pward--shame and a terrible loneliness
and dread of the future. At sunset he had watched a long line of
shackled Negroes, followed by guards with shotguns, file into camp.
To-morrow he himself would be one of that gang; and not only to-morrow,
but for two years. Assault and Battery with Intent to Kill--this was the
verdict of the court in Greenville in which he had been tried. And yet
he hadn't intended to kill anybody, he had only meant to remonstrate.

Three young fellows, sitting at a table in a cheap ice-cream parlour--it
had seemed a crystal palace to the old man and to Molly his wife, fresh
from the deepest recesses of the mountains--had made fun of Molly and
her sunbonnet.

When they did that, the mirrors that lined the walls, the enamelled-top
tables, the sunlit street showing through wide-open doors, had all
turned red before his eyes. He had risen from his chair and gone toward
this seat of the scornful. "You fellers," he had warned in a low voice,
"you fellers don't want to say anything like that again."

They had looked at him in sullen astonishment; then they had sprung to
their feet. According to the testimony they gave in court, he had
confronted one of them, an open knife hidden up his sleeve. This was not
true, and he denied it stoutly on the stand. As a matter of fact, he had
not thought of his knife until the three young bruisers, habitues of the
place and of the questionable pool-room in the rear, rushed him all
together, and a dirty-aproned waiter, coming up from behind, hit him a
crack that jarred his skull. Then he had sprung back and drawn his
knife.

The wounds he inflicted were not serious, he had simply held his
assailants off; but the policeman who ran in, followed by a crowd, found
the knife in his hand. The testimony was against him; besides, he did
not make a good witness. No man does who holds something back. And what
old Tom held back was the remark the young men had made.

On that point his lips were stubbornly sealed. He did not even tell his
lawyer. As for Molly, she had not heard. Poor girl, she was a bit deaf,
her sunbonnet came down close over her ears, and she had been eating her
ice cream, oblivious. He did not want her to know, ever. He did not want
the court to hear. What's more, he did not mean that it should hear.

The courts of justice, like the mills of the gods, ought to grind slowly
and grind exceeding small--sifting carefully the evidence, examining
deeply into the