“But ask him what he said, Jimmy, and what he meant when he took hold of my arm.”

So spoke Emily Travis, and Jimmy put the question and received the answer.

“Him say you no afraid,” said Jimmy.

Emily Travis looked pleased.

“Him say you no skookum, no strong, all the same very soft like little baby.  Him break you, in um two hands, to little pieces.  Him t’ink much funny, very strange, how you can be mother of men so big, so strong, like dat p’liceman.”

Emily Travers kept her eyes up and unfaltering, but her cheeks were sprayed with scarlet.  Little Dickensen blushed and was quite embarrassed.  The policeman’s face blazed with his boy’s blood.

“Come along, you,” he said gruffly, setting his shoulder to the crowd and forcing a way.

Thus it was that Imber found his way to the Barracks, where he made full and voluntary confession, and from the precincts of which he never emerged.

Imber looked very tired.  The fatigue of hopelessness and age was in his face.  His shoulders drooped depressingly, and his eyes were lack-lustre.  His mop of hair should have been white, but sun and weatherbeat had burned and bitten it so that it hung limp and lifeless and colorless.  He took no interest in what went on around him.  The courtroom was jammed with the men of the creeks and trails, and there was an ominous note in the rumble and grumble of their low-pitched voices, which came to his ears like the growl of the sea from deep caverns.

He sat close by a window, and his apathetic eyes rested now and again on the dreary scene without.  The sky was overcast, and a gray drizzle was falling.  It was flood-time on the Yukon.  The ice was gone, and the river was up in the town.  Back and forth on the main street, in canoes and poling-boats, passed the people that never rested.  Often he saw these boats turn aside from the street and enter the flooded square that marked the Barracks’ parade-ground.  Sometimes they disappeared beneath him, and he heard them jar against the house-logs and their occupants scramble in through the window.  After that came the slush of water against men’s legs as they waded across the lower room and mounted the stairs.  Then they appeared in the doorway, with doffed hats and dripping sea-boots, and added themselves to the waiting crowd.

And while they centred their looks on him, and in grim anticipation enjoyed the penalty he was to pay, Imber looked at them, and mused on their ways, and on their Law that never slept, but went on unceasing, in good times and bad, in flood and famine, through trouble and terror and death, and which would go on unceasing, it seemed to him, to the end of time.