"Anything further, Mr. Marriott?" asked Glassford.
Marriott had a momentary rage at this impersonation of the vengeful state sitting before him, and exclaimed with disgust:
"Oh, I guess not."
XVI
The instant Marriott entered the court-house the next morning he was sensible of a change; it was as palpable as the heavy, overheated atmosphere indoors after the cool air outdoors. He could not account for this change; he knew only that it had come in the night, and that it boded some calamity in the world. Already it seemed to have had its effect on the men he met, clerks, attachés, and loafers; they glanced at him stealthily, then averted their eyes quickly. Somehow they filled Marriott with loathing and disgust.
As he went up in the swiftly-ascending elevator, the old man who operated it gave him that same look, and then observed:
"Something's in the air to-day."
Yes, thought Marriott, something is in the air. But what?
"I reckon it's going to storm," the white-headed veteran of the great war went on. "My rheumatiz hurts like hell this morning."
What mysterious relation was it, wondered Marriott, that bound this old man through his joints--gnarled by the exposure of his service to his country so long before--to all nature, foretelling her convulsions and cataclysms? What mysterious relation was it that bound men's minds to the moral world, foretelling as well its catastrophes and tragedies?