That's what that woman there did for me."

The man stopped suddenly, and turned with a puzzled look toward where
his wife sat, for she had dropped her head on the table in front of
her, and he had heard her sobbing.

"And what I want to ask of you, sir, is to let me have two years out
of jail to show her how I feel about it. I ask you not to send me back
for life, sir. Give me just two years--two years of my life while I
have some strength left to work for her as she worked for me. I only
want to show her how I care for her _now_. I had the chance, and
I wouldn't take it; and now, sir, I want to show her that I know and
understand--now, when it's too late. It's all I've thought of when I
was in jail, to be able to see her sitting in her own kitchen with her
hands folded, and me working and sweating in the fields for
her--working till every bone ached, trying to make it up to her.

"And I can't!" the man cried, suddenly, losing the control he had
forced upon himself, and tossing his hands up above his head, and with
his eyes fixed hopelessly on the bowed head below him. "I can't! It's
too late. It's too late!"

He turned and faced the crowd and the District Attorney defiantly.

"I'm not crying for the men I killed. They're dead. I can't bring them
back. But she's not dead, and I treated her worse than I treated them.
_She_ never harmed me, nor got in my way, nor angered me. And now,
when I want to do what I can for her in the little time that's left,
_he_ tells you I'm a 'relic of the past,' that civilization's too good
for me, that you must bury me until it's time to bury me for good.