"It's his idea--that of knotting his patient's necktie under the left ear! That's what he does to each of the gentlemen to whom he has to act valet on just one occasion only.

It makes them lean just a bit to one side.

You look here-- ?" Daisy and her father came a little closer, and the speaker pointed with his finger to a little dent imprinted on the left side of each neck; running from this indentation was a curious little furrow, well ridged above, showing how tightly Jack Ketch's necktie had been drawn when its wearer was hurried through the gates of eternity.
"They looks foolish-like, rather than terrified, or--or hurt," said Bunting wonderingly.
He was extraordinarily moved and fascinated by those dumb, staring faces.
But young Chandler exclaimed in a cheerful, matter-of-fact voice, "Well, a man would look foolish at such a time as that, with all his plans brought to naught--and knowing he's only got a second to live -- now wouldn't he ?" "Yes, I suppose he would," said Bunting slowly.
Daisy had gone a little pale.

The sinister, breathless atmosphere of the place was beginning to tell on her.

She now began to understand that the shabby little objects lying there in the glass case close to her were each and all links in the chain of evidence which, in almost every case, had brought some guilty man or woman to the gallows.
"We had a yellow gentleman here the other day," observed the guardian suddenly; "one of those Brahmins--so they calls themselves.