In the days that followed Billy's swellings went down and the passed away with surprising rapidity. The quick healing of the lacerations the healthiness of his blood. Only remained the black eyes, on a face as blond as his. The discoloration was stubborn, persisting half a month, in which time happened events of importance.  
Otto Frank's trial had been . Found guilty by a jury notable for the business and professional men on it, the death sentence was passed upon him and he was removed to San Quentin for execution.
 
The case of Chester Johnson and the fourteen others had taken longer, but within the same week, it, too, was finished. Chester Johnson was sentenced to be hanged. Two got life; three, twenty years. Only two were . The remaining seven received terms of from two to ten years.
 
The effect on Saxon was to throw her into deep depression. Billy was made gloomy, but his fighting spirit was not .
 
“Always some men killed in battle,” he said. “That's to be expected. But the way of sentencin' 'em gets me. All found guilty was responsible for the killin'; or none was responsible. If all was, then they should get the same sentence. They oughta hang like Chester Johnson, or else he oughtn't to hang. I'd just like to know how the judge makes up his mind. It must be like markin' China tickets. He plays . He looks at a guy an' waits for a spot or a number to come into his head. How else could he give Johnny Black four years an' Cal Hutchins twenty years? He played the hunches as they came into his head, an' it might just as easy ben the other way around an' Cal Hutchins got four years an' Johnny Black twenty.
 
“I know both them boys. They hung out with the Tenth an' Kirkham gang mostly, though sometimes they ran with my gang. We used to go swimmin' after school down to Sandy Beach on the , an' in the slip where they said the water was sixty feet deep, only it wasn't. An' once, on a Thursday, we dug a lot of together, an' played hookey Friday to them. An' we used to go out on the Rock Wall an' catch pogies an' rock . One day—the day of the eclipse—Cal caught a half as big as a door. I never seen such a fish. An' now he's got to wear the stripes for twenty years. Lucky he wasn't married. If he don't get the consumption he'll be an old man when he comes out. Cal's mother wouldn't let 'm go swimmin', an' whenever she suspected she always licked his hair with her tongue. If it tasted salty, he got a beltin'. But he was onto himself. Comin' home, he'd jump somebody's front fence an' hold his head under a .”
 
“I used to dance with Chester Johnson,” Saxon said. “And I knew his wife, Kittie Brady, long and long ago. She had next place at the table to me in the paper-box factory. She's gone to San Francisco to her married sister's. She's going to have a baby, too. She was pretty, and there was always a string of fellows after her.”
 
The effect of the conviction and severe sentences was a bad one on the union men. Instead of being disheartening, it the bitterness. Billy's for having fought and the sweetness and affection which had flashed up in the days of Saxon's nursing of him were out. At home, he and brooded, while his talk took on the tone of Bert's in the last days ere that Mohegan died. Also, Billy stayed away from home longer hours, and was again drinking.
 
Saxon well-nigh abandoned hope. Almost was she steeled to the tragedy which her fancy painted in a thousand . Oftenest, it was of Billy being brought home on a stretcher. Sometimes it was a call to the telephone in the corner grocery and the information by a strange voice that her husband was lying in the receiving hospital or the morgue. And when the mysterious horse-poisoning cases occurred, and when the residence of one of the teaming magnates was half destroyed by , she saw Billy in prison, or wearing stripes, or mounting to the scaffold at San Quentin while at the same time she could see the little cottage on Pine street by newspaper reporters and photographers.
 
Yet her lively imagination failed altogether to anticipate the real . Harmon, the fireman , passing through the kitchen on his way out to work, had paused to tell Saxon about the previous day's train-wreck in the Alviso , and of how the engineer, under the overturned engine and unhurt, being drowned by the rising tide, had begged to be shot. Billy came in at the end of the , and from the light in his heavy-lidded eyes Saxon knew he had been drinking. He at Harmon, and, without greeting to him or Saxon, leaned his shoulder against the wall.
 
Harmon felt the awkwardness of the situation, and did his best to appear .
 
“I was just telling your wife—” he began, but was interrupted.
 
“I don't care what you was tellin' her. But I got something to tell you, Mister Man. My wife's made up your bed too many times to suit me.”
 
“Billy!” Saxon cried, her face with , and hurt, and shame.
 
Billy ignored her. Harmon was saying:
 
“I don't understand—”
 
“Well, I don't like your mug,” Billy informed him. “You're standin' on your foot. Get off of it. Get out. Beat it. D'ye understand that?”
 
“I don't know what's got into him,” Saxon hurriedly to the fireman. “He's not himself. Oh, I am so ashamed, so ashamed.”
 
Billy turned on her.
 
“You shut your mouth an' keep outa this.”
 
“But, Billy,” she .
 
“An' get outa here. You go into the other room.”
 
“Here, now,” Harmon broke in. “This is a fine way to treat a fellow.”
 
“I've given you too much rope as it is,” was Billy's answer.
 
“I've paid my rent regularly, haven't I?”
 
“An' I oughta knock your block off for you. Don't see any reason I shouldn't, for that matter.”
 
“If you do anything like that, Billy—” Saxon began.
 
“You here still? Well, if you won't go into the other room, I'll see that you do.”
 
His hand clutched her arm. For one instant she resisted his strength; and in that instant, the flesh crushed under his fingers, she realized the fullness of his strength.
 
In the front room she could only lie back in the Morris chair , and listen to what occurred in the kitchen. “I'll stay to the end of the week,” the fireman was saying. “I've paid in advance.”
 
“Don't make no mistake,” came Billy's voice, so slow that it was almost a drawl, yet quivering with rage. “You can't get out too quick if you wanta stay healthy—you an' your traps with you. I'm likely to start something any moment.”
 
“Oh, I know you're a slugger—” the fireman's voice began.
 
Then came the unmistakable impact of a blow; the crash of glass; a scuffle on the back porch; and, finally, the heavy bumps of a body down the steps. She heard Billy reenter the kitchen, move about, and knew he was up the broken glass of the kitchen door. Then he washed himself at the sink, whistling while he dried his face and hands, and walked into the front room. She did not look at him. She was too sick and sad. He paused , seeming to make up his mind.
 
“I'm goin' up town,” he stated. “They's a meeting of the union. If I don't come back it'll be because that geezer's sworn out a warrant.”
 
He opened the front door and paused. She knew he was looking at her. Then the door closed and she heard him go down the steps.
 
Saxon was . She did not think. She did not know what to think. The whole thing was incomprehensible, incredible. She lay back in the chair, her eyes closed, her mind almost a blank, crushed by a leaden feeling that the end had come to everything.
 
The voices of children playing in the street aroused her. Night had fallen. She groped her way to a lamp and lighted it. In the kitchen she stared, lips trembling, at the pitiful, half prepared meal. The fire had gone out. The water had boiled away from the potatoes. When she lifted the lid, a burnt smell arose. Methodically she scraped and cleaned the pot, put things in order, and peeled and sliced the potatoes for next day's frying. And just as methodically she went to bed. Her lack of nervousness, her , was abnormal, so abnormal that she closed her eyes and was almost immediately asleep. Nor did she till the sunshine was streaming into the room.
 
It was the first night she and Billy had slept apart. She was amazed that she had not lain awake worrying about him. She lay with eyes wide open, scarcely thinking, until pain in her arm attracted her attention. It was where Billy had gripped her. On examination she found the flesh fearfully black and blue. She was astonished, not by the spiritual fact that such had been administered by the one she loved most in the world, but by the sheer physical fact that an instant's pressure had so much damage. The strength of a man was a terrible thing. Quite , she found herself wondering if Charley Long were as strong as Billy.
 
It was not until she dressed and built the fire that she began to think about more things. Billy had not returned. Then he was arrested. What was she to do?—leave him in jail, go away, and start life afresh? Of course it was impossible to go on living with a man who had behaved as he had. But then, came another thought, WAS it impossible? After all, he was her husband. FOR BETTER OR WORSE—the phrase itself, a accompaniment to her thoughts, at the back of her consciousness. To leave him was to surrender. She carried the matter before the tribunal of her mother's memory. No; Daisy would never have surrendered. Daisy was a fighter. Then she, Saxon, must fight. Besides—and she acknowledged it—readily, though in a cold, dead way—besides, Billy was better than most husbands. Better than any other husband she had heard of, she concluded, as she remembered many of his earlier nicenesses and finenesses, and especially his eternal chant: NOTHING IS TOO GOOD FOR US. THE ROBERTSES AIN'T ON THE CHEAP.
 
At eleven o'clock she had a caller. It was Bud Strothers, Billy's mate on strike duty. Billy, he told her, had refused , refused a lawyer, had asked to be tried by the Court, had pleaded guilty, and had received a sentence of sixty dollars or thirty days. Also, he had refused to let the boys pay his fine.
 
“He's clean looney,” Strothers summed up. “Won't listen to reason. Says he'll serve the time out. He's been tankin' up too regular, I guess. His wh............