ry--one year.
Do you understand?" Ackerman blanched a little and licked his lips
nervously. "And then I am going to suspend that sentence--hold it over
your head, so that if you are ever caught taking anything else you will
be punished for this offense and the next one also at one and the same
time. Do you understand that? Do you know what I mean? Tell me. Do you?"

"Yessah! I does, sir," replied the negro. "You'se gwine to let me go
now--tha's it."

The audience grinned, and his honor made a wry face to prevent his own
grim grin.

"I'm going to let you go only so long as you don't steal anything else,"
he thundered. "The moment you steal anything else, back you come to this
court, and then you go to the penitentiary for a year and whatever
more time you deserve. Do you understand that? Now, I want you to
walk straight out of this court and behave yourself. Don't ever steal
anything. Get something to do! Don't steal, do you hear? Don't touch
anything that doesn't belong to you! Don't come back here! If you do,
I'll send you to the penitentiary, sure."

"Yassah! No, sah, I won't," replied Ackerman, nervously. "I won't take
nothin' more that don't belong tuh me."

He shuffled away, after a moment, urged along by the guiding hand of a
bailiff, and was put safely outside the court, amid a mixture of smiles
and laughter over his simplicity and Payderson's undue severity of
manner. But the next case was called and soon engrossed the interest of
the audience.

It was that of the two housebreakers whom Cowperwood had been and was
still studying with much curiosity. In all his life before he had never
witnessed a sentencing scene of any kind. He had never been in police
or criminal courts of any kind--rarely in any of the civil ones. He
was glad to see the negro go, and gave Payderson credit for having some
sense and sympathy--more than he had expected.

He wondered now whether by any chance Aileen was here. He had objected
to her coming, but she might have done so. She was, as a matter of fact,
in the extreme rear, pocketed in a crowd near the door, heavily veiled,
but present. She had not been able to resist the desire to know quickly
and surely her beloved's fate--to be near him in his hour of real
suffering, as she thought. She was greatly angered at seeing him brought
in with a line of ordinary criminals and made to wait in this, to her,
shameful public manner, but she could not help admiring all the more the
digni