reason but to a chill February draft that blew in through the open
window above his head. He couldn't get away from it. The others
wouldn't let him. They got him up in a corner and he couldn't break
through. He told them he was getting pneumonia, that the draft would
be the death of him, that he'd take back what he said about the
smoke almost suffocating him,--still they surrounded him, and argued
with him, and called him things he didn't feel physically able to
call them, and at last he voted guilty.

Smilk, haggard with worry,--for he had come to think, as the hours
went by without a verdict, that there would be a disagreement or,
worse than that, an acquittal, in which case he would have to face
the charge of bigamy that the district attorney had more than
intimated,--Smilk slouched dejectedly into the court room a few
minutes before eleven o'clock and went through the familiar process
of facing the jury while the jury faced him. He straightened up
eagerly when the verdict was read. He took a long, deep breath. His
eyes brightened,--they almost twinkled,--as they searched the room
in quest of Mr. Yollop. He was disappointed to find that the gentle
milliner was not there to hear the good news.

The judge sentenced him to twenty years imprisonment at hard labor,
and he went back to his cell in the Tombs, a triumphant, vindicated
champion of the laws of his State, a doughty warrior carrying the
banner of justice up to the very guns of sentiment.

Mr. Yollop received a friendly letter from him some two months after
his return to Sing Sing. He found it early one morning on his
library table, sealed but minus the stamp that the government exacts
for safe and conscientious delivery. Mr. Yollop's stenographer,