es, and refreshed himself by
dressing a little and by drinking a glass of wine. Then he took his way
once more to the Music Hall, and saw that people were beginning to go
in--the first drops of the great stream, among whom there were many
women. Since seven o'clock the minutes had moved fast--before that they
had dragged--and now there was only half an hour. Ransom passed in with
the others; he knew just where his seat was; he had chosen it, on
reaching Boston, from the few that were left, with what he believed to
be care. But now, as he stood beneath the far-away panelled roof,
stretching above the line of little tongues of flame which marked its
junction with the walls, he felt that this didn't matter much, since he
certainly was not going to subside into his place. He was not one of the
audience; he was apart, unique, and had come on a business altogether
special. It wouldn't have mattered if, in advance, he had got no place
at all and had just left himself to pay for standing-room at the last.
The people came pouring in, and in a very short time there would only be
standing-room left. Ransom had no definite plan; he had mainly wanted to
get inside of the building, so that, on a view of the field, he might
make up his mind. He had never been in the Music Hall before, and its
lofty vaults and rows of overhanging balconies made it to his
imagination immense and impressive. There were two or three moments
during which he felt as he could imagine a young man to feel who,
waiting in a public place, has made up his mind, for reasons of his own,
to discharge a pistol at the king or the president.

The place struck him with a kind of Roman vastness; the doors which
opened out of the upper balconies, high aloft, and which were constantly
swinging to and fro with the passage of spectators and ushers, reminded
him of the _vomitoria_ that he had read about in descriptions of the
Colosseum. The huge organ, the background of the stage--a stage occupied
with tiers of seats for choruses and civic worthies--lifted to the dome
its shining pipes and sculptured pinnacles, and some genius of music or
oratory erected himself in monumental bronze at the base. The hall was
so capacious and serious, and the audience increased so rapidly without
filling it, giving Ransom a sense of the numbers it would contain when
it was packed, that the courage of the two young women, face to face
with so tremendous an ordeal, hovered before him as really su