The emaciated form of the man in the witness chair was clothed in the gray jacket and trousers of a convict of the first grade. The collar of his jacket stood out from a scrawny neck that had a nude, leathery, rugose appearance, like the neck of a buzzard. If he wore a shirt, it was not visible, either at his neck or at his spindling wrists. As he hung his head and tried to shrink from the concentrated gaze of the crowd into his miserable garments, he suggested a skeleton, dressed up in ribald sport. It was not until Eades had spoken twice that the man raised his head, and then he raised it slowly, carefully, as if dreading to look men in the eyes. His shaven face was long and yellow; the skin at the points of his jaw, at his retreating chin and at his high cheek-bones was tightly stretched, and shone; he rolled his yellow eye-balls, and winked rapidly in the light of freedom to which he was so unaccustomed.
"Who is he?" Marriott whispered quickly.
"An old con.--a lifer," Archie explained. "One o' them false alarms. He's no good. They've promised to put him on the street for this."
But Eades had begun his examination.
"And where do you reside, Mr. Griscom?" Eades was asking in a respectful tone, just as if the man might be a resident of Claybourne Avenue.
"In the penitentiary."
"How long have you been there?"
"Seventeen years."
"And your sentence is for how long?" Eades continued.
The man's eyes drooped.