dropped into a chair from which one of the children had
risen. With his arm hanging limply over the back he sat staring haggardly
at the judge, as though finding nothing to say.

"I have a right to read any man's mind," he muttered, after a long pause,
"when it's as transparent as yours. No one had any doubt as to your
convictions--after your charge."

"That has nothing to do with it. If I charged in your favor, it was
because I wanted you to have the benefit of every possible plea. When
those pleas were found insufficient by a jury of your peers--"

Ford emitted a sound that might have been a laugh, had there been mirth in
it.

"A jury of my peers! A lot of thick-headed country tradesmen, prejudiced
against me from the start because I'd sometimes kicked up a row in their
town! They weren't my peers any more than they were yours!"

"The law assumes all men to be equal--"

"Just as it assumes all men to be intelligent--only they're not. The law
is a very fine theory. The chief thing to be, said against it is that five
times out of ten it leaves human nature out of account. I'm condemned to
death, not because I killed a man, but because you lawyers won't admit
that your theory doesn't work."

He began to speak more easily, with the energy born of his desperate
situation and his sense of wrong. He sat up straighter; the air of
dejection with which he had sunk to the chair slipped from him; his gray
eyes, of the kind called "honest," shot out glances of protest. The elder
man found himself once more struggling against the wave of sympathy which
at times in the court-room had been almost too strong for him. He was
forced to intrench himself mentally within the system he served before
bracing himself to reply.

"I can't keep you from having your opinion--"

"Nor can I save you from having yours. Look at me, judge!" He was bolt
upright now, throwing his arms wide with a gesture in which there was more
appeal than indignation "Look at me! I'm a strong, healthy-bodied,
healthy-minded fellow of twenty-four; but I'm drenched to the skin, I'm
half naked, I'm nearly dead with hunger, I'm an outlaw for life--and
you're responsible for it all."

It was Wayne's turn for protest, and though he winced, he spoke sharply.

"I had my duty to perform--"

"Good God, man, don't sit there and call that thing your duty! You're
something more than a wheel in a machine. You were a human being before
you were a judge. With your convi