At this the other prisoners regarded her with curiosity and deference. Hilda made no answer, seemed not to have heard. Her eyes were closed and her face was rigid and gray as stone. "She needn't be afraid at all," declared a young woman in black satin, addressing the company at large. "No jury'd ever convict as good-looking a girl as her." "Good business!" continued the old woman. "I'd 'a' killed mine if I could 'a' got at him--forty years ago." She nodded vigorously and cackled. Her cackle rose into a laugh, the laugh into a maudlin howl, the howl changing into a kind of song-- "My love, my love, my love and I--we had to part, to part! And it broke, it broke, it broke my heart --it broke my heart!" "Cork up in there!" shouted the policeman from the seat beside the driver. The old woman became abruptly silent. Hilda moaned and quivered. Her lips moved. She was murmuring, "I can't stand it much longer--I can't. I'll wake soon and see Aunt Greta's picture looking down at me from the wall and hear mother in the kitchen--" "Step lively now!" They were at the Essex Market police court; they were filing into the waiting-pen. A lawyer, engaged by her father, came there, and Hilda was sent with him into a little consultation room. He argued with her in vain. "I'll speak for myself," she said. "If I had a lawyer they'd think I was guilty." After an hour the petty offenders had been heard and judged. A court officer came to the door and called: "Hilda Brauner!" Hilda rose. She seemed unconcerned, so calm was she. Her nerves had reached the point at which nerves refuse to writhe, or even to record sensations of pain. As she came into the dingy, stuffy little courtroom she didn't note the throng which filled it to the last crowded inch of standing-room; did not note the scores of sympathetic faces of her anxious, loyal friends and neighbors; did not even see her father and Otto standing inside the railing, faith and courage in their eyes as they saw her advancing. The magistrate studied her over the tops of his glasses, and his look became more and more gentle and kindly. "Come up here on the platform in front of me," he said. Hilda took her stand with only the high desk between him and her. The magistrate's tone and his kind, honest, old face reassured her. And just then she felt a pressure at her elbow and heard in Otto's voice: "We're all here. Don't be afraid." "Have you counsel--a lawyer?" asked the magistrate. "No," replied Hilda. "I haven't done anything wrong. I don't need a lawyer." The magistrate's eyes twinkled, but he sobered instantly to say, "I warn you that the case against you looks grave. You had better have legal help." Hilda looked at him bravely. "I've only the truth to tell," she insisted. "I don't want a lawyer."