The clammy air smote him coldly. The day was just breaking, a yellow haze above the roofs toward the east. He hurried along the damp pavement, an eager lonely figure in the silent streets; the light spread gradually, creeping as it were through the heavy air; a fog rolled over the pavements and the world was cold and gray. An early street-car went clanging past, filled with working-men. These working-men were happy; they smoked their pipes and joked--Marriott could hear them, and he thought it strange that men could be happy anywhere in the world that morning. But these fancies were not to be indulged with the leisurely sense in which he usually philosophized on that life of which he was so conscious; for the court-house loomed huge and portentous in the dawn. And suddenly the light that was slowly suffusing the ether seemed to pause; there was a hesitation almost perceptible to the eye in the descent of morning on the world; it was, to Marriott’s imagination, exactly, as if the sun had suddenly concluded to shine no longer on the just and the unjust alike, but would await the issue then yeaning beneath that brooding dome, and see whether men would do justice in the world. Somewhere, Marriott knew, in that gray and smoky pile, the fate was waiting, biding its time. What would it be? He had remained at the court-house the night before with Pennell and Lamborn, several of the court officials and attachés, and a dwindling group of the morbid and the curious. An immediate agreement had been expected, allowing, of course, for the delay necessary to a preservation of the decencies, but as the hours dragged by, Marriott’s hopes had risen; each moment increased the chance of an acquittal, of a disagreement, or of some verdict not so tragic as the one the State had striven for. His heart had grown lighter. But by midnight he was wholly exhausted. Intelligence, which knows no walls, had somehow stolen out from the jury room; there was some eccentricity in this mighty machine of man, and no immediate agreement was to be expected. And then Marriott had left, trusting Pennell to remain and represent the defendant at the announcement of the verdict. It was about the only duty he felt he could trust to Pennell. And now, hurrying into the court-house, his hopes rose once more.