It's always snowing hard in his soul!"

Unlike most icy-tempered men, though, Third Deputy Commissioner Donohue
was addicted to speech. Dearly he loved to hear the sound of his own
voice. Give to Donohue a congenial topic, such as some one's official or
personal shortcomings, and a congenial audience, and he excelled
mightily in saw-edged oratory, rolling his r's until the tortured
consonants fairly lay on their backs and begged for mercy.

This, however, would have to be said for Deputy Commissioner Donohue--he
was a hard one to fool. Himself a grayed ex-private of the force, who
had climbed from the ranks step by step through slow and devious stages,
he was coldly aware of every trick and device of the delinquent
policeman. A new and particularly ingenious subterfuge, one that tasted
of the fresh paint, might win his begrudged admiration--his gray flints
of eyes would strike off sparks of grim appreciation; but then, nearly
always, as though to discourage originality even in lying, he would
plaster on the penalty--and the lecture--twice as thick. Wherefore,
because of all these things, the newspaper men at headquarters viewed
this elderly disciplinarian with mixed professional emotions. Presiding
over a trial day, he made abundant copy for them, which was very good;
but if the case were an important one he often prolonged it until they
missed getting the result into their final editions, which, if you know
anything about final editions, was very, very bad.

It was so on this particular afternoon. Here it was nearly dusk. The
windows toward the east showed merely as opaque patches set against a
wall of thickening gloom, and the third deputy commissioner had started
in at two-thirty and was not done yet. Sparse and bony, he crouched
forward on the edge of his chair, with his lean head drawn down between
his leaner shoulders and his stiff stubble of hair erect on his scalp,
and he looked, perching there, like a broody but vigilant old crested
cormorant upon a barren rock.

Except for one lone figure of misery, the anxious bench below him was by
now empty. Most of the witnesses were gone and most of the spectators,
and all the newspaper men but two. He whetted a lean and crooked
forefinger like a talon on the edge of the docket book, turned the page
and called the last case, being the case of Patrolman James J. Rogan.
Patrolman Rogan was a short horse and soon curried. For being on such
and such a day, at such and such