midnight
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 .