going," he said to the
sergeant. "I guess she'll break down and confess to-day."

They drove her to court in a Black Maria, packed among thieves,
drunkards and disorderly characters. Upon her right side pressed a
slant-faced youth with a huge nose and wafer-thin, flapping ears, who
had snatched a purse in Houston Street. On her left, lolling against
her, was an old woman in dirty calico, with a faded black bonnet
ludicrously awry upon scant white hair--a drunkard released from the
Island three days before and certain to be back there by noon.

"So you killed him," the old woman said to her with a leer of sympathy
and admiration.

At this the other prisoners regarded her with curiosity and deference.
Hilda made no answer, seemed not to have heard. Her eyes were closed
and her face was rigid and gray as stone.

"She needn't be afraid at all," declared a young woman in black satin,
addressing the company at large. "No jury'd ever convict as
good-looking a girl as her."

"Good business!" continued the old woman. "I'd 'a' killed mine if I
could 'a' got at him--forty years ago." She nodded vigorously and
cackled. Her cackle rose into a laugh, the laugh into a maudlin howl,
the howl changing into a kind of song--

"My love, my love, my love and I--we had
to part, to part!
And it broke, it broke, it broke my heart
--it broke my heart!"

"Cork up in there!" shouted the policeman from the seat beside the
driver.

The old woman became abruptly silent. Hilda moaned and quivered. Her
lips moved. She was murmuring, "I can't stand it much longer--I can't.
I'll wake soon and see Aunt Greta's picture looking down at me from the
wall and hear mother in the kitchen--"

"Step lively now!" They were at the Essex Market police court; they
were filing into the waiting-pen. A lawyer, engaged by her father,
came there, and Hilda was sent with him into a little consultation
room. He argued with her in vain. "I'll speak for myself," she said.
"If I had a lawyer they'd think I was guilty."

After an hour the petty offenders had been heard and judged. A court
officer came to the door and called: "Hilda Brauner!"

Hilda rose. She seemed unconcerned, so calm was she. Her nerves had
reached the point at which nerves refuse to writhe, or even to record
sensations of pain. As she came into the dingy, stuffy little
courtroom she didn't note the throng which filled it to the