Archie spread his hands wide to show the hopelessness of it all. "Well, I think you’d better try, anyhow. Will you think it over?" XVIII Marriott heard the commotion as he entered the elevator the next morning, and as the cage ascended, the noise increased. He heard the click of heels, the scuff of damp soles on the marble, and then the growl of many men, angry, beside themselves, possessed by their lower natures. The chorus of rough voices had lost its human note and sunk to the ugly register of the brutish. Drawing nearer, he distinguished curses and desperate cries. And there in the half-light at the end of the long corridor, the crowd swayed this way and that, struggling, scrambling, fighting. Hats were knocked off and spun in the air; now and then an arm was lifted out of the mass; now and then a white fist was shaken above the huddle of heads. Two deputy sheriffs, Hersch and Cumrow, were flattened against the doors of the criminal court, their faces trickling with sweat, their waistcoats torn open; and they strained mightily. The crowd surged against them, threatening to press the breath out of their bodies. They paused, panting from their efforts, then tried again to force back the crowd, shouting: "Get back there, damn you! Get back!" Marriott slipped through a side door into the judge’s chamber. The room was filled. Glassford, Eades, Lamborn, all the attachés of the court were there. Bentley, the sheriff, had flung up a window, and stood there fanning himself with his broad-brimmed hat, disregarding exposure, his breath floating in vapor out of the window. On the low leather lounge where Glassford took his naps sat Archie close beside Danner. When he saw Marriott a wan smile came to his white face. "They tried to get at me!" The phrase seemed sufficient to him to explain it all, and at the same time to express his own surprise and consternation in it all. "They tried to get at me!" Archie repeated in another tone, expressing another meaning, another sensation, a wholly different thought. The boy’s lips were drawn tightly across his teeth; he shook with fear. "They tried to get at me!" he repeated, in yet another tone. Old Doctor Bitner, the jail physician, had come with a tumbler half-full of whisky and water. "Here, Archie," he said, "try a sip of this. You’ll be all right in a minute." "He’s collapsed," the physician whispered to Marriott, as Archie snatched the glass and gulped down the whisky, making a wry face, and shuddering as if the stuff sickened him. "I’m all in, Mr. Marriott," said Archie. "I’ve gone to pieces. I’m down and out. It’s no use." He hung his head, as if ashamed of his weakness. "Well, you know, my boy, that we must begin. It’s up to us now. Can you take the stand?" "No! No!" Archie shook his head with emphasis. "I can’t! I can’t! That fellow Eades would tear me to pieces!"