A large purple spot on the floor showed where the old man’s life had ebbed away.  Close by this spot, precisely where it had been picked up, lay the long oaken club with the iron tip, which, it was supposed, had done the dreadful deed.  There were small splashes and spots on it too.

The fun of the reporters, the chat of the coroner and his friends, the readings and airy meditations of the jurors, were all suddenly checked by the appearance of Marcus Wilkeson, escorted by two police officers, and Messrs. Overtop and Maltboy, Patching and Tiffles.  All five had passed the night in the station house—­Messrs. Patching and Tiffles from compulsion, as witnesses, and possible accomplices, and Overtop and Maltboy as guides, philosophers, and friends.  All looked seedy and criminal, as if there were something in the atmosphere of station houses to give a man the semblance of a vagabond and an outcast.  Marcus Wilkeson was very pale, and, when he looked across the room, as he did upon his entrance, by a singular impulse, and saw the great blood mark and the club on the floor, he trembled with emotion.

The keen eyes of the coroner caught these signs, and he immediately brought in a mental verdict of “guilty.”  Some of the jury observed the same signs, and thought them suspicious.  The reporters looked upon Marcus Wilkeson without emotion or prejudgment.  They were so accustomed to seeing murderers, that they regarded them simply as a part of the business community—­a little vicious, perhaps, but not so much worse than other people, after all.  One reporter, attached to an illustrated paper, dashed off the profile of Marcus Wilkeson, under the cover of his hat, and caught the dejected expression of his face to a nicety.

CHAPTER II.

STATEMENT OF THE PRISONER.

The coroner received Marcus with that air of consideration which magistrates instinctively bestow upon persons charged with great crimes, and informed him, with some respect, that he was brought there to make any explanation that he saw fit, touching his connection with “this ’ere murder.”

The party were then accommodated with seats near the jury, and facing the reporters.  As Marcus looked up, and saw those practised scribes sharpening their pencils, his heart sank deeper within him.  The vision which had troubled him all night, of a broadside notoriety in all the city papers, rose before his mind, clothed with fresh horror.  The dull sound of sharpening those pencils was like the whetting of the executioner’s knife.

The proper course was to have accepted an unsworn statement from the prisoner; but the coroner always administered oaths when prisoners were willing to take them.  The repetition of that jargon with a profane conclusion (for so it seemed, in the slipshod way that it was said), which the coroner called an oath, was a positive pleasure to that official.  As Marcus desired to take the oath, the coroner rattled off the unintelligible something, and handed him a Bible, which the prisoner pressed reverentially to his lips.  Marcus, being now supposed to be sworn, proceeded, with what firmness he could muster, to answer the numerous interrogatories of the coroner.  That official chewed hard, and, as it were, spit out his questions.