Tread lightly here—let outraged justice weep!
There had been a severe change in the weather since morning. The pure frosty air, that invigorated everything it touched, hardened toward night, into one of those cold storms—half snow, half ice—that chill you to the vitals. A coating of this sleety snow lay upon the Park, icing the trees with crystal, and bending every twig as with a fruitage of pearls. The stone pavement and the City Hall steps were carpeted an inch deep by the storm; and the hail crackled sharply under foot if any one attempted to pass over them. In short, it was one of those nights when everything living seeks shelter, and no human being is seen abroad, save those given up to wild desolation, either of body or mind.
Miserable and stormy as the night was, two persons had been wandering in it for hours, sometimes lost in the blackness of the storm, sometimes gliding by the lamps that seemed struggling to keep themselves alive—and again stealing up the curving staircase within the City Hall, ghost-like and shadowy, only to come forth in the tempest and wander as before.
In the darkness, it would have been difficult to judge of the sex or condition of those persons. Both were muffled in garments black as the clouds that hung over them. Both were tall, and, sometimes as they walked, the outlines of their persons blended together, till they seemed scarcely more than a mass of moving darkness. It was remarkable that, standing or walking, they never lost sight of a range of windows in one wing of the City Hall, where lights shone gloomily into the mist, not wandering about as the lamps of a happy household often do, but motionless, like watchfires, half smothered by the dense atmosphere.
Once more these two persons ascended the steps and entered the vestibule, from which the horse-shoe staircase diverges. A shower of sleet followed them, and the wind swept wailing over their heads as they went in. A lamp burned near the staircase, and for a moment, the faces of those two wanderers became visible. The one that struck you first, was that of a female. Tresses, that had of late been curled, hung in dripping masses down each side of her face, that was not only as white, but seemed cold also as marble. A pair of wild eyes, really blue, but blackened with the smothered fire that protracted suspense leaves behind it, gleamed out from the shadow of her bonnet, around which the folds of a heavy lace veil dripped in sodden masses to her shoulders. The velvet cloak which shrouded her was heavy with rain; its lustre all gone, and its rich fringes, frozen together with sleet, rattled against the balustrades as she pressed them in passing. Her companion—but even as we attempt to describe him, the woman turns, with her hand upon the balustrade, and addresses him—thus giving his identity better than any description could convey.
"What was that, Jacob? A noise—the stirring of feet! Oh, my God—my God—they are coming in!"
She caught hold of Jacob's rough over-coat with one hand. The gleam of her teeth, as they knocked together, made the strong man recoil. It gave an expression of fearful agony to her face. He listened.
"No, it is the wind breaking through the hall."
"How it sobs! How like a human voice it is! Do you hear it? Death!—death!—that is what it says!"
"You shudder—you are cold. How your teeth chatter!" said Jacob, folding the half-frozen cloak about her. "What can I do? If you would only go home, I will come the first minute after the verdict. Do—do go!"