tiable state of one
who has been condemned to die, and not set free to live. It was as
though she still misunderstood a verdict which had filled most faces
with incredulity, but none with an astonishment to equal her own. Her
white face had leaped alight, but not with gladness. The pent-up emotion
of the week had broken forth in an agony of tears; and so they half led,
half carried her from the court. She had entered it for the last time
with courage enough; but it was the wrong kind of courage; and, for the
one supreme moment, sentence of life was harder to bear than sentence of
death.

In a few minutes the court was empty--a singular little theatre of pale
varnish and tawdry hangings, still rather snug and homely in the heat
and light of its obsolete gas, and with as little to remind one of the
play as any other theatre when the curtain is down and the house empty.
But there was clamor in the corridors, and hooting already in the
street. Nor was the house really empty after all. One white-haired
gentleman had not left his place when an attendant returned to put out
the lights. The attendant pointed him out to a constable at the door;
both watched him a few moments. Then the attendant stepped down and
touched him on the shoulder.

The gentleman turned slowly without a start. "Ah, you're the man I want
to see," said he. "Was that the Chief Warder in the dock?"

"Him with the beard," said the attendant, nodding.

"Well, give him this, and give it him quick. I'll wait up there till he
can see me."

And he pressed his card into the attendant's palm, with a couple of
sovereigns underneath.

"Wants to see the Chief Warder," explained the attendant to the
constable at the door.

"He's been here all the week," mused the constable aloud. "I wonder who
he is?"

"Name of Steel," whispered the other, consulting the card, as the
gentleman advanced up the steps toward them, the gaslight gleaming in
his silver hair, and throwing his firm features into strong relief.

"And not a bad name for him," said the constable at the door.

CHAPTER IV

THE MAN IN THE TRAIN

Rachel fought her weakness with closed eyes, and was complete mistress
of herself when those about her thought that consciousness alone was
returning. She recognized the chamber at a glance; it was the one in
which generations of metropolitan malefactors, and a few innocent
persons like herself, had waited for the verdict of life or death. For
her it