“How can we tell, my child?”
“And the girls, Ruthy and Eva, will they bring them too?”
The old woman shook her head.
“I don’t know. How can I?”
“Where are they—oh! where are they, mother?” cried the boy, startled with a new fear.
“At home. I left them safe—don’t, don’t tremble so, Jimmy.”
“Did I tremble? Mother, don’t mind, I didn’t mean to; only I was so frightened about the girls. Do they mean to kill us all?”
“Come, come, little chap. Don’t you see that we’re waiting? A little of this sort of thing is well enough; but you’re wanted up yonder, you know.”
The policeman who said this took James by the arm, not altogether unkindly, and moved toward a flight of stairs that led into the front of the most gloomy building that civilization ever invented.
Through dark corridors, narrow passages, and sparsely furnished rooms, the officers led mother and son, who, quite unconscious of crime, felt all the shame and bitter humiliation of guilt. Through those vast Egyptian pillars that seemed strong enough to bear up mountains, and whose very shadows lay like overthrown granite upon the paved floor, they went, growing more and more heavy-hearted into that stone wilderness, till, at last, they stood in a square room, with a desk running across one end, and some wooden benches along the opposite side.