“Did I tremble? Mother, don’t mind, I didn’t mean to; only I was so frightened about the girls. Do they mean to kill us all?” “Come, come, little chap. Don’t you see that we’re waiting? A little of this sort of thing is well enough; but you’re wanted up yonder, you know.” The policeman who said this took James by the arm, not altogether unkindly, and moved toward a flight of stairs that led into the front of the most gloomy building that civilization ever invented. Through dark corridors, narrow passages, and sparsely furnished rooms, the officers led mother and son, who, quite unconscious of crime, felt all the shame and bitter humiliation of guilt. Through those vast Egyptian pillars that seemed strong enough to bear up mountains, and whose very shadows lay like overthrown granite upon the paved floor, they went, growing more and more heavy-hearted into that stone wilderness, till, at last, they stood in a square room, with a desk running across one end, and some wooden benches along the opposite side. The woman and her son sat down on the nearest bench, while the officer leaned his back against the wall and waited. The widow looked around with a vague feeling of curiosity. The bare room, in another place, would hardly have challenged notice; but here, in the heart of that gloomy prison, thoughts of crime and its gloomy train of sorrows made the place desolate indeed. The Judge, who sat wearily on his bench, scarcely looked that way when the door opened to admit these two prisoners. He had become so accustomed to human suffering, so familiar with every aspect of crime, that both had ceased to shock him. After a little, he beckoned to the officer, who came forward and answered a brief question put to him. “It is,” said he, “an old woman and her son, charged with a heavy crime, the boy with grand larceny, the woman with receiving the goods he had stolen, probably at her own suggestion.” The Judge cast a severe glance at the woman, and went on with some business that had occupied him before the officer’s entrance. But few persons were in the court-room, for scenes like this were commonplace affairs, and men had scarcely the curiosity to look twice, when the mother and son seated themselves on the same bench with some half dozen other persons, gloomy, hardened and evil-looking, who awaited examination. After awhile, the Judge leaned back in his leathern chair, and the officer was ordered to come forward with his charge. He spoke kindly to the old woman, who arose, tall, rigid and tearless, to obey. This woman knew herself to be innocent, and felt the wrong that had dragged her before that tribunal with bitter, even fierce resentment. When her hand clutched the railing before the Judge, it was with a grasp of iron, and the eyes she bent upon him burned with smouldering fire which he took for defiance.