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