Those men in faded overalls were preparing for his death,--a limit had been fixed to the very hours that he might live.

On the morning of the tenth of June he would see earth and sky from that window for the last time! Chance passers-by with no very urgent affairs of their own on hand, drifted up from the street, and soon a little group had assembled in the alley to watch the two carpenters at their work, or to stare up at North's strongly barred window.

Now and again a man would point out this window to some new-corner not so well informed as himself.
Whenever North looked down into the alley that morning, there was the human grouping with its changing personnel.

Men sprawled on the piles of boards, or lounged about the yard, while the murmur of their idle talk reached him in his cell.

The visible excuse which served to bring them there was commonplace enough, but it was invested with the interest of a coming tragedy, and North's own thoughts went forward to the time when the fence should be finished, when somewhere within the space it inclosed would stand his gallows.
Shortly before the noon whistles blew, two little girls came into the alley with the carpenters' dinner pails.