shaling of the jury panel. There ensued a great
bustling and tramping as the clerk called off the names of those drawn.

While this was proceeding, Joe cast his eyes about the room, animated by
a double hope: that Alice would be there to hear him tell his story;
that Morgan had come and was in waiting to supply the facts which honor
sealed upon his own tongue. He could see only the first few rows of
benches with the certainty of individual identification; they were
filled with strangers. Beyond them it was conglomerate, that fused and
merged thing which seemed a thousand faces, yet one; that blended and
commingled mass which we call the public. Out of the mass Joe Newbolt
could not sift the lean, shrewd face of Curtis Morgan, nor glean from it
the brown hair of Alice Price.

The discovery that Alice was not there smote him with a feeling of
sudden hopelessness and abandonment; the reproaches which he had kindled
against himself in his solitary days in jail rose up in redoubled
torture. He blamed the rashness of an unreasoning moment in which he had
forgotten time and circumstance. Her interest was gone from him now,
where, if he had waited for vindication, he might have won her heart.

But it was a dream, at the best, he confessed, turning away from his
hungry search of the crowd, his head drooping forward in dejection. What
did it matter for the world's final exculpation, if Alice were not there
to hear?

His mother nodded to somebody, and touched his hand. Ollie it was, whom
she greeted. She was seated near at hand, beside a fat woman with a red
and greasy face, whose air of protection and large interest proclaimed
her a relative. Joe thought that she filled pretty well the bill that
Ollie had made out of her mother, on that day when she had scorned her
for having urged her into marriage with Isom.

Ollie was very white in her black mourning dress, and thinner of
features than when he had seen her last. She smiled, and nodded to him,
with an air of timid questioning, as if doubtful whether he had expected
it, and uncertain how it would be received. Joe bowed his head,
respectfully.

What a wayside flower she seemed, thought he; how common beside Alice!
Yet, she had been bright and refreshing in the dusty way where he had
found her. He wondered why she was not within the rail also, near
Hammer, if she was for him; or near the prosecutor, if she was on the
other side.

He was not alone in this speculation. Many