upon some extraneous routine matter; it was signed and immediately the clerk called, "The People of Illinois against Frederic Ketlar."
Calvin drew up, stiffly; and for a moment his mind would not attack the business before him, but played with the phrase, "The People of Illinois"; and he thought of them busy in their tiers of offices in the tremendous downtown blocks, and indolent in their apartments and suburban residences; he thought of the people of the country towns and of the farms, overcoated and mittened as they went about their chores in the snow over the flat, Illinois plain. So his mind flew to his home, and, returning to himself, he thought how strange for him to stand for the People of Illinois in this steam-heated room in Chicago on this winter day.
Max Elmen rose to his feet, and Calvin heard an expiration, like a great sigh, breathed by the women behind him at this first move of forces in the battle for the life of the boy who just now so jauntily had crossed the room.
Calvin arose, keeping his eyes from the prisoner and from the Royle girl; most particularly from the prisoner's mother he held his glance. The tension of the capital case, in which death—deliberate, decreed death—was the aim of his efforts, pulled at his muscles.
The first man from the panel drawn for the jury presented himself for examination, and Calvin gazed at the dark, foreign face of the fellow and rallied to a feeling of offense which banished his qualm before his duty.
Galaski was the fellow's name; an American he called himself; he even claimed American birth; but Calvin would have none such as him upon this jury.
"Have you conscientious scruples against capital punishment?" Calvin asked him. "Or are you opposed to the same?"
"Huh! What?" demanded Galaski.
