Under the circumstances, with the padrone away, with Tony Palassi away, with the sheriff away, and with the refuge of the culprit under close watch, Chief of Police Henley decided just to sit down and wait--wait for developments; wait for guidance; perhaps wait for popular sentiment to crystallize and, in process of its crystallization, give him a hint as to the steps proper to be taken next. So he sat him down at his roll-top desk in the old City Hall, with his feet on the stove, and he waited. Had our efficient chief divined the trend of opinion as it was to be expressed during the day by divers persons in divers parts of the town, it is possible he might have done something, though just what that something might have been, I for one confess I do not know--and I do not think the chief knew either. There was a passion of anger abroad. This anger was to rise and spread when word circulated--as it very shortly did--that those other Dagos were harbouring and protecting the particular Dago who had done the cutting. Such being the case, did not that make them outlaws too--accessories after the fact, comalefactors? The question was asked a good many times in a good many places and generally the answer was the same. And how about letting these murderous, dirk-toting pauper labourers come pouring down from the slums of the great cities to take the bread right out of the mouths of poor, hard-working darkies? With the sudden hostility to the white stranger rose an equally sudden sympathy for the lot of the black neighbour whose place he had usurped. Besides, who ever saw one of the blamed Dagos spending a cent at a grocery, or a notions store, or a saloon--or anywhere? Money earned in the community ought to be spent in the community. What did the railroad mean by it anyway? Toward the middle of the afternoon somebody told somebody else--who, in turn, told everybody he met--that poor old Beaver was sinking fast; the surgeons agreed that he could not live the night out. Despite the rutted snow underfoot and the chill temperature, now rapidly dropping again to the freezing point and below it, knots of men began to gather on the streets discussing one topic--and one only.