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THAT ROYLE GIRL
175

passed from the personal consideration of the victims of Augarian's crime to his offense against all people, against order and against the State!

The more plainly Calvin saw that this charge of his failed to stir the jury, the more stubbornly he determined to make those men feel it, the more squarely he turned his back upon the merely emotional appeal to punish the prisoner for the sake of the widows in black who sat on the benches behind him.

Calvin turned to the benches after Joan Daisy had slipped in and found a seat near the women in black, but Calvin did not see her, nor did he see them, though he motioned the jury in their direction; for he gazed and he gestured over their heads, directing the jury's thought out the windows through which could be seen the nearer roofs and the heaven of noonday haze hovering over the city of three millions of people, all of whom, every one, the prisoner on trial had offended.

In the silences, when Calvin stopped for breath, the murmur of the endless streets, the hum of busy buildings thrilled him with its tremendous undertone of the millions of the State for whom he spoke, whose law and order, whose prosperity, whose civilized existence itself, depended upon the triumph of the State over the enemies of the State in the battles fought in these courts.

He faced again to the jury and saw how utterly they failed to feel it. As he stood, considering them, a folded paper touched his hand, and he took from Heminway, who was assisting him, a note which read: "For God's sake, get back to the firemen and the widows."

Calvin crumpled Heminway's note and dropped it. At the moment, it seemed to him that, even more important than punishing Augarian, was the need to make these twelve men, sworn in to perform the very fundamental