He spoke as if to himself: "You see—that day—the day the thing happened—and they came and caught me—and did all those things to me—and I saw Flynn lying by the road—it was—it was a kind of sickener. If putting me out of the way is the thing in the wind, it was done right there and then. Right there and then I seem to have begun—moving on." He drew a long breath. "And I’d rather keep moving, Bob—no matter to where—no matter to what—than turn back again to face a bunch of men." CHAPTER XXVII Teddy was not called on to face a bunch of men till going to the courtroom for his trial. Dressed long before the hour in a new dark-blue suit, fresh linen, and a dark-blue tie, his prison pallor, a little like that of death, put him out of the list of the active and free. As he sat on the edge of his bunk, somber with dread, he was nevertheless obliged to find suitable jocosities with which to answer the good-luck wishes that came slithering along the walls from the neighboring cells. It was half past nine before two guards whom he had never seen before, stalwart fellows well over six feet, came to the door and unlocked it. "Ready, Follett? Time’s come." Springing to his feet, he found handcuffs slipped round his wrists before he was aware of what was being done. It was an unexpected indignity. He had never been handcuffed before. "Say, fellows," he protested, "I’ll go all right. I don’t want these on me." "Come along wid ye." The words were friendly rather than rough, as was also the hand of a guard on each shoulder as they steered him along the corridor. The Brig is a rambling building, or succession of buildings, with courthouse and house of detention under the same series of roofs. The pilgrimage was long—upstairs, downstairs, through passages, past offices, past courtrooms, with guards, police, clerks, lawyers, litigants, loungers, standing about everywhere. The sight of a man in handcuffs arrested all eyes for the moment, and stilled all tongues. With his glances flying from right to left and from left to right, Teddy again began to feel the sense of separation from the human race which had struck to his soul that day on the marshes. Of his other impressions, the chief was that of squalor. It seemed as if all the elements had been brought together that would make poor Justice vulgar and unimpressive. Out of a squalid cell he had been pushed along squalid hallways, through groups of squalid faces, into a squalid courtroom, where he was ushered into a squalid cage, long and narrow, with a seat hardly wider than a knife blade. Once within the cage the handcuffs were taken off, the door was locked, and each of the stalwart guards took his stand at one end. The cage being raised some six or eight inches above the level of the floor, the boy was well in sight of everyone. It was like being on a throne—or a Calvary.