judge and the jury saw otherwise. Berry was convicted. He was given ten
years at hard labour.

He hardly looked as if he could live out one as he heard his sentence.
But Nature was kind and relieved him of the strain. With a cry as if his
heart were bursting, he started up and fell forward on his face
unconscious. Some one, a bit more brutal than the rest, said, "It 's
five dollars' fine every time a nigger faints," but no one laughed.
There was something too portentous, too tragic in the degradation of
this man.

Maurice Oakley sat in the court-room, grim and relentless. As soon as
the trial was over, he sent for Fannie, who still kept the cottage in
the yard.

"You must go," he said. "You can't stay here any longer. I want none of
your breed about me."

And Fannie bowed her head and went away from him in silence.

All the night long the women of the Hamilton household lay in bed and
wept, clinging to each other in their grief. But Joe did not go to
sleep. Against all their entreaties, he stayed up. He put out the light
and sat staring into the gloom with hard, burning eyes.




VI