But the judge was used to such scenes, and he turned his head wearily away.

“The law requires the government to hold the witness in default of bail, in cases of capital crime.”  The judge was a kind man, and he tried to do a kind act by explaining the subtle process of the law again to the lad.  When he had done this, he nodded.  And now the men approached Isaac to remove him, by force if necessary.  But the New Hampshire boy stood before the bar of justice stolidly.  His eyes wandered aimlessly, and his lips muttered.  Paralysis swept near him at that instant.

“Am—­I—­imprisoned because I am friendless and poor?  Is this your law?”

The judge shrugged his shoulders, but many in the court-room felt uncomfortable.

“Then,” spoke Isaac Masters, rising to his greatest height, and uplifting his hand as if to call God to witness, “if this is law—­damn your law!” It was his first and last oath.  Every man in the room started to his feet at the utterance of that supreme legal blasphemy.  But the judge was silent.  What sentence might he not inflict for such contempt of court?  What sentence could he?  The witness had no money, wherewith to be fined, and he was going to prison at any rate.  The judge was great enough to put himself in Isaac’s place.  He stroked his beard meditatively.

“Remove the witness,” he said.  This was sentence enough.  Although two officers advanced cautiously, as if prepared for a tussle, a babe might have led the giant unto the confines of Hades by the pressure of its little finger.  For Isaac wept.

[Illustration:  “OH, MY GOD!” HE SOBBED.  “MY GOD!  MY GOD!”]

* * * * *

There were two other witnesses in the white-washed cell to which Isaac was assigned.  It was on the south side, and large, and sunny, and often the door was left unlocked; but the cell looked out into a crumbling grave-yard.  One of these witnesses was a boy of about eighteen, pale to the suggestion of a mortal disease.  It did not take Isaac long to find out that this complexion did not indicate consumption, but was only prison pallor.  The other prisoner was less pathetic as to color, but he was listless and discouraged.  The only amusement of these men consisted in chewing tobacco in enormous quantities, playing surreptitious games of high-low-jack, in reading the daily paper, a single magazine, and waiting for the sun to enter the barred window, and watching it in the afternoon as it slipped away.  These two men tried to cheer the new comer in a rude, hearty way; but when the country lad learned that they had been in detention for six months already, held by the government as main witnesses against the first mate of their brig, their words were as dust.  They only choked him.

“What did you do,” Isaac asked, “to get you in such a scrape?”

“We saw the mate shoot the cook; that’s all.”

“If I’d known,” said the pale boy, with, a look out of the window, “how Uncle Sam keeps us so long—­I wished I hadn’t said nothing.  But we get a dollar a day; that’s something.”  And with a sigh that he meant to engulf with his philosophy, the boy turned his face away, so that Isaac should not suspect the tears that salted the flavor of the coarse tobacco.