The scrape of the feet that were so soon to shuffle into the penitentiary, and leave scarce an echo of their hopeless fall behind, roused every one in the court-room. Even the bailiff got to his rheumatic feet and hastily arranged a row of chairs in front of the trial tables. The prisoners sat down and tried to hide their manacles by dropping their hands between their chairs.
There were seven of these prisoners, the oldest the man whom Danner had conducted. He sat with his white head cast down, but his blue eyes roamed here and there, taking in the whole court-room. The other prisoners were young men, one of them a negro; and in the appearance of all there was some pathetic suggestion of a toilet. All of them had their hair combed carefully, except the negro, whose hair could give no perceptible evidence of the comb, unless it were the slight, almost invisible part that bisected his head. But he gave the same air of trying somehow to make the best appearance he was capable of on this eventful day.
Ward's eyes ran rapidly along the row, and rested on the brown-haired, well-formed head of the youngest of the group. He was scarcely more than a boy indeed, and he alone, of all the line, was well dressed. His linen was white, and he wore his well-fitting clothes with a certain vanity and air of style that even his predicament could not divest him of. As Ward glanced at him, an expression of pain came to his face; the color left it for an instant, and then it grew redder than it had been before.
These prisoners were about to be sentenced for various felonies. Two of them, the old man with the white hair and the negro, had been tried, the one for pocket-picking, the other for burglary. The others were to change their pleas from not guilty to guilty and throw themselves on the mercy of the court. They sat there, whispering with one another, gazing about the room, and speculating on what fate awaited them, or, as they would have phrased it, what sentences they would draw. Like most prisoners they were what the laws define as "indigent," that is, so poor that they could not employ lawyers. The court in consequence had appointed counsel, and the young lawyers who now stood and joked about the fates that were presently to issue from the judge's chambers, were the counsel thus appointed. Now and then the prisoners looked at the lawyers, and some of them may have indulged speculations as to how that fate might have been changed--perhaps altogether avoided--had they been able to employ more capable attorneys. Those among them who had been induced by their young attorneys to plead guilty--under assurances that they would thus fare better than they would if they resisted the law by insisting on their rights under it--probably had not the imagination to divine that they might have fared otherwise at the hands of the law if these lawyers had not dreaded the trial as an ordeal almost as great to them as to their appointed clients, or if they had not been so indigent themselves as to desire speedily to draw the fee the State would allow them for their services. Most of the prisoners, indeed, treated these young lawyers with a certain patience, if not forbearance, and now they relied on them for such mercy as the law might find in its heart to bestow. Most of them might have reflected, had they been given to the practice, that on former experiences they had found the breast of the law, as to this divine quality, withered and dry. They sat and glanced about, and now and then whispered, but for the most part they were still and dumb and hopeless. Meanwhile their lawyers discussed and compared them, declaring their faces to be hard and criminal; one of the young men thought a certain face showed particularly the marks of crime, and when his fellows discovered that he meant the face of Danner, they laughed aloud and had a good joke on the young man. The young man became very red, almost as red as Danner himself, whom, he begged, they would not tell of his mistake.
At that moment the door of the judge's chambers opened, and instant silence fell. McWhorter, the judge, appeared. He was a man of middle size, with black curly hair, smooth-shaven face, and black eyes that caught in the swiftest glance the row of prisoners, who now straightened and fixed their eyes on him. McWhorter advanced with a brisk step to the bench, mounted it, and nodding, said:
"You may open court, Mr. Bailiff."
The bailiff let his gavel fall on the marble slab, and then with his head hanging, his eyes roving in a self-conscious, almost silly way, he said:
"Hear ye, hear ye, hear ye, this honorable court is now in session."
The bailiff sat down as in relief, but immediately got up again when the judge said:
"Bring me the criminal docket, Mr. Bailiff."