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A holiday crowd in summer colors was passing. There was laughter in the air. How intelligent the people looked, he mused, and how civilized! A graceful, powerful motor car purred by.

He paused before a window full of books, and saw many that interested him. He glanced up at the spired heights of a church, and his gaze traveled onward to a new building, towering, shapely, beautiful; men, he reflected, had made it, had shaped the steel and stone to their will. The paper dropped from his fingers, and a passing stranger courteously picked it up, and handed it to Saunders Rook with a friendly smile. Saunders Rook felt an impulse to cry aloud, “This land, these times aren’t so rotten, after all.” The words died still-born. Down Fifty-second Street he heard the shrill cry of a newsboy, “All about Saunders Rook, the martyr.”

He hurried on toward Central Park. The governor had kept his word; he had called out the militia; alert soldiers with fixed bayonets patrolled the paths and scrutinized the picnickers from under their hat-brims. The green lawns were dotted with blue policemen. They, too, were watchful. Indeed, as Saunders Rook slipped into the park, unrecognized, he saw a burly officer collar a mild, blond little man, and heard the man protesting loudly that he was not Saunders Rook, but only Ole Svenson, a pastry-cook, and that the thing he had just eaten was not poison, but a banana. As he left the man struggling in the hands of the law, Saunders Rook shrugged his shoulders, smiled a pale smile, and penetrated deeper into the park.