“George W. Stener,” said his honor, while the audience, including Cowperwood, listened attentively.  “The motion for a new trial as well as an arrest of judgment in your case having been overruled, it remains for the court to impose such sentence as the nature of your offense requires.  I do not desire to add to the pain of your position by any extended remarks of my own; but I cannot let the occasion pass without expressing my emphatic condemnation of your offense.  The misapplication of public money has become the great crime of the age.  If not promptly and firmly checked, it will ultimately destroy our institutions.  When a republic becomes honeycombed with corruption its vitality is gone.  It must crumble upon the first pressure.

“In my opinion, the public is much to blame for your offense and others of a similar character.  Heretofore, official fraud has been regarded with too much indifference.  What we need is a higher and purer political morality—­a state of public opinion which would make the improper use of public money a thing to be execrated.  It was the lack of this which made your offense possible.  Beyond that I see nothing of extenuation in your case.”  Judge Payderson paused for emphasis.  He was coming to his finest flight, and he wanted it to sink in.

“The people had confided to you the care of their money,” he went on, solemnly.  “It was a high, a sacred trust.  You should have guarded the door of the treasury even as the cherubim protected the Garden of Eden, and should have turned the flaming sword of impeccable honesty against every one who approached it improperly.  Your position as the representative of a great community warranted that.

“In view of all the facts in your case the court can do no less than impose a major penalty.  The seventy-fourth section of the Criminal Procedure Act provides that no convict shall be sentenced by the court of this commonwealth to either of the penitentiaries thereof, for any term which shall expire between the fifteenth of November and the fifteenth day of February of any year, and this provision requires me to abate three months from the maximum of time which I would affix in your case—­namely, five years.  The sentence of the court is, therefore, that you pay a fine of five thousand dollars to the commonwealth for the use of the county”—­Payderson knew well enough that Stener could never pay that sum—­“and that you undergo imprisonment in the State Penitentiary for the Eastern District, by separate and solitary confinement at labor, for the period of four years and nine months, and that you stand committed until this sentence is complied with.”  He laid down the briefs and rubbed his chin reflectively while both Cowperwood and Stener were hurried out.  Butler was the first to leave after the sentence—­quite satisfied.  Seeing that all was over so far as she was concerned, Aileen stole quickly out; and after her, in a few moments, Cowperwood’s father and brothers.  They were to await him outside and go with him to the penitentiary.  The remaining members of the family were at home eagerly awaiting intelligence of the morning’s work, and Joseph Cowperwood was at once despatched to tell them.