Page:Tongues of Flame (1924).pdf/391

 It was lying there, a wrinkled, parchment face, like some grotesque paper-weight amid the litter of the desk, when, well, say, when Lahleet stepped so excitedly out of the automobile in front of the courthouse to be followed so sullenly by Count Ulric. But about the time when Lahleet was leading Henry from his cell, John Boland's head had got back upon his shoulders again. He was sitting up—by a supreme effort of the will, he was standing up; he was walking toward the door, then down the steps and out between the statues of Lewis and Clark. He had started for the jail but he never got there, being caught in this jam on the courthouse pavement within a dozen feet of the porch to find himself presently staring up into the face of Henry Harrington at a distance of no more than a dozen feet.

Held, perforce, a single unnoticed figure in this human mosaic, he witnessed Henry's vindication. With mortification scalding deeper every moment, his state of mind was violently upheaved. What—what was that this missionary fellow was saying? What—what was that he was proposing? The people—the people were to get their titles back! Mr. Boland's mind kindled and his heart leaped.

The Salisheuttes had become merciful to the townspeople. God in His heaven! Was there to be mercy also for him? The bare possibility struck a kind of mellowness into him that he had seldom known before—a sort of preparedness of soul as for some great spiritual light to break.

And so, when at length the abating crowd hysteria gave him his chance, he laid a hand, trembling in its eagerness on Chief Charlie's shoulder, and his voice,