One after another the jurymen shook their heads.
“Then the Court directs the sheriff to remove the elderly party calling himself 'Ulswater,' and his presumable accomplice, the younger party with the particular necktie and advantageous trousers, calling himself 'Kirby,' and that the sheriff hold these parties for further action. The Court is adjourned.”
CHAPTER XXXIV—AMBASSADORS FROM ZIONVILLE
IT seemed to me I was getting into the habit of incarceration. I passed from jail to jail. It was becoming monotonous.
But this was a creditable jail, built in the fervour of the Reformation, with a considerable veranda in front facing on Main Street. In the fervour of the Reformation it had been, as you might say, a centre of interest in Zionville. So many citizens got enclosed there during that period for one reason or another connected with their not understanding the tendency of events, that this jail always had a peculiar social standing. It was not like the jails of other communities. It bore no necessary social stigma. If a citizen was deposited there, it made all the difference, and depended on the amount of repentance his case was supposed to call for, whether he was put in a front or a rear cell. Because in a front-windowed cell he could see Main Street, and maybe talk with friends in the street, or join in the conversation on the veranda. In this way the Judge and the condemned of the preceding afternoon might often be arguing in the evening through a barred window about politics or religion. Hence it always made a man vexed and low in mind to be put in a rear cell, where he couldn't see Main Street.
Doctor Ulswater and I were put in a cell over the veranda, and through the barred window we could see the length of Main Street, which ran from the railway station, at one end of the town, to nothing in particular, as yet, at the other end. Main Street now runs from the railway to the cemetery, but at that time it ran off into generalities.
Main Street at that moment was full of a crowd which acted as if it all belonged to one family. I could see Louisa standing on a dry-goods box and talking confidentially to the family. There was a general session of Zionville on Main Street. I judged we were the subject of conversation, along with Hannah Atkins. William C. Jones and two other statesmen were walking around arm in arm. The whole place was buzzing like a beehive.
Then I noticed that Dr. Ulswater was not saying anything. He was looking over my shoulder through the bars silently, and all anger was gone from his face.