depths of Sixth Avenue, under the
elevated structure, and stopped before Jefferson Market Court. The women
were hustled out and went shuddering through long corridors, until at
last they were shoved into a large cell.

* * * * *

At about the same moment Myra and Joe emerged from the West Tenth Street
house and started for the court-house. They started, bowing their heads
in the wind, holding on to their hats.

"Whew!" muttered Joe. "This is a night!"

Myra did not dare take his arm, and he spoke a little gruffly.

"Better hang on to me."

She slipped her arm through his then, gratefully, and tried to bravely
fight eastward with him.

Joe was silent. He walked with difficulty. Myra almost felt as if she
were leading him. If she only could have sent him home, nursed him and
comforted him! He was so weary that she felt more like sending him to
bed than dragging him out in this bitter weather.

More and more painfully he shuffled, and Myra brooded over him as if he
were hers, and there was a sad joy in doing this, a sad glory in leading
him and sharing the cruel night with him.

In this way they gained the corner of Sixth Avenue. Across the way
loomed the illuminated tower-topped brick court-house.

"Here it is," said Joe.

Myra led him over, up the steps, and through the dingy entrance. Then
they stepped into the court-room and sat down on one of the benches,
which were set out as in a school-room.

The place was large and blue, and dimly lighted. The judge's end of it
was screened off by wire netting. Up on a raised platform sat the
magistrate at his desk, his eyes hidden by a green shade, his bald head
radiant with the electric light above him. Clerks hovered about him, and
an anaemic indoor policeman, standing before him, grasped with one hand
a brass rail and with the other was continually handing up prisoners to
be judged. All in the inclosed space stood and moved a mass of careless
men, the lawyers, hangers-on, and all who fatten upon crime--careless,
laughing, nudging, talking openly to the women of the street. A crass
scene, a scene of bitter cynicism, of flashy froth, degrading and cheap.
Not here to-night the majesty of the law; here only a well-oiled machine
grinding out injustice.

Joe and Myra were seated among a crowd of witnesses and tired lawyers.
The law's delay seemed to steep the big room with drowsiness; the air
was warm and breathed in and out a thousand