times by a hundred lungs.
Myra looked about her at the weary, listless audience. Then she looked
at Joe. He had fallen fast asleep, his head hanging forward. She smiled
sadly and was filled with a strange happiness. He had not been able to
hold out any longer. Well, then, he should sleep, she thought; she would
watch alone.

Then, as she sat and gazed, a drunken woman in the seat before her fell
sound asleep. At once the big special officer at the little gate of wire
netting came thumping down the aisle, leaned close, and prodded her
shoulder with his forefinger, crying:

"Wake up, there!"

She awoke, startled, and a dozen laughed.

Myra had a great fear that the officer would see Joe. But he didn't. He
turned and went back to his post.

Myra watched eagerly--aware of the fact that this scene was not as
terrible to her as it might have been. The experience of the day had
sharpened her receptivity, broadened her out-look. She took it for what
it was worth. She hated it, but she did not let it overmaster her.

There was much business going forward before the judge's desk, and Myra
had glimpses of the prisoners. She saw one girl, bespectacled, hard,
flashy, pushed to the bar, and suddenly heard her voice rise shrill and
human above the drone-like buzzing of the crowd.

"You dirty liar; I'll slap yer face if yer say that again!"

A moment later she was discharged, pushed through the little gateway,
and came tripping by Myra, shouting shrilly:

"I'll make charges against him--I'll break him--I will!"

Several others Myra saw.

A stumpy semi-idiot with shining, oily face and child-staring eyes, who
clutched the railing with both big hands and stood comically in huge
clothes, his eyes outgazing the judge. He was suddenly yanked back to
prison.

A collarless wife-beater, with hanging lips and pleading dog's eyes, his
stout Irish wife sobbing beside him. He got "six months," and his wife
came sobbing past Myra.

Then there was an Italian peddler, alien, confused, and in rags, soon,
however, to be set free; and next a jovial drunk, slapping the officers
on the back, lifting his legs in dance-like motions and shouting to the
judge. He was lugged away for a night's rest.

And then, of course, the women. It was all terrible, new, undreamed of,
to Myra. She saw these careless Circes of the street, plumed, powdered,
jeweled, and she saw the way the men handled and spoke to them.

Scene after scene went on, endless,