Under his picture, this morning, was a line designating him as the officer who would demand Ketlar's life; and since it was his clear duty, Calvin never considered any evasion of it. When such words as Ellison's gave him, in spite of himself, a quiver of repulse, he recollected the portrait of Jeremy at home and that of Jeremy's son, his great grandfather, who in their day had defended and preserved the State by procuring the punishment of its enemies. Undoubtedly, when first they went to court to ask the life of a prisoner, each of them also suffered from qualms of weakness such as distressed Calvin on his walk to the Criminal Courts' building; but never had they faltered, and no more would he.
He was walking down the wide boulevard of upper Michigan Avenue with the new, tremendous towers of office buildings standing on right and left, and ahead he saw the sun shining from the lake upon the endless stone and glass water-front of the city and he thought how to-day no stone or brick of it would be here, how it would have remained a sandy swamp of wild onion grass if Jeremy Clarke and other public prosecutors had failed to enforce discipline when civilization had fringed the Atlantic shore. Not having failed, they had preserved order and law so that Chicago had risen here.
Calvin turned abruptly from the boulevard and soon came in sight of the grim grayness of the jail. A few loiterers stamped feet and rubbed mittened hands as they stood looking up at the barred windows; around the corner, at the doors of the Criminal Courts' building, a crowd was skewing and arguing for admittance; and Calvin's pulse hastened as he approached.
He recognized policemen, a couple of plain-clothes men and clerks of the courts; he recognized vaguely a few girls as persons whom he had seen in some connection with Ketlar; but he did not see the Royle girl or
