composed as nearly as possible of words of Latin
derivation.  Glassford read them slowly, but so as to give the
impression that it was an extemporaneous production.

The jurymen, though many of them did not know the meaning of the words
Glassford used, thought they all sounded ominous and portentous, and
seemed to suggest Archie’s guilt very strongly.  For half an hour
Glassford read from his instructions, from the indictment and from the
statutes, then suddenly recalling the fact that the public was greatly
interested in this case, he began to talk of the heinousness of this
form of crime and the sacredness of human life.  In imagination he could
already see the editorials that would be printed in the newspapers,
praising him for his stand, and this, he reflected, would be beneficial
to him in his campaign for renomination and reelection. Finally he told
the jurymen that they must not be affected by motives of sympathy or
compassion or pity for the prisoner at the bar or his family, for they
had nothing to do with the punishment that would be inflicted upon him.
Then he read the various verdicts to them, casually mentioning the
verdict of "not guilty" in the tone of an after-thought and as a
contingency not likely to occur, and then told them, at last, that they
could retire.

At five o’clock the jury stumbled out of the box and entered the little
room to the left.




                                  XIX


It was four o’clock in the morning, and the twelve men who were to
decide Archie’s fate were still huddled in the jury room.  For eleven
hours they had been there, balloting, arguing, disputing, quarreling,
and then balloting again.  Time after time young Menard had passed
around his hat for the little scraps of paper, and always the result was
the same, eleven for conviction, one for acquittal.  For a while after
the jury assembled there had been three votes for conviction of murder
in the second degree, but long ago, as it seemed at that hour, these
three votes had been won over for conviction of murder in the first
degree, which meant death.  At two o’clock Broadwell had declared that
there was no use in wasting more time in voting, and for two hours no
ballot had been taken.  The electric lamps had glowed all night, filling
the room with a fierce light, which, at this hour of the winter morning,
had taken on an unnatural glare.  The air was vitiated, and would have
sickened one coming from outside, but these men, whose lungs had been
gradually accustomed to it, were not aware how foul it was. Once or
twice in the night some one had thrown up a window, but the older men
had complained of the cold, and the window had to be closed down again.
In that air hung the dead odor of tobacco smoke, for in the earlier
hours of the night most of the men--all, indeed, save Broadwell--had
smoked, some of them cigars, some pipes.  But now they were so steeped
in bodily weariness and in physical discomfort and misery that none of
them smoked any longer.  On the big oaken table in the middle of the
room Menard’s hat lay tilted on its side, and all about lay the ballots.
Ballots, too, strewed the floor and filled the cuspidors, little scraps
of paper on which was scribbled for the most part the one word,
"Guilty," the same word on all of them, though not always spelled the
same.  One man wrote it "Gildy," another "Gilty," still another
"Gility."  But among all those scattered scraps there was a series of
ballots, the sight of which angered eleven of the men, and drove them to
profanity; on this series of ballots was written "Not guilty."  The
words were written in an invariable, beautiful script, plainly the
chirography of some German.

It was evident that in this barren room, with its table and twelve
chairs, its high blank walls and lofty ceiling, a mighty conflict had
been waged.  But now at the mystic hour when the tide of human forces is
at its farthest ebb, the men had become exhausted, and they sat about in
dejected attitudes of lassitude and weariness, their brains and souls
benumbed.  Young Menard had drawn his chair up to the table and thrown
his head forward on his arms.  He was wholly spent, his brow was bathed
with clammy perspiration, and a nausea had seized him.  His mind was too
tired to work longer, and he was only irritably conscious of some
unpleasant interruption when any one spoke. The old men had suffered
greatly from the confinement; the long night in that miserable little
room, without comforts, had accentuated their various diseases, all the
latent pains and aches of age had been awakened, and now, at this low
hour, they had lost the sense of time and place, the trial seemed far
away in the past, there was no future, and they could but sit there and
suffer dumbly.  In one corner Osgood had tilted back a chair and fallen
asleep.  He sprawled there, his head fallen to one side, his wide-open
mouth revealing his throat; his face was bathed in sweat, and he snored
horribly.

In another corner sat Broadwell, his hands folded across his paunch.
The flesh on his fat face had darkened, beneath his eyes were deep blue
circles and he looked very old.  He had been elected foreman, of course,
and early in the evening had made long and solemn addresses to the jury,
the same kind of addresses he delivered to his Bible-class--instructive,
patronizing, every one of his arguments based on some hackneyed and
obvious moral premise.  Particularly was this the case, when, as had
befallen early in the evening, they had discussed the death penalty.
This subject roused him to a high degree of anger, and he raged about
it, defended the practice of capital punishment, then, growing calm,
spoke of it reverently and as if, indeed, it were a sacrament like
baptism, or the Lord’s Supper, quoting from the ninth chapter of
Genesis.  Old Reder had opposed him, and Broadwell had demanded of him
to know what he would wish to have done to a man who killed his wife,
for instance.  Reder, quite insensible to the tribute implied in the
suggestion that his action would furnish the standard for all action in
such an emergency, had for a while maintained that he would not wish to
have the man put to death, but Broadwell had insisted that he would, had
quoted the ninth chapter of Genesis again, shaken his head, puffed, and
angrily turned away from Reder. One by one he had beaten down the wills
of the other jurors.  He was tenacious and stubborn, and he had
conquered them all--all but old Reder, who paced the floor, his hands in
the side pockets of his short jacket. His shaggy white brows were knit
in a permanent scowl, and now and then he gathered portions of his gray
beard into his mouth and chewed savagely.  He was the one, of course,
who had been voting for acquittal; his was the hand that had written in
that Continental script those dissenting words, "Not guilty."

When this became known, the others had gathered round him, trying to
beat him down, and finally, giving way to anger, had shaken their fists
in his face, reviled him, and called him ugly names.  But all the while
he had shaken his head and shouted:

"No! no! no! no!"

For a while he had argued against Archie’s guilt, then against the
methods of the police, at last, had begged for mercy on the boy.  But
this last appeal only made them angry.

"Mercy!" they said.  "Did he show that old woman any mercy?"

"He isn’t being triedt for der old woman," said Reder.  "Dot’s what the
chudge saidt."

"Well, then.  Did he show Kouka any mercy?"

"Bah!" shouted Reder.  "Did Kouka show him any?"

"But Kouka"--they insisted.

"_Ach_!  To hell mit all o’ you!" cried Reder, and began to stalk the
floor.

"The Dutch dog!" said one.

"The stubborn brute!" grumbled another.  "Keeping us all up here, and
making us lose our sleep!"

"I tell you," said another, "the jury system ought to be changed, so’s a
majority would rule!"

"It’s no use, it’s no use," Reder said in a high petulant voice; "you
only make me vorse; you only make me vorse!"  He held his hands up and
shook them loosely, his fingers vibrating with great rapidity.

Then it was still for a long while--but in the dark and empty
court-room, where the bailiff slept on one of the seats, sharp,
unnatural, cracking noises were heard now and then; and from it emanated
the strange weird influence of the night and darkness.  Through the
window they looked on the court-house yard lying cold and white under
the blaze of the electric lamps.  The wind swept down the bleak deserted
street.  Once they heard a policeman’s whistle.  Osgood was snoring
loudly.

"Great God!" shouted Duncan irritably.  "Can’t some of you make him stop
that?"

Church got up and gave Osgood’s chair a rude kick.

"Huh?"  Osgood started up, staring about wildly. Then he came to his
senses, looked around, understood, fell back and went to sleep again.

And Reder tramped up and down, and Broadwell sat and glared at him, and
the others waited.  Reder was thinking of that time of his boyhood in
Germany when the old peasant had been tried for setting the wood afire.
The whole scene had come back to him, and he found a fascination in
recalling one by one every detail, until each stood out vividly and
distinctly in his mind.  He paced on, until, after a while, Broadwell
spoke again.

"Mr. Reder," he said, "I don’t see how you can assume the position you
do."

"It’s no use, I tol’ you; no use!"

"But look here," Broadwell insisted, getting up and trying to stop
Reder.  He took him by the lapel of his coat, forced him to stand an
instant, and when Reder yielded, and stood still, the other jurors
looked up with some hope.

"Tell me why--"

"I don’t _vant_ to have him killedt, I tol’ you."

"But it isn’t killing; it isn’t the same."

"Bah!  Nonsense!" roared Reder.

"It’s the law."

"I don’t gare for der law.  We say he don’t die--he don’t die den, ain’t
it?"

"But it’s the _law_!" protested Broadwell, thinking to add new stress to
his argument by placing new stress on the word.  "How can we do
otherwise?"

"How?  Chust by saying not guildy, dot’s how."

"But how can we do that?"

"Chust _do_ it, dot’s how!"

"But it’s the law,--the _law_!"

"Damn der _law_!" roared Reder, resuming his walk. And Broadwell stood
looking at him, in horror, as if he had blasphemed.

There was silence again, save for Osgood’s snoring. Then suddenly, no
one knew how, the argument broke out anew.

"How do we know?" some one was saying.  It was Grey; his conviction was
shaken again.

"Know?" said Church.  "Don’t we know?"

"How do we?"

"Well--I don’t know, only--"

"Yes, only."

"You ain’t going back on us now, I hope?",

"No, but--" Grey shook his head.

"Well, you heard what the judge said."

They could always appeal to what the judge had said, as if he spoke with
some authority that was above all others.

"What’d he say?" asked Grey.

"Why--he said--what was that there word now?"

"What word?"

"That word he used--refer--no that wasn’t it, let’s see."

"Infer?" suggested Broadwell.

"Sure!  That’s it!  Infer!  He said infer."

"By God!  I guess that’s right!  He did say that."

"Course," Church went on triumphantly.  "Infer! He said infer, and that
means we can infer it, don’t it?"

Just at that minute a pain, sharp and piercing, shot through Reder’s
back.  He winced, made a wry face, stopped, stooped to a senile posture
and clapped his hand to his back.  His heart suddenly sank--there it was
again, his old trouble.  That meant bad things for him; now, as likely
as not, he’d be laid up all winter; probably he couldn’t sit on the jury
any more; surely not if that old trouble came back on him.  And how
would he and his old wife get through the winter? Instantly he forgot
everything else.  What time was it, he wondered?  This being up all
night; he could not stand that.

As from a distance he heard the argument going on. At first he felt no
relation to it, but this question must be settled some way.  The pain
had ceased, but it would come back again.  He straightened up slowly,
gradually, with extreme care, his hand poised in readiness to clap to
his back again; He turned about by minute degrees and said:

"What’s dot you saidt?"

"Why," began Church, but just then Reder winced again; clapped his hand
to his back, doubled up, his face was contorted.  He was evidently
suffering tortures, but he made no outcry.  Church sprang toward him.

"Get him some water,--here!"

Chisholm punched young Menard; he got up, and pushed the big white
porcelain water pitcher across the table.  But Reder waved it aside.

"Nefer mind," he said.  "What was dot you vas sayin’ a minute back?"

"Why, Mr. Reder, we said the judge said we could infer.  Don’t you
remember?"

Church looked into his face hopefully, and waited.

Broadwell got slowly to his feet, and moved toward the little group
deliberately, importantly, as if he alone could explain.

"Here, have my chair, Mr. Reder," said Broadwell with intense
politeness.

"No, nefer mind," said Reder, afraid to move.

"What the judge said," Broadwell began, "was simply this.  He said that
if it was to be inferred from all the facts and circumstances adduced in
evidence--"

"Besides," Church broke in, "that old woman said he _was_ the fellow,
down at the police station--it was in the paper, don’t you remember?"

"Oh, but the judge said we wasn’t to pay attention to anything like
that," said Grey.

"Well, but he said we could infer, didn’t he?"

"Just let me speak, please," insisted Broadwell, "His Honor went on to
say--" he had just recalled that that was the proper way to speak of a
judge, and then, the next instant, he remembered that it was also proper
to call the judge "the Court," and he was anxious to use both of these
phrases.  "That is, the Court said--"  And he explained the meaning of
the word "infer."

Reder was listening attentively, his head bent, his hand resting on his
hip.  Broadwell talked on, in his low insinuating tone.  Reder made no
reply.  After a while, Broadwell, his eyes narrowing, said softly,
gently:

"Gentlemen, shall we not try another ballot?"

Menard got up wearily, his hat in readiness again. The jurors began
rummaging among the scraps for ballots.


A street-car was just scraping around the curve at the corner, its
wheels sending out a shrill, grinding noise.

"Great heavens!" exclaimed McCann, taking out his watch, "it’s five
thirty!  Morning!  We’ve been here all night!"

Outside the city was still wrapped in a soft thick darkness.  Eades was
sleeping soundly; his mother, when she kissed him good night, had patted
his head, saying, "My dear, brave boy."  Marriott had just sunk into a
troubled doze.  Glassford was snoring loudly in his warm chamber;
Koerner and his wife were kneeling on their bed, their hands clasped,
saying a prayer in German, and over in the jail, Archie was standing
with his face pressed against the cold bars of his cell, looking out
across the corridor, watching for the first streak of dawn.




                                   XX


Marriott awoke with a start when the summons came.  The jury had agreed;
his heart leaped into his throat.  What was the verdict?  He had a
confused sense of the time, the world outside was dark; he could have
slept but a few minutes, surely it was not much later than midnight.  He
switched on the electric light, and looked at his watch.  It was
half-past six--morning.  He dressed hurriedly, and went out.

The clammy air smote him coldly.  The day was just breaking, a yellow
haze above the roofs toward the east.  He hurried along the damp
pavement, an eager lonely figure in the silent streets; the light spread
gradually, creeping as it were through the heavy air; a fog rolled over
the pavements and the world was cold and gray.  An early street-car went
clanging past, filled with working-men.  These working-men were happy;
they smoked their pipes and joked--Marriott could hear them, and he
thought it strange that men could be happy anywhere in the world that
morning. But these fancies were not to be indulged with the leisurely
sense in which he usually philosophized on that life of which he was so
conscious; for the court-house loomed huge and portentous in the dawn.
And suddenly the light that was slowly suffusing the ether seemed to
pause; there was a hesitation almost perceptible to the eye in the
descent of morning on the world; it was, to Marriott’s imagination,
exactly, as if the sun had suddenly concluded to shine no longer on the
just and the unjust alike, but would await the issue then yeaning
beneath that brooding dome, and see whether men would do justice in the
world. Somewhere, Marriott knew, in that gray and smoky pile, the fate
was waiting, biding its time.  What would it be?

He had remained at the court-house the night before with Pennell and
Lamborn, several of the court officials and 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.




                                  XXI


Archie sat by the trial table and looked out the window toward the east.
The window from being black became gray again--gray clouds, a scumbled
atmosphere of gray.  When the jury came out of the box, after it was all
over, a young clerk in the court-house rushed up to Menard and wrung his
hand in enthusiastic, hysterical congratulation, as if Menard in the
face of heavy opposition had done some brave and noble deed.  And Archie
wondered what he had ever done to this young clerk that he should so
have it in for him.  Then Marriott was at his side again, but he said
nothing; he only took his hand.

"Well," thought Archie, "there is one man left in the world who hasn’t
got it in for me."  And yet there actually seemed to be Danner.  For
Danner bent over and whispered:

"Whenever you’re ready, Dutch, we’ll go back.  Of course--no particular
hurry, but when you’re ready."

Archie wondered what Danner was up to now; usually he ordered them about
like brutes, with curses.

"You’ll be wanting a bite of breakfast," Danner was saying.

Breakfast!  The word was strange.  Were people still eating breakfast in
this world, just as if nothing had happened, just as if things were as
they used to be--before--before--what?  Before he shot Kouka? No, there
was nothing unusual about that; he didn’t care anything about Kouka.
Before the penitentiary and the bull rings?  Before the first time in
the workhouse, when that break, that lapse, came into his life? But
breakfast--they would be carrying the little pans about in the jail just
now, and that brought the odor of coffee to his memory.  Coffee would
not be a bad thing.

"Any time," he said to Danner.

Then they got up and walked away, through the gray morning.

In the jail, Danner instantly unlocked the handcuffs, and as he jostled
Archie a little in opening the door, he said:

"Oh, excuse me, Dutch."

What had got into Danner, anyway?  Inside he wondered more.  Danner
said:

"You needn’t lock this morning; you can stay in the corridor, and I’ll
have your breakfast sent in to you in a moment."

Then Danner put up his big hand and whispered in Archie’s ear:

"I’ll see the cook and get her to sneak in a little cream and sugar for
your coffee."

Archie could not understand this, nor had he then time to wonder about
it, for he was being turned into the prison, and there, he knew, his
companions were waiting to know the news.  Most of them were in their
cells.  Two of them, the English thief and Mosey--he could tell it was
Mosey by the striped sweater--were standing in the far end of the
corridor, but they did not even look.  He caught a snatch of their
conversation.

"What was the rap, the dip?"

"No, penny weightin’."

They appeared to be talking indifferently and were no more curious--so
one would say--than they would have been if some dinge had been vagged.
And yet Archie knew that every motion, every word, every gesture of his
was important.  He tried to walk just as he had always walked.  They
waited till Archie was at his cell door, and then some one called in a
tone of suspense that could be withheld no longer:

"What’s the word, Archie?"

"Touched off," he called, loud enough for them all to hear.  He spoke
the words carelessly, almost casually, with great nonchalance.  There
was silence, sinister and profound.  Then gradually the conversation was
resumed between cell and cell; they were all calling out to him, all
straining to be cheerful and encouraging.

"That mouthpiece of yours ’ll spring you yet," some one said, "down
below."

Archie listened to their attempts to cheer him, all pathetic enough,
until presently the English thief passed his door, and said in a low
voice:

"Be gime, me boy."

That was it!  Be game!  From this on, that must be his ideal of conduct.
He knew how they would inquire, how some day Mason and old Dillon, how
Gibbs and all the guns and yeggs would ask about this, how the old gang
would ask about it--he must be game. He had made, he thought, a fair
beginning.

Danner brought the breakfast himself, and good as his word he had got
the cook to put some cream and sugar in his coffee.  Not only this, but
the cook had boiled him two eggs--and he hadn’t eaten eggs in months.
The last time, he recalled, was when Curly had boiled some in a can--had
Curly, over in another part of the prison, been told?

Archie thanked Danner and told him to thank the cook.  And yet a wonder
possessed him.  He had never known kindness in a prison before, save
among the prisoners themselves, and often they were cruel and mean to
each other--like the rats and mission-stiffs who were always snitching
and having them chalked and stood out.  Here in this jail, he had never
beheld any kindness, for notwithstanding the fact that nearly every one
there was detained for a trial which was to establish his guilt or
innocence, and the law had a theory that every one was to be presumed
innocent until proved guilty, the sheriff and the jailers treated them
all as if they were guilty, and as if it was their duty to assist in the
punishment.  But here was a man who had been declared guilty of a
heinous crime, and was to receive the worst punishment man could bestow,
and yet, suddenly, he was receiving every kindness, almost the first he
had ever known, at least since he had grown up.  Having done all they
could to hurry him out of the world, men suddenly apologized by
showering him with attention while he remained.

When he ate his breakfast Archie felt better,--Mr. Marriott would do
something, he was sure; it was not possible that this thing could happen
to him.

"Any of youse got the makin’s?" he called.

Instantly, all down the corridor on both sides, the cells’ voices rang:

"Here!  Here!  Archie!  Here, have mine!"

"Mr. Marriott gave me a whole box yesterday, but I smoked ’em all up in
the night!" he said.




                                  XXII


Those persons in the community who called themselves the good were
gratified by Archie’s conviction, and there were at once editorials and
even sermons to express this gratification.  Lorenzo Edwards of the
_Courier_, who hated Marriott because he had borrowed ten dollars of
Marriott some years before and had never paid it back, wrote an unctuous
and hypocritical editorial in which he condemned Marriott for carrying
the case up, and deprecated the law’s delay. The _Post_--although Archie
had not talked to a reporter--printed interviews with him, and as a
final stroke of enterprise, engaged Doctor Tyler Tilson, the specialist,
to examine Archie for stigmata of degeneracy.  Tilson went to jail,
taking with him tape and calipers and other instruments, and after
measuring Archie and percussing him, and lighting matches before his
eyes, and having him walk blindfolded, and pricking him with pins, wrote
a profound article for the _Post_ from the standpoint of criminology, in
which he repeated many scientific phrases, and used the word
"environment," many times, and concluded that Archie had the homicidal
tendency strongly developed.

The Reverend Doctor Hole, who had his degree from a small college in
Dakota, had taken lessons of an elocutionist, and advertised the
sensational sermons in which he preached against those vices the
refinements and wealth of his own congregation did not tempt them to
commit, spoke on "Crime"; even Modderwell referred to it with
complacency.

In all of these expressions, of course, Eades was flattered, and this
produced in him a sensation of the greatest comfort and justification.
He felt repaid for all he had suffered in trying the case.  But Marriott
felt that an injustice had been done, and, such is the quality of
injustice, that one suspicion of it may tincture every thought until the
complexion of the world is changed and everything appears unjust.  As
Marriott read these editorials, the reports of these sermons, and the
conclusions of a heartless science that had thumped Archie as if he were
but a piece of rock for the geologist’s hammer, he was filled with
anger, and resolved that Archie should not be put to death until he had
had the advantage of every technicality of the law. He determined to
carry the case up at his own expense. Though he could not afford to do
this, and was staggered when he ran over in his mind the cost of the
transcript of evidence, the transcript of the record, the printing of
the briefs, the railroad and hotel bills, and all that,--he felt it
would be a satisfaction to see one poor man, at least, receive in the
courts all that a rich man may demand.

Within the three days provided by law, Marriott filed his motion for a
new trial and then he was content to wait, and let the proceedings drag
along.  But Eades insisted on an immediate hearing.

When Glassford had announced his decision denying a new trial, he
hesitated a moment and then, with an effect of gathering himself for an
ordeal, he dropped his judicial manner, called Eades and Marriott to the
bench, leaned over informally, whispered with them, and finally, as if
justifying a decision he had just communicated to them, observed:

"We might as well do it now and have it over with."

Then he sent the sheriff for Archie, and the bailiff for a calendar.

There were few persons in the court-room besides the clerk and the
bailiff, Marriott and Pennell, Eades and Lamborn.  It was a bleak day;
outside a mean wind that had been blowing for three days off the lake
swept the streets bare of their refuse and swirled it everywhere in
clouds of filth.  The sky was gray, and the cold penetrated to the
marrow; men hurried along with their heads huddled in the collars of
their overcoats--if they had overcoats; they winced and screwed their
faces in the stinging cold, longing for sunshine, for snow, for rain,
for anything to break the monotony of this weather.  Within the
court-room the gloom was intensified by the doom that was about to be
pronounced.  While they waited, Eades and Lamborn sat at a table,
uneasily moving now and then; Marriott walked up and down; no one spoke.
Glassford was scowling over his calendar, pausing now and then, lifting
his eyes and looking off, evidently making a calculation.

When Bentley and Danner came at last with Archie, and unshackled him,
Glassford did not look up.  He kept his head bowed over his docket; now
and then he looked at his calendar, the leaves of which rattled and
trembled as he turned them over.  Then they waited, every one there, in
silence.  After a while, Glassford spoke.  He spoke in a low voice, into
which at first he did not succeed in putting much strength:

"Koerner, you may stand up."

Archie rose promptly, his heels clicked together, his hands dropped
stiffly to his side; he held his head erect, as he came to the military
attitude of attention. But Glassford did not look at him.  He was gazing
out of the window again toward that mysterious window across the street.

"Have you anything to say why the sentence of this court should not be
passed upon you?" he asked presently.

"No, sir," said Archie.  He was looking directly at Glassford, but
Glassford did not look at him.  Glassford waited, studying how he should
begin.  The reporters were poising their pencils nervously.

"Koerner," Glassford began, still looking away, "after a fair and
impartial trial before a jury of twelve sworn men you have been found
guilty of the crime of murder in the first degree.  The trial was
conducted carefully and deliberately; the jury was composed of honest
and representative men, and you were defended, and all your rights
conserved by able counsel.  You have had the benefit of every immunity
known to our law, and yet, after calm deliberation, as the court has
said, you have been found guilty.  We have, in addition to that, here
to-day heard a motion for a new trial; we have very carefully reviewed
the evidence and the law in this case, and the court is convinced that
no errors were committed on the trial detrimental to your rights in the
premises or prejudicial to your interests.  It now becomes the duty of
the court to pass sentence upon you."

Glassford paused, removed his glasses, put them on again; and looked out
of the window as before.

"Fortunately--I say fortunately, for so I feel about it"--he
nodded--"fortunately for me, I have no discretion as to what your
punishment shall be.  The law has fixed that; it leaves nothing to me
but to announce its determination.  My duty is clear; in a measure,
simple."

Glassford paused again, sighed faintly, and settled in his chair with
some relief, as if he had succeeded in detaching himself personally from
the situation, and remained now only in his representative judicial
capacity.

"Still," he went on, speaking in an apologetic tone that betokened a
lingering of his personal identity, "that duty, while clear, is none the
less painful.  I would that it had not fallen to my lot."  He paused
again, still looking away.  "It is a sad and melancholy spectacle--a
young man of your strength and native ability, with your opportunities
for living a good and useful life, standing here to hear the extreme
penalty of the law pronounced upon you.  You might have been an
honorable, upright man; you seem, so far as I am able to ascertain, to
have come from a good home, and to have had honest, frugal, industrious
parents. You have had the opportunity of serving your country, you have
had the benefit of the training and discipline of the regular army.  You
might have put to some good use the lessons you learned in those places.
And yet, you seem to have wilfully abandoned yourself to a life of
crime.  You have shown an utter disregard for the sacred right of
property; you have been ready to steal, to live on the usufruct of the
labor of others; and now, as is inevitable"--Glassford shook his head
emphatically as he pronounced the word "inevitable"--"you have gone on
until nothing is sacred in your eyes--not even human life itself."

Glassford, who found it easy to talk in this moral strain, especially
when reporters were present to take down his words, went on repeating
phrases he employed on the occasions when he pronounced sentence, until,
as it seemed to him, having worked himself up to the proper pitch, he
said, with one last tone of regret:

"It is a painful duty," and then feeling there was no way out of the
duty, unless he resigned his position, which, of course, was out of the
question, he straightened in his seat, turned, looked up at the ceiling
and said, speaking more rapidly, "and yet I can not shirk a duty because
it is disagreeable."

He clasped the desk before him tightly with his hands; his lips were
pale.  Then he said:

"The sentence of the court is that you be taken by the sheriff to the
penitentiary, and there delivered over into the custody of the warden of
the said penitentiary, by him to be guarded and safely kept until the
fourteenth day of May next ensuing, on which day the said warden of the
said penitentiary shall cause a current of electricity to be passed
through your body, and to cause the said current to continue to be
passed through your body--until you are dead."

Glassford paused; no one in the court-room moved. Archie still kept his
eyes on Glassford, and Glassford kept his eyes on the wall.  Glassford
had remembered that in olden days the judge, when he donned the black
cap, at some such time as this used to pray that God would have mercy on
the soul of the man for whom he himself could find no mercy; but
Glassford did not like to say this; it seemed too old-fashioned and he
would have felt silly and self-conscious in it.  And yet, he felt that
the proprieties demanded that something be said in the tone of piety,
and, thinking a moment, he added:

"And I hope, Koerner, that you will employ the few remaining days of
life left to you in preparing your soul to meet its Maker."

With an air of relief, Glassford turned, and wrote in his docket.  On
his broad, shining forehead drops of perspiration were glistening.

"The prisoner will be remanded," he said.

Archie faced about and held out his left wrist toward Danner.  The
handcuffs clicked, Marriott turned, glanced at Archie, but he could not
bear to look in his white face.  Then he heard Danner’s feet and
Archie’s feet falling in unison as they passed out of the courtroom.




                                 XXIII


Danny Gibbs, having recovered from the debauch into which Archie’s fate
had plunged him, sat in his back room reading the evening paper.  His
spree had lasted for a week, and the whole tenderloin had seethed with
the excitement of his escapades.  Now that it was all over and reason
had returned, he had made new resolutions, and a certain moral
rehabilitation was expressed in his solemn demeanor and in the utter
neatness of his attire.  He was clean-shaven, his skin glowed pink from
Turkish baths, his gray hair was closely trimmed and soberly parted, his
linen was scrupulously clean; he wore new clothes of gray, his shoes
were polished and without a fleck of dust.  His meditations that evening
might have been profoundly pious, or they might have been dim, foggy
recollections of the satisfaction he had felt in heaping scathing curses
on the head of Quinn, whom he had met in Eva Clason’s while on his
rampage.  He had cursed the detective as a representative of the entire
race of policemen, whom he hated, and Quinn had apparently taken it in
this impersonal sense, for he had stood quietly by without resenting
Gibbs’s profane denunciation. But whatever Gibbs’s meditations, they
were broken by the entrance of a woman.

She was dressed just as she had always been in the long years Gibbs had
known her, soberly and in taste; she wore a dark tailor suit, the jacket
of which disclosed at her full bosom a fresh white waist.  She was
gloved and carried a small hand-bag; the bow of black ribbon on her hat
trembled with her agitation; she was not tall, but she was heavy, with
the tendency to the corpulence of middle years.  Her reddish hair was
touched with gray here and there, and, as Gibbs looked at her, he could
see in her flushed face traces of the beauty that had been the fatal
fortune of the girlhood of Jane the Gun.

"Howdy, Dan," she said, holding out her gloved hand.

"Hello, Jane," he said.  "When’d you come?"

"I got in last night," she said, laying her hand-bag on the table.
"Give me a little whisky, Dan."  She tugged at her gloves, which came
from her moist hands reluctantly.  Gibbs was looking at her hands,--they
were as white, as soft and as beautiful as they had ever been.  One
thing in the world, he reflected in the saddened philosophy that had
come to him with sobriety, had held unchanged, anyway.

"I said a little whisky, Dan!" she spoke with some of her old
imperiousness.

"No," he said resolutely, "you don’t need any. There’s nothing in it."
He was speaking out of his moral rehabilitation.  She glanced at him
angrily; he saw that her brown eyes, the brown eyes that went with her
reddish hair and her warm complexion, were flaming and almost red.  He
remembered to have seen them flame that dangerous red before.  Still, it
would be best to mollify her.

"There ain’t any more whisky in town," he said, "I’ve drunk it all up."

She laughed as the second glove came off with a final jerk.

"I heard you’d been hitting the pots.  Isn’t it a shame!  The poor kid!
I heard it’s a kangaroo."

Gibbs made no comment.

"He was a raw one, too, wasn’t he?"

"Well, he’s a young Dutchman--he filled in with the mob several moons
back."

"What was the rap?"

"He boosted a rod, and they settled him for that; he got a stretch.
Then he was in when they knocked off the peter in that P. O. down in
Indiana."

"That’s what I couldn’t get hip to; Mason wasn’t--"

"No, not that time; they had him wrong; but you know what them elbows
are."

"They must have rapped hard."

"Yes, they gave them a five spot.  But the Dutch wasn’t in on that
Flanagan job, neither was Curly. That was rough work--the cat, I
s’pose."

Jane, her chin in her hands, suddenly became intent, looking straight
into Gibbs’s eyes.

"Dan, that’s what I want to get wise to."

Her cheeks flamed to her white temples, her breast rose tumultuously,
and as she looked at Gibbs her eyes contracted, the wrinkles about them
became deeper and older, and they wore the hard ugly look of jealous
suspicion.  But presently her lip quivered, then slowly along the lower
lashes of her eyes the tears gathered.

"What’s the matter, Jane?"

"You don’t know what I’ve stood for that man!" she blazed out.  "I could
settle him.  I could send him to the stir.  I could have him touched
off!"  She had clenched her fist, and, at these last words, with their
horrible possibility, she smote it down on the table. "But he knew I
wouldn’t be a copper!"  She ended with this, and fumbling among a
woman’s trinkets in her hand-bag, she snatched out a handkerchief and
hastily brushed away the tears.  Gibbs, appealed to in all sorts of
exigencies, was at a loss when a woman wept.  She shook with weeping,
until her hatred was lost in the pity she felt for herself.

"I never said a word when you flew me the kite to keep under cover that
time he plugged Moon."

"No, you were good then."

"Yes," she said, looking up for approval, "I was, wasn’t I?  But this
time--I won’t stand for it!"

"I’m out o’ this," said Gibbs.

"Well," she went on, "his mouthpiece wrote me not to show here.  But I
was on at once.  Curly knew I was hip from the start"--her anger was
rising again. "It was all framed up; he got that mouthpiece to hand me
that bull con, and he’s even got McFee to--"

"McFee!" said Gibbs, starting at the name of the inspector.  "McFee!
Have you been to him?"

"Yes, I’ve been to him!" she said, repeating his words with a satirical
curl of the lip.  "I’ve been to him; the mouthpiece sent me word to lay
low till he sprung him; Curly sent me word that McFee said I wasn’t to
come to this town.  Think I couldn’t see through all that?  I was wise
in a minute and I just come, that’s what I did, right away.  I did the
grand over here."

"What was it you thought they had framed up?" asked Gibbs innocently.
"I can’t follow you."

"Aw, now, Dan," she said, drawing away from the table with a sneer,
"don’t you try to whip-saw me."

"No, on the dead!"

"What was it?  Why, some moll, of course; some tommy."

Gibbs leaned back and laughed; he laughed because he saw that this was
simply woman’s jealousy.

"Look here, Jane," he said, "you know I don’t like to referee these
domestic scraps--I know I’ll be the fall guy if I do--but you’re wrong,
that’s all; you’ve got it wrong."

She looked at him, intently trying to prove his sincerity, and anxious
to be convinced that her suspicions were unfounded, and yet by habit and
by her long life of crime she was so suspicious and so distrustful--like
all thieves, she thought there were no honest people in the world--that
her suspicions soon gained their usual mastery over her, and she broke
out:

"You know I’m not wrong.  I went to see McFee."

"What did he say?" asked Gibbs, with the interest in anything this lord
that stood between him and the upper world might say.

"Why, he said he wouldn’t say nothing."

"Did he say you could stay?"

"Well," she hesitated an instant, "he said he didn’t want me doing any
work in town; he said he wouldn’t stand for it."

"No, you mustn’t do any work here."  Gibbs spoke now with his own
authority, reinforcing that of the detective.

"Oh, sin not leery!" she sneered at him.  "I’m covered all right, and
strong.  You’re missing the number, that’s all.  I’m going to camp here,
and when I see her, I’ll clout her on the kurb; I’ll slam a rod to her
nut, if I croak for it!"

"Jane," said Gibbs, when he had looked his stupefaction at her, "you’ve
certainly gone off your nut. Who in hell’s this woman you’re talking
about?"

"As if you don’t know!  What do you want to string me for?"

Gibbs looked at her with a perfectly blank face.

"All right, have it your way."

"Well," she said presently, with some doubt in her mind, "if you don’t
know and just to prove to you that I _do_ know, it’s the sister of that
young Koerner!"

Gibbs looked at her a long time in a kind of silent contempt.  Then he
said in a tone that dismissed the subject as an absurdity:

"You’ve passed; the nut college for you."

Jane fingered the metal snake that made the handle of her bag; now and
then she sighed, and after a while she was forced to speak--the silence
oppressed her:

"Well, I’ll stay and see, anyway."

"Jane, you’re bug house," said Gibbs quietly.

Somehow, at the words, she bowed her head on her hands and wept; the
black ribbon on her hat shook with her sobbing.

"Oh, Dan, I am bug house," she sobbed; "that’s what I’ve been leery of.
I haven’t slept for a month; I’ve laid awake night after night; for four
days now I’ve been going down the line--hunting her everywhere, and I
can’t find her!"

She gave way utterly and cried.  And Gibbs waited with a certain aspect
of stolid patience, but in reality with a distrust of himself; he was a
sentimental man, who was moved by any suffering that revealed itself to
him concretely, or any grief or hardship that lay before his own eyes,
though he lacked the cultured imagination that could reveal the sorrows
and the suffering that are hidden in the world beyond immediate vision.
But she ceased her weeping as suddenly as she had begun it.

"Dan," she said, looking up, "you don’t know what I’ve done for that
man.  I was getting along all right when I doubled with him; I was doing
well--copping the cush right along.  I was working under protection in
Chi.; I gave it all up for him--"

She broke off suddenly and exclaimed irrelevantly:

"The tommy buster!"

Gibbs started.

"No," he protested, "not Curly!"

"Sure!" she sneered, turning away in disgust of his doubt.

"What made you stand for it?"

"Well," she temporized, forced to be just, "it was only once.  I had
rousted a goose for his poke--all alone too--"  She spoke with the pride
she had always had in her dexterity, and Gibbs suddenly recalled the
fact that she had been the first person in all their traditions who
could take a pocketbook from a man, "weed" and replace it without his
being aware; the remembrance pleased him and his eyes lighted up.

"What’s the matter?" she demanded suddenly.

"I was thinking of the time you turned the old trick, and at the
come-back, when the bulls found the sucker’s leather on him with the
put-back, they booted him down the street; remember?"

Jane looked modest and smiled, but she was too full of her troubles now
for compliments, though she had a woman’s love for them.

"I saw the sucker was fanning and I--well, Curly comes up just then and
he goes off his nut and he--gives me a beating--in the street."

She saw that the circumstances altered the case in Gibbs’s eyes, and she
rather repented having told.

"He said he didn’t want me working; he said he could support me."

Gibbs plainly thought well of Curly’s wish to be the sole head and
support of his nomadic family, but he recognized certain disadvantages
in Curly’s attitude when he said:

"You could get more than he could."

"Course, that’s what I told him, but he said no, he wouldn’t let me,
and, Dan, you know what I did? Why, I helped him; he used to bust tags
on the rattlers, and he hoisted express-wagons--I knew where to dispose
of the stuff--furs and that sort, and we did do pretty well.  I used to
fill out for him, and then I’d go with him to the plant at night and
wait with the drag holding the horses--God!  I’ve sat out in the jungle
when it was freezing, sat out for hours; sometimes the plant had been
sprung by the bulls or the hoosiers; it made no difference--that’s how I
spent my nights for two winters.  I know every road and every field and
every fence corner around that town.  It gave me the rheumatism, and I
hurt my back helping him load the swag.  You see he didn’t have a gager
and didn’t have to bit up with any one, but he never appreciated that!
And now he’s lammed, he’s pigged, that’s what he’s done; he’s thrown me
down--but you bet I’ll have my hunk!"

"That won’t get you anything," Gibbs argued. "Anyway," he added, as if
he had suddenly discovered a solution, "why don’t you go back on the gun
now?"

She was silent a moment, and, as she sat there, the tears that were
constantly filling her eyes welled up again, and she said, though
reluctantly and with a kind of self-consciousness:

"I don’t want to, Dan.  I’m getting old.  To tell the truth, since I’ve
been out of it, I’m sick of the business--I--I’ve got a notion to square
it."

Gibbs was so used to this talk of reform that it passed him idly by, and
he only laughed.  She leaned her cheek against her hand; with the other
hand she twisted and untwisted the metal snake.  Presently she sighed
unconsciously.

"What are you going to do now?" Gibbs asked presently.

"I’m going to stay here in town till I see this woman."

"But you can’t do any work here."

"I don’t want to do any work, I tell you."

"How’ll you live?"

"Live!" she said scornfully.  "I don’t care how; I don’t care if I have
to carry the banner--I’ll get a bowl of sky-blue once in a while--and
I’ll wash dishes--anything!"  She struck the table, and Gibbs’s eyes
fastened on her white, plump little fist as it lay there; then he
laughed, thinking of it in a dish-pan, where it had never been.

"Well, I’ll do it!" she persisted, reading his thought and hastily
withdrawing the fist.  "I’m going to get him!" She looked at Gibbs for
emphasis.

"Jane," he said quietly, "you want to cut that out. This is no place for
you now--this town’s getting on the bum; they’ve put it to the bad.
It’s time to rip it. This rapper--"

"Oh, yes, I’ve heard--what’s this his name is now?"

"Eades."

"What kind is he?"

"Oh, he’s a swell lobster."

"They tell me he’s strong."

"He’s the limit."

Her eyes lighted up suddenly and she sat upright.

"Then I’ll go see him!"

"Jane!"  Gibbs exclaimed with as much feeling as he ever showed.  He saw
by the flashes of her eyes that her mind was working rapidly, though he
could not follow the quick and surprising turns her intentions would
take.  He had a sudden vision, however, of her sitting in Eades’s
office, talking to him, passing herself off, doubtless, for the
respectable and devoted wife of Jackson; he knew how easily she could
impose on Eades; he knew how Eades would be impressed by a woman who
wore the good clothes Jane knew how to wear so well, and he felt, too,
that in his utter ignorance of the world from which Jane came, in his
utter ignorance of life in general, Eades would believe anything she
told him; and becoming thus prejudiced in the very beginning, make
untold work for him to do in order to save his friend.

"Jane," he said severely, "you let him alone; you hear?"

She had risen and was drawing on her gloves.  She stood there an
instant, smiling as if her new notion pleased her, while she pressed
down the fingers of her glove on her left hand.  Then she said
pleasantly:

"Good-by, Dan.  Give my love to Kate."

And she turned and was gone.




                                  XXIV


Elizabeth had heard her father enter and she imagined him sitting in the
library, musing by the fire, finding a tired man’s comfort in that quiet
little hour before dinner.  Sensitive as ever to atmospheres, Elizabeth
felt the coziness of the hour, and looked forward to dinner with
pleasure.  For days she had been under the gloom of Archie’s conviction;
she had never followed a murder case before, but she had special reason
for an interest in this.  She had helped Marriott all she could by
wishing for his success; she had felt his failure as a blow, and this,
with the thought of Gusta, had caused her inexpressible depression.  But
by an effort she had put these thoughts from her mind, and now in her
youth, her health, her wholesomeness, the effect of so much sorrow and
despair was leaving her.  She had finished her toilet, which, answering
her mood, was bright that evening, when she heard Dick enter.  Half the
time of late he had not come home at all, sometimes days went by without
her seeing him. She glanced at the little watch on her dressing-table;
it was not yet six and Dick was home in time for dinner; perhaps he
would spend the evening at home. She hoped he had not come to dress for
some engagement that would take him away.  Her father, she knew, would
be happy in the thought of the boy’s spending an evening with him;
almost pathetic in his happiness.  Of late, more and more, as she noted,
the father had yearned toward the son; the lightest word, a look, a
smile from Dick was sufficient to make him glow with pleasure.  It made
Elizabeth sad to see it, and it made her angry to see how her mother
fondled and caressed him, excusing him for, if not abetting him in, all
his excesses.  But these thoughts were interrupted just then by Dick’s
voice.  He was in the hall outside, and he spoke her name:

"Bess!"

The tone of the voice struck her oddly.  He had pushed open the door and
hesitated on the threshold, peering in cautiously.  Then he entered and
carefully closed the door behind him.  She scented the odor of Scotch
whisky, of cigarettes, in short, the odor of the club man.  His face,
which she had thought ruddy with the health, the exuberance, the
inexhaustible vitality of youth, she saw now to be really unhealthy, its
ruddy tints but the flush of his dissipations.  Now, his face went white
suddenly, as if a mask had been snatched from it; she saw the weakness
and sensuousness that marred it.

"Dick!" she said, for some reason speaking in a whisper.  "What’s the
matter?  Tell me!"

At first a great fear came to her, a fear that he was intoxicated.  She
knew by intuition that Dick must frequently have been intoxicated; but
she had never seen him so, and she dreaded it; she could have borne
anything better than that, she felt.  He sank on to the edge of her bed
and sat there, rocking miserably to and fro, his overcoat bundled about
him, his hat toppling on the side of his head, a figure of utter
demoralization.

"Dick!" she said, going to him, "what is it?  Tell me!"

She took him by the shoulders and gave him a little shake.  He continued
to rock back and forth and to moan;

"Oh, my God!" he said presently.  "What am I going to do!"

Elizabeth gathered herself for one of those ordeals which, in all
families, there is one stronger than the rest to meet and deal with.

"Here, sit up."  She shook him.  "Sit up and tell me what ails you."
The fear that he was intoxicated had left her, and there was relief in
this.  "And take off your hat."  She seized the hat from his head and
laid it on the little mahogany stand beside her bed. "If you knew how
ridiculous you look!"

He sat up at this and weakly began drawing off his gloves.  When he had
them off, he drew them through his hand, slapped them in his palm, and
then with a weary sigh, said:

"Well, I’m ruined!"

"Oh, don’t be dramatic!"  She was herself now. "Tell me what scrape
you’re in, and we’ll see how to get you out of it."  She was quite
composed.  She drew up a chair for him and one for herself.  Some silly
escapade, no doubt, she thought, which in his weakness he was half glad
to make the most of.  He had removed his overcoat and taken the chair
she had placed for him.  Then he raised his face, and when she saw the
expression, she felt the blood leave her cheeks; she knew that the
trouble was real.  She struggled an instant against a sickness that
assailed her, and then, calming herself, prepared to meet it.

"Well?" she said.

"Bess," he began fearfully, and his head dropped again.  "Bess"--his
voice was very strange--"it’s--the--bank."

She shivered as if a dead cold blast had struck her. In the moment
before there had swept through her mind a thousand possibilities, but
never this one.  She closed her eyes.  There was a sharp pain in her
heart, exactly as if she had suddenly crushed a finger.

"The bank!" she exclaimed in a whisper.  "Oh, Dick!"

He hung his head and began to moan again, and to rock back and forth,
and then suddenly he leaned over, seized his head in his two hands and
began to weep violently, like a child.  Strangely enough, to her own
surprise, she found herself calmly and coolly watching him.  She could
see the convulsive movements of his back as he sobbed; she could see his
fingers viciously tearing at the roots of his hair.  She sat and watched
him; how long she did not know.  Then she said:

"Don’t cry, Dick; they’ll hear you down-stairs."

He made an effort to control himself, and Elizabeth suddenly remembered
that he had told her nothing at all.

"What do you mean," she asked, "by the bank?"

"I mean," he said without uncovering his face, and his hands muffled his
words, "that I’m--into it."

Ah, yes!  This was the dim, unposited thought, the numb, aching dread,
the half-formed, unnamed, unadmitted fear that had lurked beneath the
thought of all these months--underneath the father’s thought and hers;
this was what they had meant when they exchanged glances, when now and
then with dread they approached the subject in obscure, mystic words,
meaningless of themselves, yet pregnant with a dreadful and terrible
import.  And now--it had come!

"How much?" she forced herself to ask.

He nodded.

"It’s big.  Several--"

"What?"

"Hundreds."

"Hundreds?"

He hesitated, and then,

"Thousands," he said, tearing the word from him.

"How many thousands?" she asked, when she could find the courage.

Again he cowered before the truth.  She grew impatient.

"Tell me!" she commanded.  "Don’t be a coward."  He winced.  "Sit up and
face this thing and tell me. How many thousands have you stolen?"

She said it in a hard, cold voice.  He suddenly looked up, his eyes
flashed an instant.  He saw his sister sitting there, her hands held
calmly in her lap, her head inclined a little, her chin thrust out, her
lips tightly compressed, and he could not meet her; he collapsed again,
and she heard him say pitifully, "Don’t use that word."  Then he began
to weep, and as he sobbed, he repeated:

"Oh, they’ll send me to the penitentiary--the penitentiary--the
penitentiary!"

The word struck Elizabeth; her gray eyes began to fill.

"How much, Dick?" she asked gently.

"Five--a--"

"More?"

He nodded

"How much more?"

"Twice as much."

"Ten, then?"

He said nothing; he ceased sobbing.  Then suddenly he looked up and met
her glance.

"Bess," he said, "it’s twenty-three thousand!"

She stared at him until her tears had dried.  In the silence she could
hear her little watch ticking away on the dressing-table.  The lights in
the room blazed with a fierce glare.

"Does Mr. Hunter know?"

"Yes."

"When did he find out?"

"This morning.  He called me in this afternoon."

"Does any one else know?"

"Yes."

"Who?"

Dick hung his head and began to fumble his watch-chain.

"Who, Dick?"

"One other man."

"Who?  Tell me."

"Eades."

She closed her eyes and leaned back; she dropped her arms to her sides
and clutched her chair for support.  For a long while they did not
speak.  It was Dick at last who spoke.  He seemed to have regained his
faculties and his command.

"Bess," he said, "Eades will have no mercy on me. You know that."

She admitted it with a slow nod of her head, her eyes still closed.

"Something must be done.  Father--he must be told. Will--will you tell
him?"

She sat a moment--it seemed a long moment--without moving, without
opening her eyes; and Dick sat there and watched her.  Some of the color
had come to his face.  His eyes were contracting; his face was lined
with new scheming.

"Will you tell him, Bess?"

She moved, opened her eyes slowly, wearily, and sighed:

"Yes."

She got up.

"You’re not going to tell him now?"

He stretched out a hand as if to detain her.

"Yes, now.  Why not?"  She rose with difficulty, paused, swayed a little
and then went toward the door. Dick watched her without a word.  His
hand was in the pocket of his coat.  He drew out a cigarette.

She went down the stairs holding the baluster tightly; her palm, moist
from her nervousness, squeaked on the rail as she slid it along.  She
paused in the library door.  Her father was lounging in his chair under
the reading-lamp, his legs stretched toward the fire.  She could just
see the top of his head over the chair, the light falling on his gray
hair.

"That you, Betsy?"

The cheer and warmth of his tone smote her; again her eyes closed in
pain.

"Yes, it’s I," she said, trying for a natural tone, and succeeding, at
least, in putting into her voice a great love--and a great pity.  She
bent over the back of the chair, and laid her hands on his head, gazing
into the fire.  The touch of her hands sent a delicious thrill through
Ward; he did not move or speak, wishing to prolong the sensation.

"Dear," she said, "I have something to tell you."

The delicious sensation left him instantly.

"Can you bear some bad news--some bad, bad news?"

His heart sank.  He had expected something like this--the day would
come, he knew, when she would leave him.  But was it not unusual?
Should not Eades have spoken--should not he have asked him first?  Her
arms were stealing about his neck.

"Some bad news--some evil news.  Something very--"

She had slipped around beside him and leaned over as if to protect him
from the blow she was about to deliver.  Her voice suddenly grew
unnatural, tragic, sending a shudder through him as she finished her
sentence with the one word:

"Horrible!"

"What is it?" he whispered.

"Be strong, dear, and brave; it’s going to hurt you."

"Tell me, Bess," he said, sitting up now, his man’s armor on.

"It’s about Dick."

"Dick!"

"Yes, Dick--and the bank!"

"Oh-h!" he groaned, and, in his knowledge of his own world, he knew it
all.




                                  XXV


"Ah, Mr. Ward, ah!  Heh!  Won’t you sit down, sir, won’t you sit down?"

Hunter had risen from his low hollow chair, and now stood bowing, or
rather stooping automatically to a posture lower than was customary with
him.  The day before or that afternoon, Ward would have noticed Hunter’s
advancing senility.  The old banker stood bent before his deep,
well-worn green chair, its bottom sagging almost to the floor.  He had
on large, loose slippers and a long faded gown.  The light glistened on
his head, entirely bald, and fell in bright patches on the lean, yellow
face that was wrinkled in a smile,--but a smile that expressed nothing,
not even mirth.  He stood there, uncertainly, almost apologetically,
making some strange noise in his throat like a chuckle, or like a cough.
His tongue moved restlessly along his thin lips.  In his left hand he
held a cigar, stuck on a toothpick.

"Won’t you sit down, Mr. Ward, won’t you sit down, sir?"

The old banker, after striving for this effect of hospitality, lowered
himself carefully into his own deep chair.  Ward seated himself across
the hearth, and looked at the shabby figure, huddled in its shabby
chair, in the midst of all the richness and luxury of that imposing
library.  About the walls were magnificent bookcases in mahogany, and
behind their little leaded panes of glass were rows of morocco bindings.
On the walls were paintings, and all about, in the furniture, the rugs,
the bric-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.




                                  XXVI


All the way to the court-house Elizabeth’s heart failed her more and
more.  She had often been in fear of Eades, but never had she so feared
him as she did to-day; the fear became almost an acute terror.  And,
once in the big building, the fear increased.  Though the court-house,
doubtless, was meant for her as much as for any one, she felt that alien
sense that women still must feel in public places.  Curiosity and
incredulity were shown in the glances the loafers of the corridors
bestowed on this young woman, who, in her suit of dark green, with gray
furs and muff, attracted such unusual attention.  Elizabeth detected the
looks that were exchanged, and, because of her sensitiveness, imagined
them to be of more significance than they were.  She saw the sign
"Marriage Licenses" down one gloomy hallway; then in some way she
thought of the divorce court; then she thought of the criminal court,
with its shadow now creeping toward her own home, and when she reflected
how much cause for this staring curiosity there might be if the curious
ones but knew all she knew, her heart grew heavier.  But she hurried
along, found Eades’s office, and, sending in her card, sat down in the
outer room to wait.

She had chosen the most obscure corner and she sat there, hoping that no
one would recognize her, filled with confusion whenever any one looked
at her, or she suspected any one of looking at her, and imagining all
the dreadful significances that might attach to her visit.  While she
waited, she had time to think over the last eighteen hours.  They had
found it necessary to tell her mother, and that lady had spent the whole
morning in hysteria, alternately wondering what people would say when
the disgrace became known, and caressing and leaning on Dick, who
bravely remained at home and assumed the manly task of comforting and
reassuring his mother.  Elizabeth had awaited in suspense the conclusion
of Hunter’s visit to Eades, and she had gone down town to hear from her
father the result of Hunter’s effort.  She was not surprised when her
father told her that Hunter reported failure; neither of them had had
much faith in Hunter and less in Eades.  But when they had discussed it
at the luncheon they had in a private room at the club, and after the
discussion had proved so inconclusive, she broached the plan that had
come to her in the wakeful night,--the plan she had been revolving in
her mind all the morning.

"My lawyer?" her father had said.  "He could do nothing--in a case like
this."

"I suppose not," Elizabeth had said.  "Besides, it would only place the
facts in the possession of one more person."

"Yes."

"We might consult Gordon Marriott.  He would sympathize--and help."

"Yes, that might do."

"But not yet," she had said, "Not till I’ve tried my plan."

"Your plan?  What is it?"

"To see John Eades--for me to see John Eades."

She had hung her head--she could not help it, and her father had shown
some indignation.

"Not for worlds!" he had said.  "Not for worlds!"

"But I’m going."

"No!  It wouldn’t be fitting!"

"But I’m going."

"Then I’ll go along."

"No, I’ll go alone."

He had protested, of course, but his very next words showed that he was
ready to give in.

"When shall you go?" he asked.

"Now.  There isn’t much time.  The grand jury--what is it the grand jury
does?"

"It sits next week, and Eades will lay the case before it
then--unless--"

"Unless I can stop him."

There had been a little intense, dramatic moment when the waiter was out
of the room and she had risen, buttoning her jacket and drawing on her
gloves, and her father had stood before her.

"Bess," he said, "tell me, are you contemplating some--horrible
sacrifice?"  He had put his finger under her chin and elevated it, in
the effort to make her look him in the eyes.  She had paled slightly and
then smiled--and kissed him.

"Never mind about me, papa."

And then she had hastened away--and here she was.

The tall door lettered "The Prosecuting Attorney" was closed, but she
did not have to wait long before it opened and three men came out,
evidently hurried away by Eades, who hastened to Elizabeth’s side and
said:

"Pardon me if I kept you waiting,"

They entered the private office, and, at her sign, he closed the door.
She took the chair beside his desk, and he sat down and looked at her
expectantly.  He was plainly ill at ease, and this encouraged her.  She
was alive to the strangeness of this visit, to the strangeness of the
place and the situation; her heart was in her throat; she feared she
could not speak, but she made a great effort and plunged at once into
the subject.

"You know what brings me here."

"I presume--"

"Yes," she said before he could finish.  He inclined his head in an
understanding that would spare painful explanation.  His heart was going
rapidly.  He would have gloried in having her near him in any other
place; but here in this place, on this subject!  He must not forget his
position; he must assume his official personality; the separation of his
relations had become a veritable passion with him.

"I came," she said, "to ask a favor--a very great favor.  Will you grant
it?"

She leaned forward slightly, but with a latent intensity that showed all
her eagerness and concern.  He was deeply troubled.

"You know I would do anything in my power for you," he said.  His heart
was sincere and glowing--but his mind instantly noted the qualification
implied in the words, "my power."

And Elizabeth, with her quick intelligence, caught the significance of
those words.  She closed her eyes an instant.  How hard he made it!
Still, he was certainly within his rights.

"I want you to let my brother go," she said,

[Illustration: "I want you to let my brother go," she said]

He compressed his lips, and she noted how very thin, how resolute they
were.

"It does not altogether rest with me."

"You evade," she said.  "Don’t treat me--as if I were some politician."
She was surprised at her own temerity.  With some little fear that he
might mistake her meaning, she, nevertheless, kept her gray eyes fixed
on him, and went on:

"I came to ask you not to lay his case before the grand jury.  I believe
that is the extent of your power. I really don’t know about such
things."  Her eyes fell, and she gently stroked the soft gray fur of her
muff, as she permitted herself this woman’s privilege of pleading
weakness.  "No one need be the loser--my father will make good
the--shortage.  All will be as if it never had been--all save this
horrible thing that has come to us--that must remain, of course, for
ever."

Then she let the silence fall between them.

"You are asking me to do a great deal."

"It seems a very little thing to me, so far as you are concerned; to
us--to me--of course, it is a great thing; it means our family, our
name, my father, my mother, myself--leaving Dick out of it altogether."

Eades turned away in pain.  It was evident that she had said her all,
and that he must speak.

"You forget one other thing," he said presently.

"What?"

"The rights of society."  He was conscious of a certain inadequacy in
his words; they sounded to him weak, and not at all as it seemed they
should have sounded.  She did not reply at once, but he knew that she
was looking at him.  Was that look of hers a look of scorn?

"I do not care one bit for the rights of society," she said.  He knew
that she spoke with all her spirit.  But she softened almost instantly
and added, "I do care, of course, for its opinion."

Eades was not introspective enough to realize his own superlative regard
for society’s opinion; it was easier to cover this regard with words
about its rights.

"But society has rights," he said, "and society has placed me here to
see those rights conserved."

"What rights?" she asked.

"To have the wrong-doer punished."

"And the innocent as well?  You would punish my mother, my father and
_me_, although, of course, we already have our punishment."  She waited
a moment and then the cry was torn from her.

"Can’t you see that merely having to come here on such an errand is
punishment enough for me?"

She was bending forward, and her eyes blinked back the tears.  He had
never loved her so; he could not bear to look at her sitting there in
such anguish.

"My God, yes!" he exclaimed.  He got up hastily, plunging his hands in
his pockets, and walking away to his window, looked out a moment, then
turned; and as he spoke his voice vibrated:

"Don’t you know how this makes me suffer?  Don’t you know that nothing I
ever had to face troubles me as this does?"

She did not reply.

"If you don’t," he added, coming near and speaking in a low, guarded
tone, "you don’t know how--I love you."

She raised her hand to protest, but she did not look up.  He checked
himself.  She lowered her gloved hand, and he wondered in a second of
great agitation if that gesture meant the withdrawal of the protest.

"Then--then," she said very deliberately, "do this for me."

She raised her muff to hide the face that flamed scarlet.  He took one
step toward her, paused, struggled for mastery of himself.  He
remembered now that the principle--the principle that had guided him in
the conduct of his office, required that he must make his decisions
slowly, calmly, impersonally, with the cold deliberation of the law he
was there to impersonate. And here was the woman he loved, the woman
whom he had longed to make his wife, the wife who could crown his
success--here, at last, ready to say the word she had so long refused to
say--the word he had so long wished to hear.

"Elizabeth," he said simply, "you know how I have loved you, how I love
you now.  This may not be the time or the place for that--I do not wish
to take an advantage of you--but you do not know some other things.  I
have never felt at all worthy of you.  I do not now, but I have felt
that I could at least offer you a clean hand and a clean heart.  I have
tried in this office, with all its responsibilities, to do my duty
without fear or favor; thus far I have done so.  It has been my pride
that nothing has swerved me from the path of that plain duty.  I have
consoled myself ever since I knew I loved you--and that was long before
I dared to tell you--that I could at least go to you with that record.
And now you ask me to stultify myself, to give all that up!  It is
hard--too hard!"  He turned away. "I don’t suppose I make it clear.
Perhaps it seems a little thing to you.  To me it is a big thing; it is
all I have."

Elizabeth was conscious for an instant of nothing but a gratitude to him
for turning away.  She pressed her muff against her face; the soft fur,
a little cold, was comforting to her hot cheeks.  She felt a humiliation
now that she feared she never could survive; she felt a regret, too,
that she had ever let the situation take this personal and intimate
turn.  For an instant she was disposed to blame Eades, but she was too
just for that; she knew that she alone was to blame; she remembered that
it was this very appeal she had come to make, and she contemned
herself--despised herself. And then in a desperate effort to regain her
self-respect, she tried to change the trend of the argument, to restore
it to the academic, the impersonal, to struggle back to the other plane
with him, and she said:

"If it could do any good!  If I could see what good it does!"

"What!" he exclaimed, turning to her.  "What good?  What good does any
of my work do?"

"I’m sure I don’t know."  As she said this, she looked up at him, met
his eye with a boldness she despised in herself.  Down in her heart she
was conscious of a self-abasement that was almost complete; she realized
the histrionic in her attitude, and in this feeling, determined now to
brave it out; she added bitterly: "None, I should say."

"None!"  He repeated the word, aghast.  "None!  Do you say that all this
work I have been doing for the betterment, the purification of society
does no good?"

"No good," she said; "it does no good; it only makes more suffering in
the world."  And she thought of all she was just then suffering.

"Where--" he could not catch his breath--"where did you get that idea?"

"In the night--in the long, horrible night."  Though she was alive to
the dramatic import of her words and this scene, she was speaking with
sincerity, and she shuddered.

Eades stood and looked at her.  He could do nothing else; he could say
nothing, think nothing.

In Elizabeth’s heart there was now but one desire, and that was to get
away, to bring this horror to an end.  She had come to save her brother;
now she was conscious that she must save herself; she felt that she had
hopelessly involved the situation; it was beyond remedy now, and she
must get away.  She rose.

"I have come here, I have humiliated myself to ask you to do a favor for
me," she said.  "You are not ready to do it, I see."  She was glad; she
felt now the dreadful anxiety of one who is about to escape an awful
dilemma.  "To me it seems a very simple little thing, but--"

She was going.

"Elizabeth!" he said, "let me think it over.  I can not think straight
just now.  You know how I want to help you.  You know I would do
anything--anything for you!"

"Anything but this," she said.  "This little thing that hurts no one, a
thing that can bring nothing but happiness to the world, that can save
my father and my mother and me--a thing, perhaps the only thing that can
save my poor, weak, erring brother--who knows?"

"Let me think it over," he pleaded.  "I’ll think it over to-night--I’ll
send you word in the morning."

She turned then and went away.




                                 XXVII


Elizabeth let the note fall in her lap.  A new happiness suddenly
enveloped her.  She felt the relief of an escape.  The note ran:


DEAR ELIZABETH:

I have thought it all over.  I did not sleep all night, thinking of it,
and of you.  But--I can not do what you ask; I could not love you as I
do if I were false to my duty.  You know how hard it is for me to come
to this conclusion, how hard it is for me to write thus.  It sounds
harsh and brutal and cold, I know. It is not meant to be.  I know how
you have suffered; I wish you could know how I have suffered and how I
shall suffer. I can promise you one thing, however: that I shall do only
my duty, my plain, simple duty, as lightly as I can, and nothing now can
give me such joy as to find the outcome one perhaps I ought not to
wish--one which in any other case would be considered a defeat for me.
But I ask you to think of me, whatever may come to pass, as

Your sincere
       JOHN EADES.


She leaned back in her chair, and closed her eyes; a sense of rest and
comfort came to her.  She was content for a while simply to realize that
rest and comfort. She opened her eyes and looked out of the window over
the little triangular park with its bare trees; the sky was solid gray;
there was a gray tone in the atmosphere, and the soft light was grateful
and restful to her eyes, tired and sensitive as they were from the loss
of so much sleep.  She felt that she could lie back then and sleep
profoundly.  Yet she did not wish to sleep--she wished to be awake and
enjoy this sensation of relief, of escape.  After that night and that
day and this last night of suspense, it was like a reprieve--she started
and her face darkened,--the thought of reprieve made her somehow think
of Archie Koerner. This event had quite driven him out of her mind,
coming as it had just at the climax.  She had not thought of him
for--how long?  And Gusta!  It brought the thought of her, too.
Suddenly she remembered, with a dim sense of confusion that, at some
time long ago, she and Gusta had talked of Archie’s first trouble. Had
they mentioned Dick?  No, but she had thought of him!  How strange!  And
then her thoughts returned to Eades, and she lifted the note, and
glanced at it.  She recalled the night at the Fords’, and his proposal,
her hesitation and his waiting.  She let the note fall again and sighed
audibly--a sigh that expressed her content.  Then suddenly she started
up!  She had forgotten Dick--the trouble--her father!


Marriott knew what she had to say almost before the first sentence had
fallen from her lips.

"I’ll not pretend to be surprised, Elizabeth," he said. "I haven’t
expected it, but now I can see that it was inevitable."

He looked away from her.

"Poor boy!" he said.  "How I pity him!  He has done nothing more than to
adopt the common standard; he has accepted the common ideal.  He has
believed them when they told him by word and deed that
possession--money--could bring happiness and that nothing else can!
Well--it’s too bad."

Elizabeth’s head was drooping and the tears were streaming down her
cheeks.  He pretended not to see.

"Poor boy!" he went on.  "Well, we must save him, that’s all."

She looked up at him, her gray eyes wide and their lashes drenched in
their tears.

"How, Gordon?"

"Well, I don’t know, but some way."  He studied a moment.  "Eades--well,
of course, he’s hopeless."

She could never tell him of her visit to Eades; she had told him merely
of Hunter’s interview with the prosecutor.  But she was surprised to see
how Marriott, instantly, could tell just what Eades would do.

"Eades is just a prosecutor, that’s all," Marriott went on.  "Heavens!
How the business has hardened him!  How it does pull character to
shreds!  And yet--he’s like Dick--he’s pursuing another ideal that’s
very popular.  They’ll elect Eades congressman or governor or something
for his severity.  But let’s not waste time on him.  Let’s think."  He
sat there, his brows knit, and Elizabeth watched him.

"I wish I could fathom old Hunter.  He had some motive in reporting it
to Eades so soon.  Of course, if it wasn’t for that it would be easy.
Hm--"  He thought.  "We’ll have to work through Hunter.  He’s our only
chance.  I must find out all there is to know about Hunter.  Now,
Elizabeth, I’ll have to shut myself up and do some thinking.  The grand
jury doesn’t meet for ten days--we have time--"

"They won’t arrest Dick?"

"Oh, it’s not likely now.  Tell him to stay close at home--don’t let him
skip out, whatever he does.  That would be fatal.  And one thing
more--let me do the worrying."  He smiled.

Marriott had hoped, when the murder trial was over, that he could rest;
he had set in motion the machinery that was to take the case up on
error; he had ordered his transcripts and prepared the petition in error
and the motions, and he was going to have them all ready and file them
at the last moment, so that he might be sure of delay.  Archie had been
taken to the penitentiary, and Marriott was glad of that, for it
relieved him of the necessity of going to the jail so often; that was
always an ordeal.  He had but one more visit to make there,--Curly had
sent for him; but Curly never demanded much.  But now--here was a task
more difficult than ever.  It provoked him almost to anger; he resented
it.  It was always so, he told himself; everything comes at once--and
then he thought of Elizabeth.  It was for her!

He thought of nothing else all that day.  He inquired about Hunter of
every one he met.  He went to his friends, trying to learn all he could.
He picked up much, of course, for there was much to be told of such a
wealthy and prominent man as Amos Hunter, especially one with such
striking personal characteristics. But he found no clue, no hint that he
felt was promising.  Then he suddenly remembered Curly.

He found him in another part of the jail, where he had been immured away
from Archie in order that they might not communicate with each other.
With his wide knowledge and deeper nature Curly was a more interesting
personality than Archie.  He took his predicament with that philosophy
Marriott had observed and was beginning to admire in these fellows; he
had no complaints to make.

"I’m not worried," he said.  "I’ll come out all right. Eades has nothing
on me, and he knows it.  They’re holding me for a bluff.  They’ll keep
me, of course, until they get Archie out of the way, then they’ll put me
on the street.  It wouldn’t do to drop my case now. They’ll just stall
along with it until then.  Of course--there’s one danger--" he looked up
and smiled curiously, and to the question in Marriott’s eyes, he
answered:

"You see they can’t settle me for this; but they might dig up something
somewhere else and put me away on that.  You see the danger."

Marriott nodded, not knowing just what to say.

"But we must take the bitter with the sweet, as Eddie Dean used to say."
Curly spoke as if the observation were original with Dean.  "But, Mr.
Marriott, there’s one or two things I want you to attend to for me."

"Well," consented Marriott helplessly, already overburdened with others’
cares.

"I don’t like to trouble you, but there’s no one I like to trust, and
they won’t let me see any one."

He hesitated a moment.

"It’s this way," he presently went on.  "I’ve got a woman--Jane, they
call her.  She’s a good woman, you see, though she has some bad tricks.
She’s sore now, and hanging around here, and I want her to leave.  She’s
even threatened to see Eades, but she wouldn’t do that; she’s too
square.  But she has a stand-in with McFee, and while he’s all right in
his way, still he’s a copper, and you can’t be sure of a copper.  She
can’t help me any here, and she might queer me; the flatties might pry
something out of her that could hurt me--they’ll do anything.  If you’ll
see Danny Gibbs and have him ship her, I’ll be much obliged.  And say,
Mr. Marriott, when you’re seeing him, tell him to get that thing fixed
up and send me my bit.  He’ll understand.  I don’t mind telling you, at
that.  There’s a man here, a swell guy, a banker, who does business with
Dan.  He’s handled some of our paper--and that sort of thing, you know,
and I’ve got a draw coming there.  It ain’t much, about twenty-five
case, I guess, but it’d come in handy.  Tell Dan to give the woman a
piece of it and send the rest to me here.  I can use it just now buying
tobacco and milk and some little things I need.  Dan’ll understand all
about it."

"Who is this swell guy you speak of--this banker?"

Curly looked at Marriott with the suspicion that was necessarily
habitual with him, but his glance softened and he said:

"I don’t know him myself.  I never saw him--his name’s Hunt, no, Hunter,
or some such thing.  Know him?"

Marriott’s heart leaped; he struggled to control himself.

"Course, you understand, Mr. Marriott," said Curly, fearing he had been
indiscreet, "this is all between ourselves."

"Oh, of course, you can depend on me."

He was anxious now to get away; he could scarcely observe the few
decencies of decorum that the place demanded.  And when he was once out
of the prison, he called a cab and drove with all speed to Gibbs’s
place.  On the way his mind worked rapidly, splendidly, under its
concentration.  When he reached the well-known quiet little saloon in
Kentucky Street, Gibbs took him into the back room, and there, where
Gibbs had been told of the desperate plights of so many men, Marriott
told him of the plight of Dick Ward.  When he had done, he leaned across
the table and said:

"And you’ll help me, Dan?"

Gibbs made no reply, but instead smoked and blinked at Marriott
curiously.  Just as Marriott’s hopes were falling, Gibbs broke the
silence:

"It’s the girl you’re interested in," he said gruffly, "not the kid."
He looked at Marriott shrewdly, and when Marriott saw that he looked not
at all unkindly or in any sense with that cynical contempt of the
sentimental that might have been expected of such a man, Marriott
smiled.

"Well, yes, you’re right.  I am interested in her."

Gibbs threw him one look and then tilted back, gazed upward to the
ceiling, puffed meditatively at his cigar, and presently said, as if
throwing out a mere tentative suggestion:

"I wonder if it wouldn’t do that old geezer good to take a sea-voyage?"

Marriott’s heart came into his throat with a little impulse of fear.  He
felt uneasy--this was dangerous ground for a lawyer who respected the
ethics of his profession, and here he was, plotting with this go-between
of criminals.  Criminals--and yet who were the criminals he went
between?  These relations, after all, seemed to have a high as well as a
low range--was there any so-called class of society whom Gibbs could
not, at times, serve?

"Let’s see," Gibbs was saying, "where is this now? Canada used to do,
but that’s been put on the bum. Mexico ain’t so bad, they say, and some
of them South American countries does pretty well, though they complain
of the eatin’, and there’s nothing doing anyway. A couple of friends of
mine down in New York went to a place somewhere called--let’s
see--called Algiers, ain’t it?"

Marriott did not like to speak, but he nodded.

"Is that a warm country?"

"Yes."

"Where is it?"

"It’s on the shores of the Mediterranean."

"Now that don’t tell me any more than I knew before," said Gibbs, "but
if the climate’s good for old guys with the coin, that’s about all we
want.  It’ll make the front all right, especially at this time o’ year."

Marriott nodded again.

"All right, that’ll do.  An old banker goes there for his health--just
as if it was Hot Springs."

Gibbs thought a moment longer.

"Now, of course, the kid’s father’ll make it good, won’t he?  He’ll put
up?"

"Yes," said Marriott.  He was rather faint and sick about it all--and
yet it was working beautifully, and it must be done.  Even then Ward was
pacing the floor somewhere--and Elizabeth, she was waiting and depending
on him.  "Shall I bring you his check?"

"Hell, no!" exclaimed Gibbs.  "We’ll want the cash. I’ll get it of him.
The fewer hands, the better."

Marriott was wild to get away; he could scarcely wait, but he remembered
suddenly Curly’s commissions, and he must attend to them, of course.  He
felt a great gratitude just now to Curly.

When Marriott told Gibbs of Curly’s request, Gibbs shook his head
decidedly and said:

"No, I draw the line at refereeing domestic scraps. If Curly wants to go
frame in with a moll, it’s his business; I can’t do anything."  And then
he dryly added: "Nobody can, with Jane; she’s hell!"




                                 XXVIII


One morning, a week later, as they sat at breakfast, Ward handed his
newspaper across to Elizabeth, indicating an item in the social column,
and Elizabeth read:


"Mr. Amos Hunter, accompanied by his daughter, Miss Agnes Hunter, sailed
from New York yesterday on the steamer _King Emanuel_ for Naples.  Mr.
Hunter goes abroad for his health, and will spend the winter in Italy."


Elizabeth looked up.

"That means--?"

"That it’s settled," Ward replied.

She grew suddenly weak, in the sense of relief that seemed to dissolve
her.

"Unless," Ward added, and Elizabeth caught herself and looked at her
father fearfully, "Hunter should come back."

"But will he?"

"Some time, doubtless."

"Oh, dear!  Then the suspense isn’t over at all!"

"Well, it’s over for the present, anyway.  Eades can do nothing, so
Marriott says, as long as Hunter is away, and even if he were to return,
the fact that Hunter accepted the money and credited it on his books--in
some fashion--would make it exceedingly difficult to prove anything, and
of course, under any circumstances, Hunter wouldn’t dare--now."

Elizabeth sat a moment idly playing with a fork, and her father studied
the varying expressions of her face as the shades came and went in her
sensitive countenance.  Her brow clouded in some little perplexity, then
cleared again, and at last she sighed.

"I feel a hundred years old," she said.  "Hasn’t it been horrible?"

"I feel like a criminal myself," said Ward.

"We are criminals--all of us," she said, dealing bluntly, cruelly with
herself.  "We ought all of us to be in the penitentiary, if anybody
ought."

"Yes," he acquiesced.

"Only," she said, "nobody ought.  I’ve learned that, anyway."

"What would you do with them?" he asked, in the comfort of entering the
realm of the abstract.

"With us?"

"Well--with the criminals."

"Send us to the penitentiary, I suppose."

"You are delightfully illogical, Betsy," he said, trying to laugh.

"That’s all we can be," she said.  "It’s the only logical way."

Then they were silent, for the maid entered.

"Have we really committed a crime?" she asked, when the door swung on
the maid, who came and went so unconsciously in the midst of these
tragic currents. "Don’t tell me--if we have."

"I don’t know," said Ward.  "I presume I’d rather not know.  I know I’ve
gone through enough to make me miserable the rest of my life.  I know
that we have settled nothing--that we have escaped nothing--except what
people will say."

"Yes, mama, after all, was the only one wise enough to understand and
appreciate the real significance."

"Well, there’s nothing more we can do now," he replied.

"No, we must go on living some way."  She got up, went around the table
and kissed him on the forehead. "We’ll just lock our little skeleton in
the family closet, papa, and once in a while go and take a peep at him.
There may be some good in that--he’ll keep us from growing proud,
anyway."

Ward and Marriott had decided to say as little to Elizabeth as possible
of their transaction.  Ward had gone through a week of agony.  In a day
or two he had raised the little fortune, and kept it ready, and he had
been surprised and a bit perturbed when Gibbs had come and in quite a
matter-of-fact way asked for the amount in cash.  Ward had helplessly
turned it over to him with many doubts and suspicions; but he knew no
other way.  Afterward, when Gibbs returned and gave him Hunter’s
receipt, he had felt ashamed of these doubts and had hoped Gibbs had not
noticed them, but Gibbs had gone away without a word, save a gruff:

"Well, that’s fixed, Mr. Ward."

And yet Elizabeth had wondered about it all.  Her conscience troubled
her acutely, so acutely that when Marriott came over that evening for
the praise he could not forego, and perhaps for a little spiritual
corroboration and comfort, she said:

"Gordon, you have done wonders.  I can’t thank you."

"Don’t try," he said.  "It’s nothing."

She looked troubled.  Her brows darkened, and then, unable to resist the
impulse any longer, she asked:

"But, Gordon, was it right?"

"What?" he asked, quite needlessly, as they both knew.

"What you--what we--did?"

"Yes, it was right."

"Was it legal?"

"N-no."

"Ah!"  She was silent a moment.  "What is it called?"

"What?"

"You know very well--our crime.  I _must_ know the worst.  I must know
just how bad I am."

"You wish to have it labeled, classified, as Doctor Tilson would have
it?"

"Yes, tell me."

"I believe," said Marriott looking away and biting his upper lip, "that
it’s called compounding a felony, or something of that sort."

He was silent and she was silent.  Then he spoke again.

"They disbarred poor old Billy Gale for less than that."

She looked at him, her gray eyes winking rapidly as they did when she
was interested and her mind concentrated on some absorbing problem.
Then she impulsively clasped her white hands in her lap, and, leaning
over, she asked out of the psychological interest the situation must
soon or late have for her:

"Tell me, Gordon, just how you felt when you were--"

"Committing it?"

She nodded her head rapidly, almost impatiently.

"Well," he said with a far-away expression, "I experienced, especially
when I was in Danny Gibbs’s saloon, that pleasant feeling of going to
hell."

"You just _won’t_ reassure me," she said, relaxing into a hopeless
attitude.

"Oh, yes, I will," he replied.  "Don’t you remember what Emerson says?"
He looked up at the portrait of the beautiful, spiritual face above the
mantel.

She looked up in her vivid literary interest.

"No; tell me.  He said everything."

"Yes, everything there is to say.  He said, ’Good men must not obey the
laws too well.’"




                                  XXIX


When Eades read the announcement of Hunter’s departure for Italy he was
first surprised, then indignant, then relieved.  Hunter had reported
Dick’s crime in anger, the state of mind in which most criminal
prosecutions are begun.  The old man had trembled until Eades feared for
him; as he sat there with pallid lips relating the circumstances, he was
not at all the contained, mild and shrewd old financier Eades so long
had known.

"We must be protected, Mr. Eades,"--he could hear the shrill cry for
days--"we must be protected from these thieves!  They are the worst of
all, sir; the worst of all!  I want this young scoundrel arrested and
sent to the penitentiary right away, sir, right away!"

Eades had seen that the old man was in fear, and that in his fear he had
turned to him as toward that ancient corner-stone of society, the
criminal statute. And now he had fled!

Eades knew, of course, that some one had tampered with him; and, of
course, the defalcation had been made good, and now Hunter would be an
impossible witness.  Even Eades could imagine Hunter on the stand, not
as he had been in his office that day, angry, frightened, keenly
conscious of his wrong and recalling minutely all the details; but
senile, a little deaf, leaning forward with a hand behind his ear, a
grin on his withered face, remembering nothing, not cognizant of the
details of his bookkeeping--sitting there, with his money safe in his
pocket, while the case collapsed, Dick was acquitted in triumph--and he,
John Eades, made ridiculous.

But what was he to do?  After all, in the eye of the law, Hunter was not
a witness; and, besides, it was possible that, technically, the felony
might not have been compounded.  At any rate, if it had been he could
not prove it, and as for proceeding now against Ward, that was too much
to expect, too much even for him to exact of himself.  When a definite
case was laid before him with the evidence to support it, his duty was
plain, but he was not required to go tilting after wind-mills, to
investigate mere suspicions.  It was a relief to resign himself to this
conclusion.  Now he could only wait for Hunter’s return, and have him
brought in when he came, but probably, in the end, it would come to
nothing.  Yes, it was a relief, and he could think hopefully once more
of Elizabeth.


The fourteenth of May--the date for the execution of the sentence of
death against Archie--was almost on him before Marriott filed his
petition in error in the Appellate Court and a motion for suspension of
sentence.  He had calculated nicely.  As the court could not hear and
determine the case before the day of execution, the motion was granted,
and the execution postponed.  Marriott’s relief was exquisite; he
hastened to send a telegram to Archie, and was happy, so happy that he
could laugh at the editorial which Edwards printed the next morning,
calling for reforms in the criminal code which would prevent "such
travesties as were evidently to be expected in the Koerner case."

Marriott could laugh, because he knew how hypocritical Edwards was, but
Edwards’s editorials had influence in other quarters, and Marriott more
and more regretted his simple little act of kindness--or of weakness--in
loaning Edwards the ten dollars.  If the newspapers would desist, he
felt sure that in time, when public sentiment had undergone its
inevitable reaction, he might secure a commutation of Archie’s sentence;
but if Edwards, in order to vent his spleen, continued to keep alive the
spirit of the mob, then there was little hope.

"If he could only be sent to prison for life!" said Elizabeth, as they
discussed this aspect of the case. "No,"--she hastened to correct
herself--"for twenty years; that would do."

"It would be the same thing," said Marriott.

"What do you mean?" Elizabeth leaned forward with a puzzled expression
in her gray eyes.

"All sentences to the penitentiary are sentences for life.  We pretend
they’re not, but if a man lives to get out--do we treat him as if he had
paid the debt?  No, he’s a convict still.  Look at Archie, for
instance."

"Look at Harry Graves!  Oh, Gordon,"--Elizabeth suddenly sat up and made
an impatient gesture--"I can’t forget him!  And Gusta!  And those men I
saw as they were taken from the jail!"

"You mustn’t worry about it; you can’t help it."

"Oh, that’s what they all tell me!  ’Don’t worry about it--you can’t
help it!’  No!  But you worried about Archie--and about"--she closed her
eyes, and he watched their white lids droop in pain--"and about Dick."

"I knew them."

"Yes," she said, nodding her head, "you knew them--that explains it all.
We don’t know the others, and so we don’t care.  Some one knows them, of
course, or did, once, in the beginning.  It makes me so unhappy! Don’t,
please, ever any more tell me not to worry, or that I can’t help it.
Try to think out some way in which I can help it, won’t you?"

Meanwhile, Edwards’s editorials were doing their work.  They had an
effect on Eades, of course, because the _Courier_ was the organ of his
party, to which he had to look for renomination.  And they produced
their effect on the judges of the Appellate Court, who also belonged to
that party, but, not knowing Edwards, thought his anonymous utterances
the voice of the people, which, at times, in the ears of politicians
sounds like the voice of God.  The court heard the case early in June;
in two weeks it was decided.  When Marriott entered the court-room on
the morning the decision was to be rendered, his heart sank.  On the
left of the bench were piled some law-books, and behind them, peeping
surreptitiously, he recognized the transcript in the Koerner case.  It
was much like other transcripts, to be sure, but to Marriott it was as
familiar as the features of a friend with whom one has gone through
trouble.  The transcript lay on the desk before Judge Gardner’s empty
chair and therefore he knew that the decision was to be delivered by
Gardner, and he feared that it was adverse, for Gardner had been severe
with him and had asked him questions during the argument.

The bailiff had stood up, rapped on his desk, and Marriott, Eades and
the other lawyers in the courtroom rose to simulate a respect for the
court entertained only by those who felt that they were likely to win
their cases.  The three judges paced solemnly in, and when they were
seated and the presiding judge had made a few announcements, Gardner
leaned forward, pulled the transcript toward him, balanced his gold
glasses on his nose, cleared his throat, and in a deep bass voice and in
a manner somewhat strained, began to announce the decision.  Before he
had uttered half a dozen sentences, Marriott knew that he had lost
again.  The decision of the lower court was affirmed in what was
inevitably called by the newspapers an able opinion, and the day of
Archie’s death was once more fixed--this time for the twenty-first of
October.

A few weeks later, Marriott saw Archie at the penitentiary.  He had gone
to the state capital to argue to the Supreme Court old man Koerner’s
case against the railroad company.  Several weeks before he had tried
the case in the Appellate Court, and had won, the court affirming the
judgment.  This case seemed now to be the only hope of the family, and
Marriott was anxious to have it heard by the Supreme Court before the
learned justices knew of Archie’s case, lest the relation of the old man
and the boy prejudice them.  He felt somehow that if he failed in
Archie’s case, a victory in the father’s case would go far to dress the
balance of the scales of justice and preserve the equilibrium of things.
It was noon when Marriott was at the penitentiary, and he was glad that
the men who were waiting to be killed were then taking their exercise,
for he was spared the depression of the death-chamber.  He met Archie
under the blackened locust tree in the quadrangle.  Archie was hopeful
that day.

"I feel lucky," said Archie.  "I’ll not have to punish,--think so, Mr.
Marriott?"

"We’ve got lots of time," Marriott replied, not knowing what else to
say, "the Supreme Court doesn’t sit till fall."

Pritchard, the poisoner, laid his slender white hand on Archie’s
shoulder.

"Good boy you’ve got here, Mr. Marriott," he said jokingly, "but a
trifle wild."

Marriott laughed, and wondered how he could laugh.

Just then a whistle blew, and the convicts in close-formed ranks filed
by on their way to dinner.  As they went by, one of them glanced at him
with a smile of recognition; a smile which, as Marriott saw, the man at
once repressed, as the convict is compelled to repress all signs of
human feeling.  Marriott stared, then suddenly remembered; it was a man
named Brill, whom he had known years before.  And he, like the rest of
the world, had forgotten Brill!  He had not even cast him a glance of
sympathy!  He felt like running after the company--but it was too late;
Brill must go without the one little kindness that might have made one
day, at least, happier, or if not that, shorter for him.

The last gray-garbed company marched by, the guard with his club at his
shoulder.  The rear of this company was brought up by a convict, plainly
of the fourth grade, for he was in stripes and his head was shaved.  He
walked painfully, with the aid of a crooked cane, lifting one foot after
the other, flinging it before him and then slapping it down uncertainly
with a disagreeable sound to the pavement.

"What’s the matter with that man?" asked Marriott.

"They say he has locomotor ataxia," said Beck, the death-watch, "but
he’s only shamming.  He’s no good."




                                  XXX


Archie had lived in the death-chamber at the penitentiary for nine
months.  Three times had the day of his death been fixed; the first
time, by Glassford for the fourteenth of May, the second time by the
Appellate Court for the twenty-first of October.  Then, the third time
the seven justices of the Supreme Court, sitting in their black and
solemn gowns, sustained the lower court, and set the day anew, this time
for the twenty-third of November.  Then came the race to the Pardon
Board; where Marriott and Eades again fought over Archie’s life.  The
Pardon Board refused to recommend clemency.  But one hope remained--the
governor.  It was now the twenty-second of November--one day more.
Archie waited that long afternoon in the death-chamber, while Marriott
at the state house pleaded with the governor for a commutation of his
sentence to imprisonment for life.

Already the prison authorities had begun the arrangements.  That
afternoon Archie had heard them testing the electric chair; he had
listened to the thrumming of its current; twice, thrice, half a dozen
times, they had turned it on.  Then Jimmy Ball had come in, peered an
instant, without a word, then shambled away, his stick hooked over his
arm.  It was very still in the death-chamber that afternoon.  The eight
other men confined there, like Archie, spent their days in reviving hope
within their breasts; like him, they had experienced the sensation of
having the day of their death fixed, and then lived to see it postponed,
changed, postponed and fixed again.  They had known the long suspense,
the alternate rise and fall of hope, as in the courts the state had
wrangled with their lawyers for their lives.  Not once had Burns, the
negro, twanged his guitar.  Lowrie, who was writing a history of his
wasted life, had allowed his labor to languish, and sat now moodily
gazing at the pieces of paper he had covered with his illiterate
writing.  Old man Stewart, who had strangled his young wife in a jealous
rage, lay on his iron cot, his long white beard spread on his breast,
strangely suggestive of the appearance he soon would present in death.
Kulaski, the Slav, who had slain a saloon-keeper for selling beer to his
son, and never repented, was moody and morose; Belden and Waller had
consented to an intermission of their quarrelsome argument about
religion.  The intermission had the effect of a deference to Archie; the
argument was not to be resumed until after Archie’s death, when he
might, indeed, be supposed to have solved the problem they constantly
debated, and to have no further interest in it.  Pritchard, the
poisoner, a quiet fellow, and Muller had ceased their interminable game
of cribbage, the cards lay scattered on the table, the little pins stuck
in the board where they had left them, to resume their count another
time.  The gloom of Archie’s nearing fate hung over these men, yet none
of them was thinking of Archie; each was thinking of an evening which
would be to him as this evening was to Archie, unless--there was always
that word "unless"; it made their hearts leap painfully.

Just outside the iron grating which separated from the antechamber the
great apartment where they existed in the hope of living again, Beck,
the guard, sat in his well-worn splint-bottomed chair.  He had tilted it
against the wall, and, with his head thrown back, seemed to slumber.
His coarse mouth was open, his purple nose, thrown thus into prominence,
was grotesque, his filthy waistcoat rose and stretched and fell as his
flabby paunch inflated with his breathing. Beside the hot stove, just
where the last shaft of the sun, falling through the barred window,
could fall on her, a black cat, fat and sleek, that haunted the chamber
with her uncanny feline presence, stretched herself, and yawned, curling
her delicate tongue.

When Archie entered the death-chamber, there had been eleven men in it.
But the number had decreased. He could remember distinctly each separate
exit.  One by one they had gone out, never to return.  There was Mike
Thomas; he would remember the horror of that to the end of his life, as,
with the human habit, he expressed it to Marriott, insensible of the
grim irony of the phrase in that place of deliberate death, where, after
all, life persisted on its own terms and with its common phrases and
symbols.  The newspapers had called it a harrowing scene; the inmates of
the death-chamber had whispered about it, calling it a bungle, and the
affair had magnified and distorted itself to their imaginations, and
they had dwelt on it with a covert morbidity.  The newspapers next day
were denied them, but they knew that it had required three shocks--they
could count them by the thrumming of the currents, each time the prison
had shaken with the howl of the awakened convicts in the cell-house.
Bill Arnold, the negro who had killed a real estate agent, had been the
most concerned; his day was but a week after Thomas’s.  The strain had
been too much for Arnold; he had collapsed, raved like a maniac, then
sobbed, fallen on his knees and yammered a prayer to Jimmy Ball, as if
the deputy warden were a god.  They had dragged him out, still on his
knees, moaning "God be merciful; God be merciful."

They had missed Arnold.  He was a jolly negro, who could sing and tell
stories, and do buck-and-wing dancing, and, when Ball was away, and the
guard’s back turned, give perfect imitations of them both. They missed
him out of their life in that chamber, or rather out of their death.  It
seemed strange to think that one minute he was among them, full of warm
pulsing life and strength--and that the next, he should be dead.  They
missed him, as men miss a fellow with whom they have eaten and slept for
months.

These men in the state shambles were there, the law had said, for
murder.  But this was only in a sense true.  One was there, for
instance, because his lawyer had made a mistake; he had not kept
accurate account of his peremptory challenges; he thought he had
exhausted but fifteen, whereas he had exhausted sixteen; that is, all of
them, and so had been unable to remove from the jury a man whom he had
irritated and offended by his persistent questioning; he had been quite
sarcastic, intending to challenge the man peremptorily in a few moments.
Another man was there because the judge before whom he was tried, having
quarreled with his wife one morning, was out of humor all that day, and
had ridiculed his lawyer, not in words, but by sneers and curlings of
his lip, which could not be preserved in the record.
Another--Pritchard, to be exact--was there, first, because he had been a
chemist; secondly, because he, like the judge, had had a quarrel with
his wife; thirdly, because his wife had died suddenly, and traces of
cyanide of potassium had been found in her stomach--at least three of
the four doctors who had conducted the post-mortem examination had said
the traces were of cyanide of potassium--and fourthly, because a small
vial was discovered in the room in which were also traces of cyanide of
potassium; at least, three chemists declared the traces were those of
cyanide of potassium.  And all of them were there for some such reason
as this, and all of them, with the possible exception of Pritchard, had
taken human life.  And yet each one had felt, and still felt, that the
circumstances under which he had killed were such as to warrant killing;
such, indeed, as to make it at the moment seem imperative and necessary,
just as the State felt that in killing these men, circumstances had
arisen which made it justifiable, imperative and necessary to kill.


Though Archie waited in suspense, the afternoon was short, short even
beyond the shortness of November, and at five o’clock Marriott came.  He
lingered just outside the entrance to the chamber in the little room
that was fitted up somehow like a chapel, the room in which the death
chair was placed.  The guard brought Archie out, and he leaned
carelessly against the rail that surrounded the chair, mysterious and
sinister under its draping of black oil-cloth.  The rail railed off the
little platform on which the chair was placed just as a chancel-rail
rails off an altar, possibly because so many people regarded the chair
in the same sacred light that they regarded an altar, and spoke of it as
if its rite were quite as saving and sacerdotal.  But Archie leaned
against the rail calmly, negligently, and it made Marriott’s flesh creep
to see him thus unmoved and practical.  He did not speak, but he looked
his last question out of his blue eyes.

"The governor hasn’t decided yet," Marriott said. "I’ve spent the
afternoon with him.  I’ve labored with him--God!" he suddenly paused and
sighed in utter weariness at the recollection of the long hours in which
he had clung to the governor--"I’m to see him again at eight o’clock at
the executive mansion.  He’s to give me a final answer then."

"At eight o’clock?"  The words slipped from Archie’s lips as softly as
his breath.

"This evening," said Marriott, dreading now the thought of fixity of
time.  He looked at Archie; and it was almost more than he could endure.
Archie’s eyes were fastened on him; his gaze seemed to cling to him in
final desperation.

"Oh, in the name of God," Archie suddenly whispered, leaning toward him,
his face directly in his, "do something, Mr. Marriott! _something_!
_something_!  I can’t, I can’t die to-night!  If it’s only a little more
time--just another day--but not to-night!  Not to-night!  Do something,
Mr. Marriott; _something_!"

Marriott seized Archie’s hand.  It was cold and wet. He wrung it as hard
as he could.  There were no words for such a moment as this.  Words but
mocked.

He saw Archie’s chest heave, and the cords tighten in his swelling neck.
Marriott could only look at him--this boy, for whom he had come to have
an affection--so young, so strong, with the great gloom of death
prematurely, unnecessarily, in his face!

But the face cleared suddenly,--Archie still could think, and he
remembered--he remembered Curly, and Mason and old Dillon, and Gibbs, he
recalled the only ideals he knew--like all of us, he could live up only
to such ideals as he had--he remembered that he must be game.  He
straightened, Marriott saw the fine and supple play of the muscles of
his chest, its white skin revealed through his open shirt.

"So long, Mr. Marriott," said Archie, and then turned and went back into
the death-chamber.

Outside, in the twilight that was filling the quadrangle, Marriott
passed along, the gloom of the place he had left filling his soul.  The
trusty who had conducted him to the death-chamber paced in silence by
his side.  He passed the great tree, gaunt and bare and black now, the
tree under which he had seen that summer day these doomed men take their
exercise, with the Sunday-school scholars standing by and gazing on with
curious covert glances and perverted thoughts. He wished that time had
paused on that day--he had had hope then; this thing as to Archie, it
then had seemed, simply could not be; it might, he had felt, very well
be as to those other doomed men; indeed, it seemed certain and
irrevocable; but as to Archie, no, it could not be.  And yet, here it
was, the night before the day--and but one more hope between them and
the end.  He hastened on, anxious to get out of the place. Any moment
the whistle might blow and he would have to wait until the men had come
from their work; the gates could not be unlocked at that time, or until
the men were locked again in their cells.  They were passing the chapel,
and suddenly he heard music--the playing of a piano.  He stopped and
listened.  He heard the deep bass notes of Grieg’s _Ode to the Spring_,
played now with a pathos he had never known before.

"What’s that?" he asked the trusty.

"That playing?  That’s young Ernsthauser.  He’s a swell piano player."

"May we look in?"

"Sure."

They entered, and stood just inside the door.  A young German, in the
gray convict garb, was seated at a piano, his delicate hands straying
over the keys. One gas-jet burned in the wall above the piano, shedding
its faint circle of light around the pianist, glistening on the dark
panels of the instrument, lighting the pale face of the boy--he was but
a boy--and then losing itself in the great darkness that hung thick and
soft and heavy in the vast auditorium.  Marriott looked and listened in
silence; tears came to his eyes, a vast pity welled within him, and he
knew that never again would he hear the _Ode_ without experiencing the
pity and the pain of this day.  He wished, indeed, that he had not heard
it.  The musician played on, rapt and alone, unconscious of their
presence.

"Tell me about that fellow," said Marriott, as they stole away.

"Oh, he was a musician outside.  The warden lets him play.  The warden
likes music.  I’ve seen him cry when Ernsthauser plays.  He plays for
visitors, and he picks up, they say, a good bit of money every day. The
visitors, except the Sunday-schools, give him tips."

"How long is he in for?"

"Life."

The word fell like a blow on Marriott.  Life!  What paradoxes were in
this place!  What perverted meanings--if there were any meanings left in
the world. This one word life, in one part of the prison meant life
indeed; now it meant death.  Was there any difference in the words,
after all--life and death?  Life in death; death in life?  With Archie
it was death in life, with this musician, life in death--no, it was the
other way.  But was it?  Marriott could not decide.  The words meant
nothing, after all.

The delay in the chapel kept Marriott in the prison for half an hour.
He would not watch the convicts march again to their cells; he did not
wish to hear the clanging of the gong nor the thud of the bolts that
locked them in for the night.

The warden, a ruddy and rotund man, spoke pleasantly to him and asked
him into his office.  The warden sat in a big swivel chair before his
roll-top desk, and, while Marriott waited, locked in now like the rest,
they chatted.  It was incomprehensible to Marriott that this man could
chat casually and even laugh, when he knew that he must stay up that
night to do such a deed as the law required of him.  The consciousness,
indeed, must have lain on the warden, try as he might not to show it,
for, presently, the warden himself, as if he could not help it, referred
to the event.

"How’s Archie taking it?" he asked.

Marriott might have replied conventionally, or politely, that he was
taking it well, but he somehow resented this man’s casual and contained
manner.  And so, looking him in the eyes, and meaning to punish him, he
said:

"He’s trying to _appear_ game, but he’s taking it hard."

"Hard, eh?"

"Yes, hard."  Marriott looked at him sternly.  "Tell me," he emboldened
himself to ask, "how can you do it?"

The warden’s face became suddenly hard.

"Do it?  Bah!  I could switch it into all of them fellows in there--like
that!"  He snapped his fat fingers in the air with a startling,
suggestive electric sound.  And for a moment afterward his upper lip
curled with a cruelty that appalled Marriott.  He looked at this man,
this executioner, who seemed to be encompassed all at once with a kind
of subtle, evil fascination.  Marriott looked at his face--then in some
way at the finger and thumb which, a moment before, had snapped their
indifference in the air.  And he started, for suddenly he recalled that
Doctor Tyler Tilson had declared, in the profound scientific treatise he
had written for the _Post_, that Archie had the spatulate finger-tips
and the stubbed finger-nails that were among the stigmata of the
homicide, and Marriott saw that the fingers of the warden were
spatulate, their nails were broad and stubbed, imbedded in the flesh.
And this man liked music--cried when the life-man played!

"Won’t you stop and have dinner with me?" the warden asked.  "You can
stay for the execution, too, if you wish."

"No, thank you," said Marriott hurriedly.  The thought of sitting down
to dine with this man on this evening was abhorrent, loathsome to him.
He might have sat down and eaten with Archie and his companions, or with
those convicts whose distant shuffling feet he heard; he could have
eaten their bread, wet and salt with their tears, but he could not eat
with this man.  And yet, sensitively, he could not let this man detect
his loathing.

"No," he said, "I must get back to my hotel--" and the thought of the
hotel, with its light and its life, filled him with instant longing.  "I
have another appointment with the governor this evening."

"Oh, he won’t do anything," said the warden.

The words depressed Marriott, and he hurried away with them persistently
ringing in his ears, glad at least to get away from the great pile that
hid so much sorrow and misery and shame from the world, and now sat
black against the gathering night, under the shadow of a mighty wing.


At eight o’clock that evening Archie was sitting on the edge of his cot,
smoking one of the Russian cigarettes Marriott had brought him in the
afternoon.  The pungent and unusual odor filled the death-chamber, and
the other waiting men (who nevertheless did not have to die that night)
sniffed, some suspiciously, some with the air of connoisseurs.

"Ha!" said Pritchard, turning his pale face slowly about, "imported,
eh?"

Then Archie passed them around, though somewhat reluctantly.  Marriott
had brought him several boxes of these cigarettes, and Archie knew they
were the kind Marriott smoked himself.  He was generous enough; this
brotherhood of doomed men held all things in common, like the early
Christians, sharing their little luxuries, but Archie felt that it was
useless to waste such cigarettes on men who would be alive to-morrow;
especially when it was doubtful if there would be enough for himself.

The warden had sent him a supper which was borne in with the effect of
being the last and highest excellence to which the culinary art could
attain.  If there was anything, Ball reported the warden as having said,
that was then in market, and was not there he’d like to know what it
was.  The generosity of the warden had not been limited to Archie; the
others were treated to a like repast; there was turkey for all.  Archie
had not eaten much; he had made an effort and smiled and thanked the
warden when he strolled in afterward for his meed of praise.  Archie
found the cigarettes sufficient.  He sat there almost without moving,
smoking them one after another, end to end, lighting a fresh one from
the cork-tipped stub of the one he was about to fling away.  He sat and
smoked, his eyes blinked in his white face, and his brows contracted as
he tried to think.  He was not, of course, at any time, capable of
sustained or logical thought, and now his thoughts were merely a muddle
of impressions, a curiosity as to whether he would win or lose, as if he
were gambling, and all this in the midst of a mighty wonder, vast,
immeasurable, profound, that was expanding slowly in his soul.

How many times had he waited as he was waiting now, for word from
Marriott?  May fourteenth, October twenty-first, November twenty-third.
What day was this?  Oh, yes, the twenty-second.  What time was it now?
... Kouka?--Kouka was dead; yes, dead. That was good ... And he himself
must die ... Die?  What was that? ... May fourteenth, October
twenty-first, November twenty-third.  He had already died three times.
No, he had died many more times than that; during the trial he had died
again and again, by day, by night.  Here in the death-chamber he had
died; here on this very cot.  Sometimes during the day, when they were
all strangely merry, when Bill Arnold was doing a song and dance, when
they had all forgotten, suddenly, in an instant, it would come over him,
and he would die--die there, amidst them all, with the sun streaming in
the window--die with a smile and a joke, perhaps while speaking to one
of them; they would not know he was dying.  And in the night he died
often, nearly every night, suddenly he would find himself awake, staring
into the darkness; then he would remember it all, and he would die, live
over that death again, as it were.  All about him the others would be
snoring, or groaning, muttering or cursing, like drunkards in their
sleep.  Perhaps they were dying, too.  Now, he must die again.  And he
had already died a thousand deaths.  Kouka had died, too, but only
once....

What was that?  Marriott?  His heart stopped. But, no, it was not
Marriott.  There was still hope; there was always hope so long as
Marriott did not come.  It was only the old Lutheran preacher, Mr.
Hoerr.  He came to pray with him?  This was strange, thought Archie.
Why should he pray now?  What difference could that make?  Prayers could
not save him; he had tried that, sometimes at night, as well as he
could, imploring, pleading, holding on with his whole soul, until he was
exhausted; but it did no good; no one, or nothing heard.  The only thing
that could do any good now was the governor....  Still, he was glad it
was not Marriott.  He had, suddenly, begun to dread the coming of
Marriott....  But this preacher?  Well, he could pray if he wanted to,
it seemed to please him, to be a part somehow of the whole ceremony they
were going through.  Yet he might pray if it gave him any pleasure.  He
had read of their praying, always; but Mr. Hoerr must not expect him to
stop smoking cigarettes while he prayed. Archie lighted a fresh
cigarette hurriedly, inhaled the smoke, filling his lungs in every
cell....  The preacher had asked him if he was reconciled, if he were
ready to meet his God.  Archie did not reply. He stared at the preacher,
the smoke streaming from his lips, from his nostrils.  Ready to meet his
God? What a strange thing to ask!  He was not ready, no; he had not
asked to meet his God, yet.  There was no use in asking such a question;
if they were uncertain about it, or had any question, or feared any
danger they could settle it by just a word--a word from the governor.
Then he would not have to meet his God.... Where was his God anyhow?  He
had no God.... These sky-pilots were strange fellows!  He never knew
what to say to them....  "The blood of Jesus." ... Oh, yes, he had heard
that, too.... Was he being game?  What would the papers say? Would the
old Market Place gang talk about it?  And Mason, and Dillon, and Gibbs?
And Curly, too?  They might as well; doubtless they would.  They settled
whomever they pleased....  Out at Nussbaum’s saloon in the old days....
His mother, and Jakie and little Katie playing in the back yard, their
yellow heads bobbing in the sunshine....  And Gusta!  Poor Gusta!
Whatever became of that chump of a Peltzer? He ought to have fixed
him....  The old man’s rheumatic leg....  And that case of his against
the railroad....  John O’Brien--rattler....  What was the word for leg?
Oh, yes, gimp....  Well, he had made a mess of it....  If they would
only hang him, instead....  Why couldn’t they?  That would be so much
easier.  He was used to thinking of that; so many men had gone through
that.  But this new way, there was so much fuss about it....  Bill
Arnold.... What if? ... Ugh....  How cold it was!  Had some one opened
the window?...

Yes, he was the fall guy, all right, all right....  A black, intolerable
gloom, dread wastes like a desert. Thirst raged in his throat....  It
was dry and sanded.... How rank the cigarette tasted! ... Why did the
others huddle there in the back of the cage, their faces black, ugly,
brutal?  Were they plotting?  They might slip up on him, from behind.
He turned quickly....  Well, they would get theirs, too.... One day in
the wilderness of Samar when their company had been detailed to--the
flag--how green the woods were; the rushes--

His father hated him, too, yes, ever since.... Eades--Eades had done
this.  God!  What a cold proposition Eades was! ... One day when he was
a little kid, just as they came from school in the afternoon....  The
rifle range, and the captain smiling as he pinned his sharp-shooter’s
medal on....  Where was his medal now?  He meant to ask the warden to
have it pinned on his breast after--He must attend to that, and not
forget it.  He had spoken to Beck about it and Beck had promised, but
Beck never did anything he said he would....  If, now, those bars were
not there, he could choke Beck, take his gun--

His mind suddenly became clear.  With a yearning that was ineffable,
intolerable, he longed for some power to stay this thing--if he could
only try it all over again, he would do better now!  His mind had become
clear, incandescent; he had a swift flashing conception of purity,
faith, virtue--but before he could grasp the conception it had gone.  He
was crying, his mother, he remembered--but now he could not see her
face, he could see the shape of her head, her hair, her throat, but not
her face.  He could, however, see her hands quite distinctly.  They were
large, and brown, and wrinkled, and the fingers were curved so that they
were almost always closed....  But this was not being game; he needn’t
say dying game just yet.

Was that Marriott?  No, the warden.  He had brought him something.  He
was thrusting it through the bars.  A bottle!  Archie seized it, pressed
it to his lips.  Whisky!  He drank long and long.  Ah!  That was better!
That did him good!  That beat prayers, or tears, or solitaire, or even
wishing on the black cat. That made him warm, comfortable.  There was
hope now.  Marriott would bring that governor around! Marriott was a
hell of a smart fellow, even if he had lost his case.  Perhaps, if he
had had Frisby,--Frisby was smart, too, and had a pull.  He drank again.
That was better yet.  What would it matter if the governor refused?  It
wouldn’t matter at all; it was all right. This stuff made him feel game.
How much was there in the bottle? ... Ah, the cigarettes tasted better,
too, now...

Marriott?  No, not this time.  Well, that was good. It was the barber
come to "top" him.

The barber shaved bare a little round spot on Archie’s head, exposing a
bluish-white disk of scalp in the midst of his yellow locks.  And then,
kneeling with his scissors, he slit each leg of Archie’s trousers to the
knee.  Then the warden drew a paper out of his pocket and began to read.

Archie could not hear what he read.  After the barber began shaving his
head, he fell into a stupor, and sat there, his eyes staring straight
before him, his mouth agape, a cigarette clinging to his lower lip and
dangling toward his chin.  He looked like a young tonsured priest
suddenly become imbecile.

When they finished, he still sat there.  Some one was taking off his
shoes.  Then there was a step.  He looked up, as one returning from a
dream.  He saw some one standing just within the door of the
antechamber.  Marriott?  No, it was not Marriott.  It was the governor’s
messenger.


Without in the cell-house the long corridors had been laid deep in
yellow sawdust, so that the fall of the feet of the midnight guests
might not awaken the convicts who slept so heavily, on the narrow bunks
in their cells, after their dreadful day of toil.




                                  XXXI


"All ready, Archie."

Jimmy Ball touched him on the shoulder.  The grated door was open, and
Beck stood just inside it, his revolver drawn.  He kept his eye on the
others, huddled there behind him.

"Come, my boy."

He made an effort, and stood up.  He glanced toward the open grated
door, thence across the flagging to the other door, and tried to take a
step.  Out there he could see one or two faces thrust forward suddenly;
they peered in, then hastily withdrew.  He tried again to take a step,
but one leg had gone to sleep, it prickled, and as he bore his weight
upon it, it seemed to swell suddenly to elephantine proportions.  And he
seemed to have no knees at all; if he stood up he would collapse.  How
was he ever to walk that distance?

"Here!" said Ball.  "Get on that other side of him, Warden."

Then they started.  The Reverend Mr. Hoerr, waiting by the door, had
begun to read something in a strange, unnatural voice, out of a little
red book he held at his breast in both his hands.

"Good-by, Archie!" they called from behind, and he turned, swayed a
little, and looked back over his shoulder.

"Good-by, boys," he said.  He had a glimpse of their faces; they looked
gray and ugly, worse even than they had that evening--or was it that
evening when with sudden fear he had seen them crouching there behind
him?

Perhaps just at the last minute the governor would change his mind.
They were walking the long way to the door, six yards off.  The flagging
was cold to his bare feet; his slit trouser-legs flapped miserably,
revealing his white calves.  Walking had suddenly become laborious; he
had to lift each leg separately and manage it; he walked much as that
man in the rear rank of Company 21 walked.  He would have liked to stop
and rest an instant, but Ball and the warden walked beside him, urged
him resistlessly along, each gripping him at the wrist and upper arm.

In the room outside, Archie recognized the reporters standing in the
sawdust.  What they were to write that night would be in the newspapers
the next morning, but he would not read it.  He heard Beck lock the door
of the death-chamber, locking it hurriedly, so that he could be in time
to look on.  Archie had no friend in the group of men that waited in
silence, glancing curiously at him, their faces white as the whitewashed
wall. The doctors held their watches in their hands.  And there before
him was the chair, its oil-cloth cover now removed, its cane bottom
exposed.  But he would have to step up on the little platform to get to
it.

"No--yes, there you are, Archie, my boy!" whispered Ball.  "There!"

He was in it, at last.  He leaned back; then, as his back touched the
back of the chair, started violently. But there were hands on his
shoulders pressing him down, until he could feel his back touch the
chair from his shoulders down to the very end of his spine.  Some one
had seized his legs, turned back the slit trousers from his calves.

"Be quick!" he heard the warden say in a scared voice.  He was at his
right side where the switch and the indicator were.

There were hands, too, at his head, at his arms--hands all over him.  He
took one last look.  Had the governor--?  Then the leather mask was
strapped over his eyes and it was dark.  He could only feel and hear
now--feel the cold metal on his legs, feel the moist sponge on the top
of his head where the barber had shaved him, feel the leather straps
binding his legs and arms to the legs and the arms of the chair, binding
them tightly, so that they gave him pain, and he could not move.
Helpless he lay there, and waited.  He heard the loud ticking of a
watch; then on the other side of him the loud ticking of another watch;
fingers were at his wrists.  There was no sound but the mumble of Mr.
Hoerr’s voice.  Then some one said:

"All ready."

He waited a second, or an age, then, suddenly, it seemed as if he must
leap from the chair, his body was swelling to some monstrous,
impossible, unhuman shape; his muscles were stretched, millions of hot
and dreadful needles were piercing and pricking him, a stupendous
roaring was in his ears, then a million colors, colors he had never seen
or imagined before, colors no one had ever seen or imagined, colors
beyond the range of the spectra, new, undiscovered, summoned by some
mysterious agency from distant corners of the universe, played before
his eyes.  Suddenly they were shattered by a terrific explosion in his
brain--then darkness.

But no, there was still sensation; a dull purple color slowly spread
before him, gradually grew lighter, expanded, and with a mighty pain he
struggled, groping his way in torture and torment over fearful obstacles
from some far distance, remote as black stars in the cold abyss of the
universe; he struggled back to life--then an appalling confusion, a
grasp at consciousness; he heard the ticking of the two watches--then,
through his brain there slowly trickled a thread of thought that
squirmed and glowed like a white-hot wire...

A faint groan escaped the pale lips below the black leather mask, a
tremor ran through the form in the chair, then it relaxed and was still.

"It’s all over."  The doctor, lifting his fingers from Archie’s wrist,
tried to smile, and wiped the perspiration from his face with a
handkerchief.


Some one flung up a window, and a draught of cool air sucked through the
room.  On the draught was borne from the death-chamber the stale odor of
Russian cigarettes.  And then a demoniacal roar shook the cell-house.
The convicts had been awake.




                                 XXXII


Late in the winter the cable brought the news that Amos Hunter had died
at Capri.  Though the conventionalities were observed, it was doubtful
if the event caused even a passing regret in the city where Hunter had
been one of the wealthiest citizens.  The extinction of this cold and
selfish personality was noted, of course, by the closing of his bank for
a day; the Chamber of Commerce, the Board of Trade, and the Stock
Exchange adopted the usual resolutions, and the newspapers printed
editorials in which the old canting, hypocritical phrases were paraded.
To his widow, beyond the shock that came with the breaking of the habit
of years, there was a mild regret, and the daughter, who was with him
when he died, after the American consul had come to her assistance and
arranged to send the body home, experienced a stealthy pleasure in her
homeward journey she had not known on the outward voyage.

But to the Wards the news came as a distinct relief, for now the danger,
if it ever was a danger, that had hung over them for months was
definitely removed. They had grown so accustomed to its presence,
however, the suspense and uncertainty had become so much a part of their
lives that they did not recognize its reality until they found it
removed altogether. Ward and Elizabeth had now and then talked about it
and speculated on its possibilities of trouble in a world where there
was so much trouble; and Mrs. Ward had been haunted by the fear of what
her world might say.  Now that this danger was passed, she could look on
it as a thing that was as if it never had been, and she fondled and
caressed her full-grown son more than ever.  Ward was glad, but he was
not happy.  He saw that Dick’s character had been marked definitely. The
boy had escaped the artificial law that man had made, but he had not
evaded the natural law, and Ward realized, though perhaps not so clearly
as Elizabeth realized, that Dick must go on paying the penalty in his
character year after year--perhaps to the end of his days.

If it made any real difference to Dick, he did not show it.  Very early
in the experience he seemed to be fully reassured, and Ward and
Elizabeth and Marriott saw plainly that he was not wise enough to find
the good that always is concealed somewhere in the bad.  Dick took up
his old life, and, so far as his restricted opportunities now permitted,
sought his old sensations.  Elizabeth sadly observed the continued
disintegration of his character, expressed to her by such coarse
physical manifestations as his excessive eating and drinking and
smoking.  And she saw that there was nothing she or any one could now
do; that no one could help him but himself, and that, like the story of
the prodigal of old, which suddenly revealed its hidden meaning to her
in this personal contact with a similar experience, he must continue to
feed on husks until he came to himself.  How few, she thought, had come
to themselves!  Elizabeth had been near to boasting that her own eyes
had been opened, and they had, indeed, been washed by tears, but now she
humbly wondered if she had come to herself as yet.  She had long ago
given up the fictions of society which her mother yet revered; she had
abandoned her formal charities, finding them absurd and inadequate.
Meanwhile, she waited patiently, hoping that some day she might find the
way to life.

She saw nothing of Eades, though she was constantly hearing of his
success.  His conviction of Archie had given him prestige.  He
considered the case against Curly Jackson, but finding it impossible to
convict him, feeling a lack of public sentiment, he was forced to nolle
the indictment against him and reluctantly let him go.  In fact, Eades
was having his trouble in common with the rest of humanity.  Though he
had been applauded and praised, all at once, for some mysterious reason
he could not understand but could only feel in its effect, he discovered
an eccentricity in the institution he revered.  For a while it was
difficult to convict any one; verdict after verdict of not guilty was
rendered in the criminal court; there seemed to be a reaction against
punishment.

When Amos Hunter died, Eades began to think again of Elizabeth Ward.  He
assured himself that after this lapse of time, now that the danger was
removed, Elizabeth would respect him for his high-minded impartiality
and devotion to duty, and, indeed, understand what a sacrifice it had
been to him to decide as he had.  And he resolved that at the first
opportunity he would speak to her again.  He did not have to wait long
for the opportunity.  A new musician had come to town, and, with his
interest in all artistic endeavors, Braxton Parrish had taken up this
frail youth who could play the violin, and had arranged a recital at his
home.

Elizabeth went because Parrish had asked her especially and because her
mother had urged it on her, "out of respect to me," as Mrs. Ward put it.
When she got there, she told herself she was glad she had come because
she could now realize how foreign all this artificial life had become to
her; she was glad to have the opportunity to correct her reckoning, to
see how far she had progressed.  She found, however, no profit in it,
though the boy, whose playing she liked, interested her.  He stood in
the music-room under the mellow light, and his slender figure bending
gracefully to his violin, and his sensitive, fragile, poetic face, had
their various impressions for her; but she sat apart and after a while,
when the supper was served, she found a little nook on a low divan
behind some palms. But Eades discovered her in her retreat.

"I have been wondering whether my fate was settled--after that last time
we met," he said, after the awkward moment in which they exchanged
banalities.

The wonder was in his words alone; she could not detect the uncertainty
she felt would have become him.

"Is it settled?"

"Yes, it is settled."

He was taken aback, but he was determined, always determined.  He could
not suppose that, in the end, she would actually refuse him.

"Of course," he began again, "I could realize that for a time you would
naturally feel resentful--though that isn’t the word--but now--that the
necessity is passed--that I am in a sense free--I had let myself begin
to hope again."

"You don’t understand," she said, almost sick at heart.  "You didn’t
understand that day."

"Why, I thought I did.  You wanted me--to let him go."

"Yes."

"And because I loved you, to prove that I loved you--"

"Exactly."

"Well, then, didn’t I understand you?"

"No."

"Well, I confess," he leaned back helplessly, "you baffle me."

"Oh, but it wasn’t a _bargain_," she said.  Her gray eyes looked calmly
into his as she told him what she knew was not accurately the truth, and
she was glad of the moment because it gave her the opportunity to
declare false what had so long been true to her, and, just as she had
feared, true to him.  She felt restored, rehabilitated in her old
self-esteem, and she relished his perplexity.

"It seems inconsistent," he said.

"Does it?  How strange!"  She said it coldly, and slowly she took her
eyes from him.  They were silent for a while.

"Then my fate is settled--irrevocably?" he asked at length.

"Yes, irrevocably."

"I wish," he complained, "that I understood."

"I wish you did," she replied.

"Can’t you tell me?"

"Don’t force me to."

"Very well," he said, drawing himself up.  "I beg your pardon."  These
words, however, meant that the apology should have been hers.

As they drove home, her mother said to her:

"What were you and John Eades talking about back there in that corner?"

"An old subject."

"Was he--"  Mrs. Ward was burning with a curiosity she did not, however,
like to put into words.

Elizabeth laughed.

"Yes," she said, "he _was_.  But I settled him."

"I hope you were not--"

"Brutal?"

"Well, perhaps not that--you, of course, could not be that."

"Don’t be too sure."

They discussed Eades as the carriage rolled along, but their points of
view could never be the same.

"And yet, after all, dear," Mrs. Ward was saying, "we must be just.  I
don’t see--"

"No," Elizabeth interrupted her mother.  "You don’t see.  None of you
can see.  It wasn’t because he wouldn’t let Dick go.  It was because
that one act of his revealed his true nature, his real self; showed me
that he isn’t a man, but a machine; not a human being, but a prosecutor;
he’s an institution, and one can’t marry an _institution_, you know,"
she concluded oddly.

"Elizabeth!" said Mrs. Ward.  "That doesn’t sound quite ladylike or
nice!"

Elizabeth laughed lightly now, in the content that came with the new
happiness that was glowing within her.




                                 XXXIII


Curly Jackson was hurrying along Race Street, glad of his old friend,
the darkness, that in February had begun to gather at five o’clock.  He
passed a factory, a tall, ugly building of brick, and in the light of
the incandescent lamps he could see the faces of the machinists bent
over the glistening machines.  Curly looked at these workmen, thought of
their toil, of the homes they would go to presently, of the wives that
would be waiting, and the children--suddenly a whistle blew, the roar of
machinery subsided, whirred, hummed and died away; a glad, spontaneous
shout went up from the factory, and, in another minute, a regiment of
men in overalls and caps, begrimed and greasy, burst into the street and
went trooping off in the twilight.  The scene moved Curly profoundly; he
longed for some touch of this humanity, for the fellowship of these
working-men, for some one to slap his back, and, in mere animal spirits
and joy at release, sprint a race for half a block with him.

Curly felt that these workmen were like him, at least, in one respect,
they were as glad to be released from the factory as he had been half an
hour before to be released from the jail.  He had left the jail, but he
was not free.  Inside the jail he had the sympathy and understanding of
his fellows; here he had nothing but hatred and suspicion.  Even these
men trooping along beside him and, to his joy, brushing against him now
and then, would have scorned and avoided him had they known he was just
released from prison.  There was no work for him among them, and his
only freedom lay still in the fields, the woods, and along the highways
of gravel and of iron.

"Well," he thought, grinding his teeth bitterly, "they’ll have to pay
toll now!"

He found Gibbs in his back room, alone, and evidently in a gloomy mood.
Gibbs stretched his hand across the table.

"Well, Curly, I’m glad to see some one in luck."

"You’re right, Dan, my luck’s good.  I’m no hoodoo. To be in the way I
was and have your pal topped, to make a clear lamas--that looks like
good luck to me."

"Oh, well, they never had anything on you."

"They didn’t have anything on Dutch neither--but in the frame-up I
didn’t know but they’d put a sinker on me, too.  What made me sore was
having that Flanagan rap against me--why, great God! a job like
that--that some fink, some gay cat done after he’d got scared!"  Jackson
could not find the words to express his disgust, his sense of injury,
the stain, as it were, on his professional reputation.

"It was that they put Dutch away on."

"Sure, I know that, Dan, and everybody knows that. It was just like a
mob of hoosiers after you with pitchforks; like that time old Dillon and
Mason and me gave ’em battle in the jungle in Illinois.  Well, that’s
the way these people was.  They was howlin’ around that court-house and
that pogey--God! to think of it! To think of a fellow’s getting a lump
like that handed to him--all for croakin’ a copper!"  Curly shook his
head a moment in his inability to understand this situation, and he held
his hands out in appeal to Gibbs, and said in his high, shrill voice,
emphasizing certain words:

"What in hell do you make of it, Dan?"

"What’s the use wasting time over that?" Gibbs asked.  "That’s all over,
ain’t it?  Then cut it out. Course,"--it seemed, however, that Gibbs had
some final comment of his own to make--"you might say the kid ought
to’ve had a medal for croaking a gendie.  I wisht when he pushed his
barker he’d wiped out a few more bulls.  He was a good shot."

Gibbs said this with an air of closing the discussion, and of having
paid his tribute to Archie.

"Well, Dan," Curly began, "you’ll have to put me on the nut until I can
get to work.  I haven’t even got pad money.  I gave my bit to Jane; she
says graft’s on the fritz.  She twisted a super, but it was an old
canister--has she been in to-day?"

Gibbs shook his head gloomily.

"She didn’t expect ’em to turn me out to-day."  Curly mused in a
moment’s silence.  "Ain’t she the limit?  One day she was goin’ to bash
that sister of poor Dutch, the next she’s doubled with her, holdin’ her
up.  She had me scared when she landed in; I was ’fraid she’d tip off
the lay somehow--course"--he hastened to do her justice--"I knew she
wouldn’t throw me down, but the main bull--  What’s wrong, Dan?"  Curly,
seeing that Gibbs was not interested, stopped suddenly.

"Oh, everything’s wrong.  Dean’s been here--now he’s pinched!"

"No!  What for?"

"You’d never guess."

"The big mitt?"

"No, short change!  He came in drunk--he’s been at it for a month; of
course, if he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have done anything so foolish.  Did
you know a moll buzzer named McGlynn?  Well, he got home the other day
from doin’ a stretch, and Ed gets sorry for him and promises to take him
out.  So they go down to the spill and turned a sucker--Ed flopped him
for a ten!"  Gibbs’s tone expressed the greatest contempt.  "He’ll be
doing a heel or a stick-up next, or go shark hunting.  Think of Ed
Dean’s being in for a thing like that!"

"Is he down at the boob?"

"No, we sprung him on paper.  He’s all broke up--you heard about
McDougall?"

"What about him?"

"Dead; didn’t you know?  Died in Baltimore--some one shot him in a
saloon.  He wouldn’t tell who; he was game--died saying it was all
right, that the guy wasn’t to blame.  And then," Gibbs went on, "that
ain’t all.  Dempsey was settled."

"Yes, I read it in the paper."

"That was a kangaroo, too."

"I judged so; they settled him for the dip.  How did it come off?"

"Oh, it was them farmers down at Bayport.  Dempsey had a privilege at
the fair last fall; he took a hieronymous--hanky-panky, chuck-a-luck."

"Yes, I know," said Curly impatiently, "the old army game."

"Well, he skinned the shellapers, and they squealed this year to get
even.  They had him pinched for the dip.  Why, old Dempsey couldn’t even
stall--he couldn’t put his back up to go to the front!"

"Who did it?"

"Oh, a little Chicago gun.  You don’t know him."

"Well," said Curly, "you have had a run of bad luck."

"Do you know what does it?"  Gibbs leaned over confidentially, a
superstitious gleam in his eye.  "It’s that Koerner thing.  There’s a
hoodoo over that family. That girl’s been in here once or twice--with
Jane. You tell Jane not to tow her round here any more.  If I was you,
I’d cut her loose--she’ll queer you.  You won’t have any luck as long as
you’re filled in with her."

"I thought the old man had some damages coming to him for the loss of
his gimp," said Curly.

"Well, he has; but it’s in the courts.  They’ll job him, too, I suppose.
He can’t win against that hoodoo. The courts have been taking their
time."

The courts, indeed, had been taking their time with Koerner’s case.
Months had gone by and still no hint of a decision.  The truth was, the
judges of the Supreme Court were divided.  They had discussed the case
many times and had had heated arguments over it, but they could not
agree as to what had been the proximate cause of Koerner’s injury,
whether it was the unblocked frog in which he had caught his foot, or
the ice on which he had slipped.  If it was the unblocked frog, then it
was the railroad company’s fault; if it was the snow and ice, then it
was what is known as the act of God.  Dixon, McGee and Bundy, justices,
all thought the unblocked frog was the proximate cause; they argued that
if the frog had been blocked, Koerner could not have caught his foot in
it.  They were supported in their opinion by Sharlow, of the _nisi
prius_ court, and by Gardner, Dawson and Kirkpatrick, of the Appellate
Court; so that of all the judges who were to pass on Koerner’s case, he
had seven on his side.  On the other hand, Funk, Hambaugh and Ficklin
thought it was God’s fault and not the railroad company’s; they argued
it was the ice causing him to slip that made Koerner fall and catch his
foot.

It resulted, therefore, that with all the elaborate machinery of the
law, one man, after all, was to decide this case, and that man was
Buckmaster, the chief justice.  Buckmaster had the printed transcript of
the record and the printed briefs of counsel, but, like most of his
colleagues, he disliked to read records and merely skimmed the briefs.
Besides, Buckmaster could not fix his mind on anything just then, for,
like Archie, he, too, was under sentence of death.  His doctor, some
time before this, had told him he had Bright’s disease, and Buckmaster
had now reached the stage where he had almost convinced himself that his
doctor was wrong, and he felt that if he could take a trip south, he
would come back well again.  Buckmaster would have preferred to lay the
blame of Koerner’s accident on God rather than on the railroad company.
He had thought more about the railroads and the laws they had made than
he had about God and the laws He had made, for he had been a railroad
attorney before he became a judge; indeed, the railroad companies had
had his party nominate him for judge of the Supreme Court.  Buckmaster
knew how much the railroads lost in damages every year, and how the
unscrupulous personal-injury lawyers mulcted them; and just now, when he
was needing this trip south, and the manager of the railroad had placed
his own private car at his disposal, Buckmaster felt more than ever
inclined toward the railroad’s side of these cases.  Therefore, after
getting some ideas from Hambaugh, he announced to his colleagues that he
had concluded, after careful consideration, that Funk and Hambaugh and
Ficklin were right; and Hambaugh was designated to write the profound
opinion in which the decision of the court below was reversed.

Marriott had the news of the reversal in a telegram from the clerk of
the Supreme Court, and he sat a long time at his desk, gazing out over
the hideous roofs and chimneys with their plumes of white steam....
Well, he must tell old Koerner.  He never dreaded anything more in his
life, yet it must be done. But he could wait until morning.  Bad news
would keep.

But Marriott was spared the pain of bearing the news of this final
defeat to Koerner.  It would seem that the law itself would forego none
of its privileges as to this family with which it so long had sported.
The news, in fact, was borne to Koerner by a deputy sheriff.

Packard, the lawyer for the Building and Loan Company which held the
mortgage on Koerner’s house, had been waiting, at Marriott’s request,
for the determination of Koerner’s suit against the railroad company.
That morning Packard had read of the reversal in the _Legal Bulletin_, a
journal that spun out daily through its short and formal columns, the
threads of misery and woe and sin that men tangle into that inextricable
snarl called "jurisprudence."  And Packard immediately, that very
morning, began his suit in foreclosure, and before noon the papers were
served.

When Marriott knocked at the little door in Bolt Street, where he had
stood so often and in so many varying moods of hope and despair,--though
all of these moods, as he was perhaps in his egoism glad to feel, had
owed their origin to the altruistic spirit,--he felt that surely he must
be standing there now for the last time.  He glanced at the front of the
little home; it had been so neat when he first saw it; now it was
weather-beaten and worn; the front door was scratched, the paint had
cracked and come off in flakes.

The door was opened by the old man himself, and he almost frightened
Marriott by the fierce expression of his haggard face.  His shirt was
open, revealing his red and wrinkled throat; his white hair stood up
straight, his lean jaws were covered with a short, white beard, and his
thick white eyebrows beetled fearfully. When he saw Marriott his lips
trembled in anger, and his eyes flashed from their caverns.

"So!" he cried, not opening wide the door, not inviting Marriott in,
"you gom’, huh?"

"Yes, Mr. Koerner," said Marriott, "I came--to--"

"You lost, yah, I know dot!  You lose all your cases, huh, pretty much,
aindt it so?"

Marriott flamed hotly.

"No, it isn’t so," he retorted, stepping back a little. "I have been
unfortunate, I know, in your case, and in Archie’s, but I did--"

"Ho!" scoffed Koerner in his tremendous voice. "Vell!  Maybe you like to
lose anudder case.  _Hier_!  I gif you von!"

With a sudden and elaborate flourish of the arm he stretched over his
crutch, he delivered a document to Marriott, and Marriott saw that it
was the summons in the foreclosure suit.

"I s’pose we lose dot case, too, aindt it?"

"Yes," said Marriott thoughtfully and sadly, tapping his hand with the
paper, "we’ll lose this.  When did you get it?"

"Dis morning.  A deputy sheriff, he brought ’im--"

"And he told you--"

"’Bout de oder von?  Yah, dot’s so."

They were silent a moment and Marriott, unconsciously, and with
something of the habit of the family solicitor, put the summons into his
pocket.

"Vell, I bet dere be no delays in dis case, huh?" Koerner asked.

Marriott wondered if it were possible to make this old man understand.

"You see, Mr. Koerner," he began, "the law--"

The old German reared before him in mighty rage, and he roared out from
his tremendous throat:

"Oh, go to hell mit your Gott-tamned law!"

And he slammed the door in Marriott’s face.


Koerner was right; there were no delays now, no questions of proximate
cause, no more, indeed, than there had been in Archie’s case.  The law
worked unerringly, remorselessly and swiftly; the _Legal Bulletin_
marked the steps day by day, judgment by default--decree--order of sale.
There came a day when the sheriff’s deputies--there were two of them
now, knowing old man Koerner--went to the little cottage in Bolt Street.
Standing on the little stoop, one of them, holding a paper in his hand,
rapped on the door.  There was no answer, and he rapped again.  Still no
answer.  He beat with his gloved knuckles; he kicked lightly with his
boot; still no answer.  The deputies went about the house trying to peep
in at the windows.  The blinds were down; they tried both doors, front
and back; they were locked.

In a neighbor’s yard a little girl looked on with the crude curiosity of
a child.  After the man had tried the house all about, and rightly
imagining from all that was said of the Koerners in the neighborhood
that the law was about to indulge in some new and sensational ribaldry
with them, she called out in a shrill, important voice:

"They’re in there, Mister!"

"Are you sure?"

"Oh, honest!" said the officious little girl, drawing her chin in
affectedly.  "Cross my heart, it’s so."

Then the deputy put his shoulder to the door; presently it gave.

In the front room, on the plush lounge, lay the two children, Jakie and
Katie, their throats cut from ear to ear.  In the dining-room, where
there had been a struggle, lay the body of Mrs. Koerner, her throat
likewise cut from ear to ear.  And from four huge nails driven closely
together into the lintel of the kitchen door, hung the body of old man
Koerner, with its one long leg just off the floor, and from his long
yellow face hung the old man’s tongue, as if it were his last impotent
effort to express his scorn of the law, whose emissaries he expected to
find him there.




                                 XXXIV


The series of dark events that had so curiously interwrought themselves
into the life of Elizabeth Ward seemed, as far as the mind of mortals
could determine, to find its close in the tragedy which the despairing
Koerner contrived in his household.  The effects of all these related
circumstances on those who, however remotely, were concerned in them,
could not, of course, be estimated; but the horror they produced in
Elizabeth made the end of that winter a season of depression that left a
permanent impress on her life and character. For weeks she was
bewildered and afraid, but as the days went by those events began to
assume in her retrospective vision their proper relations in a world
that speedily forgot them in its contemplation of other events exactly
like them, and she tried to pass them in review; the Koerners all were
dead, save Gusta, and she was worse than dead; Kouka and Hunter were
dead; Dick was still astray; Graves and all that horde of poor and
criminal, whose faces for an instant had been turned up in appeal to
her, had sunk into the black abyss again.  What did it all mean?

She sought an answer to the questions, but could find none.  No one
could help her; few, indeed, could understand what it was she wished to
know.  Her father thought the market quotations important; her mother
was absorbed in the way in which certain persons dressed, or served
their meals, or arranged their entertainments; as for the church, where
once she might have gone for help, it was not interested in her
question.

The philosophers and the poets that had been her favorites had now for
her new meanings, it is true, but they had been writing of the poor and
the imprisoned for ages, and yet that very morning in that very city,
not far away, there were countless poor and criminal, and as fast as
these died or disappeared or were put to prison or to death, others
appeared to take their places; the courts ground on, the prisons were
promptly filled, the scenes she had witnessed in the slums and at the
prisons were daily 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.


Meanwhile, everything went on as before.  The peculiar spiritual
experience through which Elizabeth was passing she kept largely to
herself: she could not discuss it with any one; somehow, she would have
found it impossible, because she realized that all those about her,
except perhaps Marriott, would consider it all ridiculous and look at
her in a queer, disconcerting way.  She saw few persons outside of her
own family; people spoke of her as having settled down, and began to
forget her.  But she saw much of Marriott; their old friendly relations,
resumed at the time the trouble of Gusta and Archie and Dick had brought
them together, had grown more intimate.  Of Eades she saw nothing at
all, and perhaps because both she and Marriott were conscious of a
certain restraint with respect to him, his name was never mentioned
between them. But at last an event occurred that broke even this
restraint: it was announced that Eades was to be married.  He was to
marry an eastern girl who had visited in the city the winter before and
now had come back again.  She had been the object of much social
attention, partly because she was considered beautiful, but more,
perhaps, because she was in her own right very wealthy.  She had, in
truth, a pretty, though vain and selfish little face; she dressed
exquisitely, and she had magnificent auburn, that is, red hair.  People
were divided as to what color it really was, though all spoke of it as
"artistic."  And now it was announced that she had been won by John
Eades; the wedding was to occur in the autumn.  The news had interested
Marriott, of course, and he could not keep from imparting it to
Elizabeth; indeed, he could not avoid a certain tone of triumph when he
told her.  He had seen Eades that very morning in the court-house; he
seemed to Marriott to have grown heavier, which may have been the effect
of a new coat he wore, or of the prosperousness and success that were
surely coming to him.  He was one of those men whom the whole community
would admire; he would always do the thing appropriate to the occasion;
it would, somehow, be considered in bad form to criticize him.

The newspapers had the habit of praising him; he was popular--precisely
that, for while he had few friends and no intimates, everybody in the
city approved him.  He was just then being mentioned for Congress, and
even for the governorship.

Yes, thought Marriott, Eades is a man plainly marked for success;
everything will come his way. Eades had stopped long enough--and just
long enough--to take Marriott’s hand, to smile, to ask him the proper
questions, to tell him he was looking well, that he must drop in and see
him, and then he had hastened away.  Marriott had felt a new quality in
Eades’s manner, but he could not isolate or specify it.  Was Eades
changing?  He was changing physically, to be sure, he was growing
stouter, but he was at the age for that; the youthful lines were being
erased from his figure, just as the lines of maturity were being drawn
in his face.  Marriott thought it over, a question in his mind. Was
success spoiling Eades?

But when Marriott told Elizabeth the news, she did not appear to be
surprised; she did not even appear to be interested.  The summer had
come early that year; within a week it had burst upon them suddenly.
The night was so warm that they had gone out on the veranda.  Marriott
watched Elizabeth narrowly, there in the soft darkness, to note the
effect.  But apparently there was no effect.  She sat quite still and
said nothing.  The noise of the city had died away into a harmony, and
the air throbbed with the shrill, tiny sounds of hidden infinitesimal
life.  There came to them the fragrance of the lilacs, just blooming in
the big yard of the Wards, and the fragrance of the lilacs brought to
them memories.  To Marriott, the fragrance brought memories of that
night at Hazel Ford’s wedding; he thought of it a long time, wondering.
After a while they left the veranda and strolled into the yard under the
trees.

"Do you know," said Marriott, "I thought you would be surprised to hear
of John Eades’s engagement."

"Why?" she asked.

"Well, I don’t know; no one had noticed that he was paying her any
attention--"  Suddenly he became embarrassed.  He was still thinking of
the evening at Hazel Ford’s wedding, and he was wondering if Elizabeth
were thinking of it, too, and this confused him.

"Oh," Elizabeth said, as if she had not noticed his hesitation, "I’m
very glad--it’s an appropriate match."

Then she was silent; she seemed to be thinking; and Marriott wondered
what significance there was in the remark she had just made; did it have
a tribute for Eades, or for the girl, or exactly the reverse?

"I was thinking," she began, as if in answer to his thought, and then
suddenly she stopped and gave a little laugh.  "Gordon," she went on,
"can’t you see them?  Can’t you see just what a life they will live--how
correct, and proper, and successful--and empty, and hollow, and deadly
it will be--going on year after year, year after year?  Can’t you see
them with their conception of life, or rather, their lack of conception
of it?"  She had begun her sentence with a laugh, but she ended it in
deep seriousness.  And for some reason they stopped where they were; and
suddenly, they knew that, at last, the moment had come.  Just why they
knew this they could not have told, either of them, but they knew that
the moment had come, the moment toward which they had been moving for a
long time.  They felt it, that was all.  And neither was surprised.
Words, indeed, were unnecessary.  They had been talking, for the first
time in months, of Eades, yet neither was thinking at all of the life
Eades and his fashionable wife would lead, nor caring in the least about
it. Marriott knew that in another instant he would tell Elizabeth what
long had been in his heart, what he should have told her months ago,
what he had come there that very night to tell her; he knew that
everything he had said that night had been intended, in some way, to
lead up to it; he was certain of it, and he thought quite calmly, and
yet when he spoke and heard his own voice, its tone, though low, showed
his excitement; and he heard himself saying:

"I am thinking--do you know of what?  Well, of that night--"

And then, suddenly, he took her hands and poured out the unnecessary
words.

"Elizabeth, do you know--I’ve always felt--well, that little incident
that night at Hazel Ford’s wedding; do you remember?  I was so stupid,
so bungling, so inept.  I thought that Eades--that there was--something;
I thought so for a long time.  I wish I could explain--it was only
because--I loved you!"

He could see her eyes glow in the darkness; he heard her catch her
breath, and then he took her in his arms.

"Oh, Elizabeth, dearest, how I loved you!  I had loved you for a long,
long time, but that night for the first time I fully realized, and I
thought then, in that moment, that I was too late, that there never had
been--"

He drew her close to him, and bent his head and kissed her lips, her
eyes, her hair.

"Oh, Gordon!" she whispered, lifting her face from his shoulder.  "How
very blind you were that night!"


Long after Marriott had gone, Elizabeth sat by her window and looked out
into the night; above the trees the stars glowed in a purple sky.  She
was too happy for sleep, too happy for words.  She sat there and dreamed
of this love that had come to her, and tears filled her eyes.  Because
of this love, this love of Gordon Marriott, this love of all things, she
need ask no more questions for a while.  Love, that was the great law of
life, would one day, in the end, explain and make all things clear.  Not
to her, necessarily, but to some one, to humanity, when, perhaps,
through long ages of joy and sorrow, of conflict and sin, and in hope
and faith, it had purified and perfected itself.  And now by this love
and by the new light within her, at last she was to live, to enter into
life--life like that which had awakened in the world this brooding
tropical night, with its soft glowing stars, its moist air, laden with
the odor of lilacs and of the first blossoms of the fruit trees, and
with the smell of the warm, rich, fecund earth.




                                THE END