I whispered to Everett, thinking him one among this company of enthusiasts who might have a little common sense left.  “We had better get him away from here!” And Everett put his hand gently on the prophet’s shoulder, and said, “The prisoners in the jail are hoping for us.”  I took him by the other arm, and we began to lead him down the street.  When we had once got him going, we walked him faster and faster, until presently the crowd was trailing out into a string of idlers and curiosity seekers, as before.

XLVI

The party came to the city jail, and knocked for admission.  But no doubt the authorities had taken consultation in the meantime, and there was no admission for prophets.  The party stood on the steps, baffled and bewildered, a pitiful and pathetic little group.

For my part, I thought it just as well that Carpenter had not got inside, for I knew what he would find there.  It happens that my Aunt Jennie belongs to a couple of women’s clubs, and they have been making a fuss about our city jail; they have kept on making it for many years, but apparently without accomplishing anything.  The place was built a generation ago, for a city of perhaps one-tenth our present size; it is old and musty, and the walls are so badly cracked that it has been condemned by the building department.  It is so crowded that half a dozen men sometimes sleep on the floor of a single cell.  They are devoured by vermin, and lie in semi-darkness, some of them shivering with cold and others half suffocated.  They stay there, sometimes for many months unheeded, because the courts are crowded, and if Comrade Abell’s word may be taken in the matter, every poor man is assumed to be guilty until he is proven innocent.  I have heard Aunt Jennie arguing the matter with considerable energy.  Our banks are housed in palaces, and our Chamber of Commerce and our Merchants and Manufacturers and our Real Estate Exchange and all the rest of our boosters have commodious and expensive quarters; but our prisoners lie in torment, and no one boosts for them.

Did Carpenter know these things?  Had the strikers or his little company of agitators, told him about them?  Suddenly he said, “Let us pray;” and there on the steps of the jail he raised his hands in invocation, and prayed for all prisoners and captives.  And when he finished, Comrade Abell suddenly lifted his voice and began to sing.  I would not have supposed that so big a voice could have come out of so frail a body; but I was reminded that Abell had been practicing on soap-boxes a good part of his life.  He was one of these shouting evangelists—­only his gospel was different.  He sang: 

    Arise, ye pris’ners of starvation! 
    Arise, ye wretched of the earth! 
    For justice thunders condemnation,
    A better world’s in birth.

I think I would have shuddered, even more than I did, if I had known the name of this song; if I had realized that this group of fanatics were sounding the dread Internationale on the steps of our city jail!  I suspect that what saved them was the fact that the guardians of the jail had no more idea what it was than I had!