Then Simpson sat down and awaited the event with serene confidence. For, as has been stated, he had been in just such a position more than once before, and he had planned carefully to meet this crisis. The sergeant-at-arms, instructed beforehand in his duties, summoned two assistants and advanced upon Bassett. For a moment, it was evident that that individual meditated resistance; then, as he sized up the three stalwart men confronting him, he realized the futility of it. “All right,” he said; “I’ll go. But don’t put your hands on me—I won’t stand that. An’ I just want to say one thing: you’ll all of you regret this night’s work.” And catching up his overcoat, he followed the sergeant-at-arms to the door, which closed after him a moment later. The night’s experience had sobered him, but nevertheless he reeled slightly as he went down the stairs—not with intoxication, but with a kind of vertigo of rage. He paused at the foot of the stairs to recover himself. “They framed it up on me!” he muttered to himself. “The hounds! To think of their framin’ it up on me!” And he got out his handkerchief and mopped his forehead with shaking hand. Then, entering the saloon on the ground floor of the building, he asked for two quart bottles of whiskey. The bartender, an old acquaintance, ventured to protest. “Look here, Rafe,” he said, “you’re goin’ it too strong. Better let up a little, old man.” “Oh, this ain’t fer me,” answered Bassett, laughing grimly. “I’m givin’ a little blow-out to-night. This is fer the company,” and putting a bottle in each coat-pocket, he hurried from the place. The bartender gazed after him speculatively, for there was a strangeness in his manner, a sort of menace, as of a man who has thrown down the gauntlet to society, regardless of the consequences, but other customers demanded attention, and the bartender soon forgot all about the incident. Could he have followed Bassett, he would have been more and more surprised; for the latter’s path did not lead him home, nor to any place suggestive of a social function. Instead, he turned down the nearest alley, came out upon the railroad track and followed it toward the river. Once he passed a track-walker, but the latter did not recognize the dark figure apparently hurrying toward home. The road ran past back yards, from which an occasional dog saluted him, crossed a street at an angle, skirted a row of tumble-down brick buildings, and then emerged upon the river bank, which it skirted for perhaps half a mile. Upon this bank, in the days when municipal sanitation was not what it now is, a number of slaughter-houses had been built, because of the convenience of running their refuse into the river. This had been stopped some years before, and the buildings, already decrepit and decayed, had fallen into a still more disreputable condition.