Page:Melville Davisson Post--The Man of Last Resort.djvu/285



ARPER did not recall that he had ever noticed the ugly details of the courtroom before,—the high, soiled ceiling, the rows of benches, worn, broken, empty as a fool's heart, the clerk's desk, and the presumptuous bench of the judge; the long tables, too, for the attorneys, heaped with papers, books, and dusty covers, a farrago of disorder—how ugly they were!

Carper looked up at the judge. The man's black silk robe fell away in sharp straight folds; he sat erect like a bronze cast, his face turned half toward the window in order that he might better read the paper before him. How power had changed this face! Carper remembered idly that, years before, the face of this