They had come to the flight of steps which descended to the yard,—­and the visitor, looking down upon the angry crowd, added, “If they don’t kill him!”

Joe himself was anxious concerning no such matter.  He shook hands with Happy at the end of the sitting, bidding him be of good cheer, and, when the little man had marched away, under a strong guard, began to gather and sort his papers at a desk inside the bar.  This took him perhaps five minutes, and when he had finished there were only three people left in the room:  a clerk, a negro janitor with a broom, and the darky friend who always hopefully accompanies a colored man holding high public office.  These two approvingly greeted the young lawyer, the janitor handing him a note from Norbert Flitcroft, and the friend mechanically “borrowing” a quarter from him as he opened the envelope.

“I’ll be roun’ yo’ way to git a box o’ Se-gahs,” laughed the friend, “soon ez de campaign open up good.  Dey all goin’ vote yo’ way, down on the levee bank, but dey sho’ expecks to git to smoke a little ‘fo’ leckshun-day!  We knows who’s Ow frien’!”

Norbert’s missive was lengthy and absorbing; Joe went on his way, perusing it with profound attention; but as he descended the stairway to the floor below, a loud burst of angry shouting, outside the building, caused him to hasten toward the big front doors which faced Main Street.  The doors opened upon an imposing vestibule, from which a handsome flight of stone steps, protected by a marble balustrade, led to the ground.

Standing at the top of these steps and leaning over the balustrade, he had a clear view of half the yard.  No one was near him; everybody was running in the opposite direction, toward that corner of the yard occupied by the jail, the crowd centring upon an agitated whirlpool of men which moved slowly toward a door in the high wall that enclosed the building; and Joe saw that Happy Fear’s guards, conducting the prisoner back to his cell, were being jostled and rushed.  The distance they had made was short, but as they reached the door the pressure upon them increased dangerously.  Clubs rose in the air, hats flew, the whirlpool heaved tumultuously, and the steel door clanged.

Happy Fear was safe inside, but the jostlers were outside—­baffled, ugly, and stirred with the passion that changes a crowd into a mob.

Then some of them caught sight of Joe as he stood alone at the top of the steps, and a great shout of rage and exultation arose.

For a moment or two he did not see his danger.  At the clang of the door, his eyes, caught by the gleam of a wide white hat, had turned toward the street, and he was somewhat fixedly watching Mr. Ladew extricate Ariel (and her aged and indignant escorts) from an overflow of the crowd in which they had been caught.  But a voice warned him:  the wild piping of a newsboy who had climbed into a tree near by.