Was he living? Was he dead?--stricken by the sight of so many
faces in a doorway considered sacred from all intrusion? No! the
emotion capable of thus transforming the features of so strong a
man must have a deeper source than that. The woman was to blame
for this--the audacious, the unknown, the mysteriously clad woman.
Let her be found. Let her be made to explain herself and the
condition into which she had thrown this good man.
Indignation burst into words, and pity was beginning to voice
itself in inarticulate murmurs which swelled and ebbed, now
louder, now more faintly as the crowd surged forward or drew back,
appalled by that moveless, breathless, awe-compelling figure.
Indignation and pity were at their height when the strain which
held them all in one common leash was loosed by the movement of a
little child.
Attracted possibly by what it did not understand, or simply made
fearless because of its non-comprehension of the mystery before
him, a curly-haired boy suddenly escaped its mother's clutch, and,
toddling up by a pathway of his own to the awesome form in the
great chair, laid his little hand on the judge's rigid arm and,
looking up into his face, babbled out:
"Why don't you get up, man? I like oo better up."
A breathless moment; then the horrified murmur rose here, there
and everywhere: "He's dead! He's dead!" and the mother, with a
rush, caught the child back, and confusion began its reign, when
quietly and convincingly a bluff and masculine voice spoke from
the doorway behind them and they heard:
"You needn't be frightened.
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