Page:Upbuilders by Lincoln Steffens.djvu/197



all the hours I have spent with you in jail are to go for nothing, you ‘scoot.’ I’ll not interfere. I leave it to you. I can’t save a fellow, you know, not by myself; I can only help a fellow to save himself, if he wants to. If he doesn’t want to, and I can’t convince him that he ought to want to, then I do not see much hope. So, go or stay, as you wish, Henry.”

“Do you mean that, Judge?” the boy asked, and the Judge thinks his impulse was to go.

“You know what I mean,” he answered, and for a moment the two looked at each other.

“Then,” says the Judge, “I thought I saw a peculiar shadow cross his face, and I believed he understood. I went back to my table and sat down. I must confess it was an anxious moment for me. I wasn’t sure that I had made on that boy the impression I hoped to make. He looked so hard. And he wavered there. I hardly dared to look at him. I thought of the ridicule of the police, of the failure and what it would mean: the defeat of the policy I was coming to believe in. And there that boy hung, swinging, actually swinging. Well, he had a certain peculiar swinging gait, and when he made a lurch for that window, my heart rose in my throat. His hand went up in the air, and I thought he was gone. But no — the hand that went up