rdict I
cordially concur. The offense was a very serious one; but the endeavor
which you have made to screen yourself, at the expense of that beautiful
and innocent young girl, is, in my opinion, still more heinous and
contemptible than the crime itself. Having made yourself master of her
affections, you used your power to the utmost to effect her moral and
social hurt. You would have had her perjure herself, and proclaim
herself guilty of a crime she did not commit, in order that you might
yourself escape justice. Nobody who heard her evidence--who saw her in
yonder box--can doubt it. Still, as your counsel has just remarked, you
are but a youth in years, and I looked about me in hopes to find some
extenuating circumstances in your past career--some record of
good--which might have justified me in inflicting on you a more lenient
sentence than your offense had earned. I had no other purpose in asking
whether any thing was known of your previous career. The reply to that
question has astonished and shocked me, as it has shocked and astonished
every right-thinking person in this court who heard it. We knew to what
base purpose you had used the comeliness and youth and good address with
which nature had endowed you; and now we have learned how evilly you
have misused your talents--with what perverted ingenuity you have
striven, at so early an age, to set at naught those precautions by which
your country has lately endeavored to secure for itself efficient public
servants."

"That's neat," whispered a learned friend to Mr. Balais, reverently
shutting his eyes, as though in rapt admiration.

"Very," returned that gentleman. "He's bidding for the Lord Chief
Justiceship."

"In the whole course of my legal experience, young man," continued the
judge, "I have never seen a case which seems to me to call for more
exemplary punishment than yours. The promise of your future is dark
indeed--bad for yourself, and bad for that society which, though so
fitted to adorn and benefit it, you have chosen to outrage. I will not,
however, reproach you further; I will rather express a hope that when
you return to the world after your long probation--and it will be as
long as I am able to make it--you may be a wiser and better, as well as
a much older man. The sentence of the court is, that you be kept in
penal servitude for the space of twenty years."

CHAPTER XXXII.

BROODING.

Not a syllable of the judge's exhortation was los