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 At half-past seven the judge came to the municipal building and entered the room, across the hall from the police station, where he held court. He was followed by a motley collection of idlers, loiterers and curiosity seekers, eager for whatever excitement the night's trials might produce. Peg Scudder brought up the rear, wet from the rain but apparently unmindful of discomfort. He saw Bert on his bench, put his tawny head in through the doorway, took note of the sergeant, and withdrew across the hall to the court room.

Bert's heart began to throb with apprehension. In another half-hour the charge against him would be read, and he would have to face it. The Butterfly Man had said that he would be back. The boy glanced at the clock. Twenty-five of eight! A nervous dread shook him. Suppose Tom Woods was delayed.

The sergeant, gathering up a batch of papers, stepped across the hallway to the court room and left him alone. He was cramped from his long confinement on the bench, and the tremor in his nerves made him restless. The windows at the front end of the station looked down upon the street, and he walked the length of the room and stood gazing at the wet pavement. At any other time he might have thought the dripping January scene dreary; but now the outdoors represented a freedom from which the law had torn him and held him pending judgment.