“Ye may be!” Mr. Critchlow gaily concurred.  He was very content.

Just as he shuffled round to leave the shop, Cyril entered.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Critchlow,” said Cyril, sheepishly polite.

Mr. Critchlow gazed hard at the boy, then nodded his head several times rapidly, as though to say:  “Here’s another fool in the making!  So the generations follow one another!” He made no answer to the salutation, and departed.

Cyril ran round to his mother’s corner, pitching his bag on to the showroom stairs as he passed them.  Taking off his hat, he kissed her, and she unbuttoned his overcoat with her cold hands.

“What’s old Methuselah after?” he demanded.

“Hush!” Constance softly corrected him.  “He came in to tell me the trial had started.”

“Oh, I knew that!  A boy bought a paper and I saw it.  I say, mother, will father be in the paper?” And then in a different tone:  “I say, mother, what is there for tea?”

When his stomach had learnt exactly what there was for tea, the boy began to show an immense and talkative curiosity in the trial.  He would not set himself to his home-lessons.  “It’s no use, mother,” he said, “I can’t.”  They returned to the shop together, and Cyril would go every moment to the door to listen for the cry of a newsboy.  Presently he hit upon the idea that perhaps newsboys might be crying the special edition of the Signal in the market-place, in front of the Town Hall, to the neglect of St. Luke’s Square.  And nothing would satisfy him but he must go forth and see.  He went, without his overcoat, promising to run.  The shop waited with a strange anxiety.  Cyril had created, by his restless movements to and fro, an atmosphere of strained expectancy.  It seemed now as if the whole town stood with beating heart, fearful of tidings and yet burning to get them.  Constance pictured Stafford, which she had never seen, and a court of justice, which she had never seen, and her husband and Daniel in it.  And she waited.

Cyril ran in.  “No!” he announced breathlessly.  “Nothing yet.”

“Don’t take cold, now you’re hot,” Constance advised.

But he would keep near the door.  Soon he ran off again.

And perhaps fifteen seconds after he had gone, the strident cry of a Signal boy was heard in the distance, faint and indistinct at first, then clearer and louder.

“There’s a paper!” said the apprentice.

“Sh!” said Constance, listening.

“Sh!” echoed Miss Insull.

“Yes, it is!” said Constance.  “Miss Insull, just step out and get a paper.  Here’s a halfpenny.”

The halfpenny passed quickly from one thimbled hand to another. 
Miss Insull scurried.

She came in triumphantly with the sheet, which Constance tremblingly took.  Constance could not find the report at first.  Miss Insull pointed to it, and read—­

“‘Summing up!’ Lower down, lower down!  ’After an absence of thirty-five minutes the jury found the prisoner guilty of murder, with a recommendation to mercy.  The judge assumed the black cap and pronounced sentence of death, saying that he would forward the recommendation to the proper quarter.’”