to the most acute pain and grief whenever Fannie came to him.
Then he would toss and moan and give vent to his sorrow in passionate
complaints.

"I did n't tech his money, Fannie, you know I did n't. I wo'ked fu'
every cent of dat money, an' I saved it myself. Oh, I 'll nevah be able
to git a job ag'in. Me in de lock-up--me, aftah all dese yeahs!"

Beyond this, apparently, his mind could not go. That his detention was
anything more than temporary never seemed to enter his mind. That he
would be convicted and sentenced was as far from possibility as the
skies from the earth. If he saw visions of a long sojourn in prison, it
was only as a nightmare half consciously experienced and which with the
struggle must give way before the waking.

Fannie was utterly hopeless. She had laid down whatever pride had been
hers and gone to plead with Maurice Oakley for her husband's freedom,
and she had seen his hard, set face. She had gone upon her knees before
his wife to cite Berry's long fidelity.

"Oh, Mis' Oakley," she cried, "ef he did steal de money, we 've got
enough saved to mek it good. Let him go! let him go!"

"Then you admit that he did steal?" Mrs. Oakley had taken her up
sharply.

"Oh, I did n't say dat; I did n't mean dat."

"That will do, Fannie. I understand perfectly. You should have confessed
that long ago."

"But I ain't confessin'! I ain't! He did n't----"

"You may go."

The stricken woman reeled out of her mistress's presence, and Mrs.
Oakley told her husband that night, with tears in her eyes, how
disappointed she was with Fannie,--that the woman had known it all
along, and had only just confessed. It was just one more link in the
chain that was surely and not too slowly forging itself about Berry
Hamilton.

Of all the family Joe was the only one who burned with a fierce
indignation. He knew that his father was innocent, and his very
helplessness made a fever in his soul. Dandy as he was, he was loyal,
and when he saw his mother's tears and his sister's shame, something
rose within him that had it been given play might have made a man of
him, but, being crushed, died and rotted, and in the compost it made all
the evil of his nature flourished. The looks and gibes of his
fellow-employees at the barber-shop forced him to leave his work there.
Kit, bowed with shame and grief, dared not appear upon the streets,
where the girls who had envied her now hooted at her. So the little
family was shut in upo