Page:The unhallowed harvest (1917).djvu/29

24 A janitor came into the room to sweep up the litter on the floor, and, as he swept, he hummed a plaintive ditty that had long been favored of him:

John Jifkins, he to court would go;

Listen to the tale I tell!

His story it was fall of woe;

His lawers fought, but the judge said no,

That Jifkins hadn't a ghost of a show,

And it ended there. Ah well!

Heigh-ho!

Jingle the court-house bell."

The janitor finished his song and his task and departed. Silence fell on the big room, and the shadows of the waning day crept in and took, each one, its accustomed place. Darkness came, and, under its cover, ghosts of old and unnumbered tragedies, enacted through the years within the confines of the four gray walls, came out to stride back and forth across the wide spaces, up and down the enclosure for the bar, and in and out among the vacant chairs of the jury box; to ascend even to the sacred precinct of the bench, and stand grimly behind the chair from which white-robed Justice, with her bandaged eyes and well-poised scales, was supposed to listen to the cry of all who sought her aid.