CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE.
THE HOUSE OF CARDS The long day had been devoted to the choosing of the twelve men who should say whether John North was innocent or guilty, but at last court adjourned and Marshall Langham, pushing through the crowd that was emptying itself into the street, turned away in the direction of his home.
For no single instant during the day had he been able to take his eyes from his father's face.

He had heard almost nothing of what was said, it was only when the coldly impersonal tones of the judge's voice reached him out of, what was to him silence, that he was stung to a full comprehension of what was going on about him.

The faces of the crowd had blended until they were as indistinguishable as the face of humanity itself.

For him there had been but the one tragic presence in that dingy room; and now--as the dull gray winter twilight enveloped him,--wherever he turned his eyes, on the snow-covered pavement, in the bare branches of the trees,--there he saw, endlessly repeated, the white drawn face of his father.
His capacity for endurance seemed to measure itself against the slow days.

A week--two weeks--and the trial would end, but how?
If the verdict was guilty, North's friends would still continue their fight for his life.