ok but ten minutes to sum up the case, telling
the jury that they knew their duty too well for him to attempt to
instruct them. "But," said he, "I will add one word of your own
convictions. These people have infested our beautiful city, sapping its
life like a great pest. The law is nothing to them--human life less.
There is one thing, gentlemen of the jury, of which they stand in awe,
and it is in your hands to give them one more lesson. That one thing
they fear is--the rope."

He sat down amid a dense silence. The judge spoke shortly and the twelve
jurors filed out past the stooping prisoner, who seemed to care so
little that he did not look upon them as they went.

Twenty minutes elapsed and the court officer announced in stentorian
tones that the verdict had been reached. Solemnly the twelve men seated
themselves whilst an expectant flutter passed over the room.

Then a voice droned:

"Prisoner, rise."

The lumbering form painfully raised its two humps.

"Prisoner, look upon the jury; jury, look upon the prisoner."

The grizzled head settled itself back between the two pulsing humps; the
steady eyes under the shaggy brows looking out for the first time in two
days upon the row of men who hated him--all popular citizens of Ithaca.

"Foreman, of the jury, have you found the prisoner innocent or guilty?"

A pause, a hush; then a deliberate:

"Guilty of murder in the first degree."

A little higher rose the bible-back of the fisherman, lower sunk the
large head between the deformed shoulders, like the receding head of a
turtle, hiding itself under its shell when an enemy draws near. Skinner
still stood with hypnotized eyes fastened on the jury; one thought in
his mind--Tess.

"Orn Skinner," began the judge, "is there any reason why the sentence of
this court should not be pronounced upon you in accordance with the
law?"

The fisherman turned his piercing eyes upon the judge, but attempted not
to speak.

"Orn Skinner--"

The judge was interrupted, there was a disturbing commotion in the back
of the court-room. He lifted his gavel for silence, his gaze falling
upon a dripping, shivering, red-haired girl, who raised to his face a
pair of copper-colored eyes in which shone a soul, the magnitude of
which the judge could not fathom with all his dignity.

"Orn Skinner," he finished, turning again to the fisherman, "twelve men
have found you guilty of murder in the first degree. The court, then,
passes its