Would the man still in possession of the paper whose contents had brought about this attack understand these evidences of apprehension?  Yes; and what is more, he seems to take such means as offers to hide from the judge all knowledge of the fact that any other eyes than his own have read these invidious words.  With unexpected address, he waits for the judge to turn his head aside when with a quick and dextrous movement he so launches the paper from his hand that it falls softly and without flurry within an inch of the judicial seat.  Then he goes back to his papers.

This suggestion, at once so marked and so delicate, did not fail of its effect upon those about.  Wherever the judge looked he saw abstracted faces and busy hands, and, taking heart at not finding himself watched, he started to rise.  Then memory came,—­blasting, overwhelming memory of the letter he had been reading; and, rousing with a start, he looked down at his hand, then at the floor before him, and, seeing the letter lying there, picked it up with a secret, side-long glance to right and left, which sank deep into the heart of the still watchful Deborah.

If those about him saw, they made no motion.  Not an eye looked round and not a head turned as he straightened himself and proceeded to leave the room.  Only Deborah noted how his steps faltered and how little he was to be trusted to find his way unguided to the door.  It lay to the right and he was going left.  Now he stumbles—­Isn’t there any one to—­Yes, she is not the sole one on watch.  The same man who had read aloud the note and then dropped it within his reach, had stepped after him, and kindly, if artfully, turned him towards the proper place of exit.  As the two disappear, Deborah wakes from her trance, and, finding herself alone among the seats, hurries to quit her corner and leave the building.

The glare—­the noise of the square, as she dashes down into it seems for the moment unendurable.  The pushing, panting mass of men and women of which she has now become a part, closes about her, and for the moment she can see nothing but faces,—­faces with working mouths and blazing eyes,—­a medley of antagonistic expression, all directed against herself;—­or so she felt in the heat of her self-consciousness.  But after the first recoil she knew that no such universal recognition could be hers; that she was merely a new and inconsiderable atom caught in a wave of feeling which engulfed all it met; that this mob was not raised from the stones to overwhelm her but him, and that if she flew, it should be to his aid, and not to save herself.  But how was she to reach him?  He would not come out by the main entrance; that she knew.  Where look for him, then?  Suddenly she remembered; and using some of her strength of which she had good measure, and more of that address to which I have already alluded, she began to worm herself along through this astounding collection of people much too large already for the ordinary force of police to handle, to that corner of the building where a small door opened upon a rear street.  She remembered it from those old days when she had once entered this courthouse as a witness.