Her torn heart yearned to cancel the penalty that would fall on all of them, to deliver Hughs from the common enemy--the Law; but a queer feeling of pride and bewilderment, and a knowledge, that, to demand an eye for an eye was expected of all self-respecting persons, kept her silent.
Thus, then, they reached the great consoler, the grey resolver of all human tangles, haven of men and angels, the police court.

It was situated in a back street.

Like trails of ooze, when the tide, neither ebb nor flow, is leaving and making for some estuary, trails of human beings were moving to and from it.

The faces of these shuffling "shadows" wore a look as though masked with some hard but threadbare stuff-the look of those whom Life has squeezed into a last resort.
Within the porches lay a stagnant marsh of suppliants, through whose centre trickled to and fro that stream of ooze.

An old policeman, too, like some grey lighthouse, marked the entrance to the port of refuge.
Close to that lighthouse the old butler edged his way.