When they reached the court the same little pen in which Cowperwood had awaited the verdict of his jury several months before was waiting to receive him.

Cowperwood, senior, and his other sons sought places in the courtroom proper.  Eddie Zanders remained with his charge.  Stener and a deputy by the name of Wilkerson were in the room; but he and Cowperwood pretended now not to see each other.  Frank had no objection to talking to his former associate, but he could see that Stener was diffident and ashamed.  So he let the situation pass without look or word of any kind.  After some three-quarters of an hour of dreary waiting the door leading into the courtroom proper opened and a bailiff stepped in.

“All prisoners up for sentence,” he called.

There were six, all told, including Cowperwood and Stener.  Two of them were confederate housebreakers who had been caught red-handed at their midnight task.

Another prisoner was no more and no less than a plain horse-thief, a young man of twenty-six, who had been convicted by a jury of stealing a grocer’s horse and selling it.  The last man was a negro, a tall, shambling, illiterate, nebulous-minded black, who had walked off with an apparently discarded section of lead pipe which he had found in a lumber-yard.  His idea was to sell or trade it for a drink.  He really did not belong in this court at all; but, having been caught by an undersized American watchman charged with the care of the property, and having at first refused to plead guilty, not quite understanding what was to be done with him, he had been perforce bound over to this court for trial.  Afterward he had changed his mind and admitted his guilt, so he now had to come before Judge Payderson for sentence or dismissal.  The lower court before which he had originally been brought had lost jurisdiction by binding him over to to higher court for trial.  Eddie Zanders, in his self-appointed position as guide and mentor to Cowperwood, had confided nearly all of this data to him as he stood waiting.

The courtroom was crowded.  It was very humiliating to Cowperwood to have to file in this way along the side aisle with these others, followed by Stener, well dressed but sickly looking and disconsolate.

The negro, Charles Ackerman, was the first on the list.

“How is it this man comes before me?” asked Payderson, peevishly, when he noted the value of the property Ackerman was supposed to have stolen.

“Your honor,” the assistant district attorney explained, promptly, “this man was before a lower court and refused, because he was drunk, or something, to plead guilty.  The lower court, because the complainant would not forego the charge, was compelled to bind him over to this court for trial.  Since then he has changed his mind and has admitted his guilt to the district attorney.  He would not be brought before you except we have no alternative.  He has to be brought here now in order to clear the calendar.”