word, but gazed as at a riddle going by. Yet at one
place a Sabbath scholar of Agnes came out before her, and, making a
courtesy, said:

"Teacher, take my orange blossom!"

The flower was nearly white, and very fragrant. Duff Salter reached out
and put it in his button-hole.

So excited were the sensibilities of Agnes that it seemed to her the old
door-knockers squinted; the idle writing of boys on dead walls read with
a hidden meaning; the shade-trees lazily shaking in summer seemed to
whisper; if she looked down, there now and then appeared, moulded in the
bricks of the pavement, a worn letter, or a passing goose foot, the
accident of the brickyard, but now become personal and intentional. The
little babies, sporting in their carriages before some houses, leaned
forward and looked as wise and awful as doctors in some occult
diagnosis. Cartwheels, as they struck hard, articulated, "What, out!
Boo! boohoo!" Sunshine all slanted her way. Hucksters' cries sounded
like constables' proclamation: "Oyez! oyez!"

With the perceptions, the reflections of Agnes were also startlingly
alert. She seemed two or three unfortunate people at once. Now it was
Lady Jane Grey going to the tower. Now it was Beatrice Cenci going to
torture. Now it was Mary Magdalene going to the cross. At almost every
house she felt a kindness speak for her, except mankind; a recollection
of nursing, comforting, praying with some one, but all forgotten now.
"_Via Crucia, Via Crucia_," her thorn-torn feet seemed to patter in the
echoes of her ears and mind, and there arose upon her spirit the
sternest curse of women, direful with God's own rage, "I will greatly
multiply thy sorrow and thy conception."

Thus she reached the magistrate's little office, around the door of
which was a little crowd of people, and Duff Salter led her in the
private door to the residence itself. A cup of tea and a decanter of
wine were on the table. The magistrate's wife knew her, and kissed her.
Then Agnes broke down and wept like a little child.

The magistrate was a lame man, and a deacon in Van de Lear's church,
quite gray, and both prudent and austere, and making use of but few
words, so that there was no way of determining his feelings on the case.
He took his place behind a plain table and opened court by saying,

"Who appears? Now!"

Duff Salter rose, the largest man in the court-room. His long beard
covered his whole breast-bone; his fine intelligent features, cl