Darrow slipped his note-book from his pocket, and scribbled a few lines, which he showed to the officer. The latter read, inwardly digested for a moment, and smiled. "Keep your hair on," ran Darrow's screed. "This will pass in a few minutes, and it won't hurt you, anyway. Don't look like all these other dubs." He stood there companionably by the patrolman. They looked about them. All at once, with this touch of normal, unafraid, human companionship, the weird horror of the situation fell away. Darrow and his companion were seeing humanity disjointed from its accustomed habit, as one looks on a stage full of men hypnotized into belief of an absurdity. Where the blotting out of electricity had been tragic, this, as soon as its utter harmlessness was realized, became comic. All about through the park men were meeting the situation according to the limited ideas developed by a crustacean life of absolute dependence on the shell of artificial environment. A considerable number of all sorts had fallen on their knees and were praying. One fat man in evening dress, with a silk hat and a large diamond stud showing between the lapels of a fur-lined coat, was particularly fervent. By force of habit Darrow remarked on this individual. "I'll bet he hasn't been to church since he was a kid," he observed, of course inaudibly. The policeman caught the direction of his look, however, and grinned with understanding. Some stood frozen to one spot, their faces agonized, as a man would stand still were the earth likely to yawn anywhere. Darrow would have liked to reassure these, for their eyes expressed a frantic terror. One red-faced individual with white side-whiskers, looking exactly like the comic-paper caricatures of the trusts, had evidently refused to accept any arbitrary dictates of natural forces. Probably he had never accepted any dictates of any kind. He was going from one taxicab to another, trying to command a driver to take him somewhere, talking vehemently and authoritatively, his face getting more and more purple with anger. The taxicab drivers merely stared at him stupidly. "That old boy's kept his nerve," Darrow remarked, of course inaudibly, to his companion. "But he'll die of apoplexy if he doesn't watch out." Again the policeman caught the direction of Darrow's glance, and grinned in understanding. He reached his huge gloved hand for the young man's pencil and paper, on which he wrote the name of a man high in railroad circles, and grinned again with evident relish. At this moment an entirely self-possessed young man swung across the street. He surveyed the two men sharply a moment, then approached, producing a sheaf of yellow paper as he did so. "Professor Darrow?" he wrote. Darrow nodded. The young man pointed to himself, then to the Despatch Building. "Cause?" he wrote, and waved his hand. Darrow shook his head. "Dangerous?" Darrow shook his head again.