could keep her from the pronouncement of the words that would free him and bind herself in intolerable ill.  Her uprightness was terrible.  It would take her fearful but determined into the pits of any hell.  His hands slowly clenched, his muscles tightened, in a spasm of anguish.  God, why hadn’t he recognized the desperation in Essie’s quivering face!  It would have been already too late, he added in thought; it went back, back—­

A knock sounded discreetly on the door:  and, opening it, he saw a young man, remembered as a law student in Stephen’s office.  “They are ready for you, sir, at the City Hall,” he stated, in an over-emphasized, professional calm.

XXI

The restrained curiosity and inaudible comments which greeted his passage through the lower floor of the hotel gave place to a livelier interest when he was readily recognized on the street.  The news of the murder had, evidently, already become city property.  He was indicated to individuals unaware of his identity, with a rapid sketch of the crime, of fabulous ascribed possessions, and hinted oriental indulgence.  He strode on rapidly, his shoulders squared, his expression contemptuous, challenging; but within he was possessed by an apprehension increasing at every step.  It was not, fortunately, far from Sanderson’s Hotel to the City Hall; west on Chestnut Street they reached their destination at the following corner.  The loungers from the trees before the State House had gathered, with an increasing mob aware of the hearing within, at the entrance to the municipal offices.  The windows on either side of the marble steps were crowded with faces, ribald or blank or censorious, and Jasper Penny had to force his way into the building.  He tried to recall if there was another, more private, ingress, through which Susan might be taken; but his thoughts evaded every discipline; they whirled in a feverish course about the sole fact of the public degradation he had brought on Susan Brundon.  They passed the doors of civic departments, he saw their signs—­Water, City Treasurer, and then entered the Mayor’s chamber.

The latter was seated at a table facing the room with his back to a wide window, opening on the blank brick wall of the Philosophical Society building; and at one side the High Constable of the district in which the murder had been committed was conversing with the Sheriff.  Beside them, Jasper Penny saw, there were only some clerks present and three policemen.  The Mayor spoke equably to the Ironmaster, directed a chair placed for his convenience, and resumed the inspection of a number of reports.  He had a gaunt, tight-lipped face framed in luxuriant whiskers, a severely moral aspect oddly contradicted by trousers of tremendous sporting plaid, a waistcoat of green buckskin cassimere, while his silk hat held a rakish, forward angle.  The Constable and Sheriff punctuated their converse by prodigious and dexterous spitting into a dangerously far receptacle, and the clerks and police murmured together.  The Mayor, finally glancing at a watch enamelled, Jasper Penny saw, with a fay of the ballet, spoke to the room in general.  “Ten and past.  Well!  Well!  Where are the others?  Who is to come still, Hoffernan?”