Then the march began, and all the prisoners appeared to want to march the double, but they had only a short time of duty.
The second man who passed was an old one, some forty years of age, who wore a swallow-tail coat, and looked most like a defaulting half-starved attorney’s clerk.
He gave a searching look, knit up his brows, as if to see “who in creation there could be that he knew,” and then apparently satisfied that he was not “wanted,” passed on with a livelier tread.
The third but a young man, with a bull neck, who held his head down and stared at the ground, as though afraid of seeing anyone strange, for fear they should recognise him.
He had apparently gone through this class of inspection before.
Two other young fellows passed, of lively mien, and then there came
ONE WHO WAS WANTED.
A man of about five feet three or four inches in height, with white hair on his head, cut very short, and bald in the front of his head, but the razor had lately done this.
His eyebrows heavy and overhanging the eyes, which were deeply socketed.
A chin standing very prominently, and, as if to make it more so, the head was thrown back with an air of half self-assertion, yet half caution, as though there was a degree of hesitancy in the action.