but that you can understand what I am going to say to you.  The offense you have committed—­stealing a piece of lead pipe—­is a crime.  Do you hear me?  A criminal offense—­one that I could punish you very severely for.  I could send you to the penitentiary for one year if I chose—­the law says I may—­one year at hard labor for stealing a piece of lead pipe.  Now, if you have any sense you will pay strict attention to what I am going to tell you.  I am not going to send you to the penitentiary right now.  I’m going to wait a little while.  I am going to sentence you to one year in the penitentiary—­one year.  Do you understand?” Ackerman blanched a little and licked his lips nervously.  “And then I am going to suspend that sentence—­hold it over your head, so that if you are ever caught taking anything else you will be punished for this offense and the next one also at one and the same time.  Do you understand that?  Do you know what I mean?  Tell me.  Do you?”

“Yessah!  I does, sir,” replied the negro.  “You’se gwine to let me go now—­tha’s it.”

The audience grinned, and his honor made a wry face to prevent his own grim grin.

“I’m going to let you go only so long as you don’t steal anything else,” he thundered.  “The moment you steal anything else, back you come to this court, and then you go to the penitentiary for a year and whatever more time you deserve.  Do you understand that?  Now, I want you to walk straight out of this court and behave yourself.  Don’t ever steal anything.  Get something to do!  Don’t steal, do you hear?  Don’t touch anything that doesn’t belong to you!  Don’t come back here!  If you do, I’ll send you to the penitentiary, sure.”

“Yassah!  No, sah, I won’t,” replied Ackerman, nervously.  “I won’t take nothin’ more that don’t belong tuh me.”

He shuffled away, after a moment, urged along by the guiding hand of a bailiff, and was put safely outside the court, amid a mixture of smiles and laughter over his simplicity and Payderson’s undue severity of manner.  But the next case was called and soon engrossed the interest of the audience.

It was that of the two housebreakers whom Cowperwood had been and was still studying with much curiosity.  In all his life before he had never witnessed a sentencing scene of any kind.  He had never been in police or criminal courts of any kind—­rarely in any of the civil ones.  He was glad to see the negro go, and gave Payderson credit for having some sense and sympathy—­more than he had expected.

He wondered now whether by any chance Aileen was here.  He had objected to her coming, but she might have done so.  She was, as a matter of fact, in the extreme rear, pocketed in a crowd near the door, heavily veiled, but present.  She had not been able to resist the desire to know quickly and surely her beloved’s fate—­to be near him in his hour of real suffering, as she thought.  She was greatly angered at seeing him brought in with a line of ordinary criminals