And yet Marriott knew better than to hope. As he walked to the court-house Monday morning, he wondered how he was to get through the week. He looked on those he met as the strangely happy and favored beings of another world, and envied them keenly, even the ragged outcasts shoveling the newly-fallen snow from the sidewalks. And there in the upper corridor was that hated crowd, that seemed to be in league with Eades, Glassford, the jury, the police, the whole machinery of the state, to kill Archie, to stamp his identity out of the world. Just then the crowd gyrated in precipitated interest, and he saw Bentley and Danner bringing Archie down the hall, all three stamping the snow from their boots. And he saw another figure, new to him, but one that instantly filled him with strange foreboding. Why, he could not tell, but this was the effect of the figure that shambled down the corridor. The man was alone, a tall gaunt form in rough gray clothes, with a long gray face, walking in loose gangling strides, flinging his huge feet one after the other, leaving moist tracks behind him. A hickory cane dangled by its crook from his left arm, he slowly smoked a cigar, taking it from his mouth occasionally with an uncouth gesture. As he swung along in his awkward, spraddling gait, his frame somehow conveyed paradoxically an impression of strength. It seemed that at any moment this man was in danger of coming apart and collapsing--until Marriott caught his restless eye. Archie had seen him the instant he entered the corridor. Marriott detected Archie’s recognition, and he looked intently for some inkling of the meaning. The man, in the same instant, saw Archie, stopped, took his cigar from his lips, spat, and said in a peculiar, soft voice: "Why, Archie, my boy." This incident deepened Marriott’s foreboding. A few moments later, as the bailiff was opening court, the man entered with a familiar and accustomed air, and Bentley got a chair and made him comfortable so that he might enjoy the trial. "Who’s that man?" Marriott whispered to Archie. "That? That’s old Jimmy Ball, the deputy warden at the pen." "What do you suppose--" "He’s here to knock, that’s what. He’s here to rap ag’in me, the old--" Archie applied his ugly epithet with an expression of intensest hatred, and glared at Ball. Now and then Archie repeated the epithet under his breath, trying each time to strengthen it with some new oath. But Marriott just then had no time to learn the significance of this strange presence. Eades was calling a witness. "Detective Quinn!"