A
hush had fallen, and some one had whispered, "They're coming!" The
light-hearted chatter had died away on the word; perhaps it was not so
light-hearted after all. But the alarm was false, there was no sign of
the jury, and the talk rose again, as the wind will in a storm.
"We shall want a glass when this is over," whispered one of the pair who
had argued about the case.
"And we'll have it, too, old man!" rejoined his friend.
The white-haired man was grimly interested. So this was the way men
talked while waiting to hear a fellow-creature sentenced to death! It
was worth knowing. And this was what the newspaper men would call a low
buzz--an expectant hush--this animated babble! Yet the air was charged
with emotion, suppressed perhaps, but none the less distinguishable in
every voice. Within earshot a perspiring young pressman was informing
his friends that to come there comfortably you should commit the murder
yourself, then they gave you the Royal Box; but his teeth could be heard
chattering through the feeble felicity. The white-headed listener curled
a contemptuous nostril. They could joke, and yet they could feel! He
himself betrayed neither weakness, but sat waiting patiently and idly
listening, with the same grim jaw and the same inscrutable eye with
which he had watched the prisoner and the jury alternately throughout
the week.
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