"It would be the same thing," said Marriott.
"What do you mean?" Elizabeth leaned forward with a puzzled expression in her gray eyes.
"All sentences to the penitentiary are sentences for life. We pretend they're not, but if a man lives to get out--do we treat him as if he had paid the debt? No, he's a convict still. Look at Archie, for instance."
"Look at Harry Graves! Oh, Gordon,"--Elizabeth suddenly sat up and made an impatient gesture--"I can't forget him! And Gusta! And those men I saw as they were taken from the jail!"
"You mustn't worry about it; you can't help it."
"Oh, that's what they all tell me! 'Don't worry about it--you can't help it!' No! But you worried about Archie--and about"--she closed her eyes, and he watched their white lids droop in pain--"and about Dick."
"I knew them."
"Yes," she said, nodding her head, "you knew them--that explains it all. We don't know the others, and so we don't care. Some one knows them, of course, or did, once, in the beginning. It makes me so unhappy! Don't, please, ever any more tell me not to worry, or that I can't help it. Try to think out some way in which I can help it, won't you?"
Meanwhile, Edwards's editorials were doing their work. They had an effect on Eades, of course, because the Courier was the organ of his party, to which he had to look for renomination. And they produced their effect on the judges of the Appellate Court, who also belonged to that party, but, not knowing Edwards, thought his anonymous utterances the voice of the people, which, at times, in the ears of politicians sounds like the voice of God. The court heard the case early in June; in two weeks it was decided. When Marriott entered the court-room on the morning the decision was to be rendered, his heart sank. On the left of the bench were piled some law-books, and behind them, peeping surreptitiously, he recognized the transcript in the Koerner case. It was much like other transcripts, to be sure, but to Marriott it was as familiar as the features of a friend with whom one has gone through trouble. The transcript lay on the desk before Judge Gardner's empty chair and therefore he knew that the decision was to be delivered by Gardner, and he feared that it was adverse, for Gardner had been severe with him and had asked him questions during the argument.
The bailiff had stood up, rapped on his desk, and Marriott, Eades and the other lawyers in the courtroom rose to simulate a respect for the court entertained only by those who felt that they were likely to win their cases. The three judges paced solemnly in, and when they were seated and the presiding judge had made a few announcements, Gardner leaned forward, pulled the transcript toward him, balanced his gold glasses on his nose, cleared his throat, and in a deep bass voice and in a manner somewhat strained, began to announce the decision. Before he had uttered half a dozen sentences, Marriott knew that he had lost again. The decision of the lower court was affirmed in what was inevitably called by the newspapers an able opinion, and the day of Archie's death was once more fixed--this time for the twenty-first of October.