The commotion had called a crowd of curious servants into the hall.  Fannie hardly saw them as she dashed among them, crying for her mistress.  In a moment she returned, dragging Mrs. Oakley by the hand.

“Tell ’em, oh, tell ’em, Miss Leslie, dat you don’t believe it.  Don’t let ’em ’rest Berry.”

“Why, Fannie, I can’t do anything.  It all seems perfectly plain, and Mr. Oakley knows better than any of us, you know.”

Fannie, her last hope gone, flung herself on the floor, crying, “O Gawd!  O Gawd! he ‘s gone fu’ sho’!”

Her husband bent over her, the tears dropping from his eyes.  “Nevah min’, Fannie,” he said, “nevah min’.  Hit ‘s boun’ to come out all right.”

She raised her head, and seizing his manacled hands pressed them to her breast, wailing in a low monotone, “Gone! gone!”

They disengaged her hands, and led Berry away.

“Take her out,” said Oakley sternly to the servants; and they lifted her up and carried her away in a sort of dumb stupor that was half a swoon.

They took her to her little cottage, and laid her down until she could come to herself and the full horror of her situation burst upon her.

V

THE JUSTICE OF MEN

The arrest of Berry Hamilton on the charge preferred by his employer was the cause of unusual commotion in the town.  Both the accuser and the accused were well known to the citizens, white and black,—­Maurice Oakley as a solid man of business, and Berry as an honest, sensible negro, and the pink of good servants.  The evening papers had a full story of the crime, which closed by saying that the prisoner had amassed a considerable sum of money, it was very likely from a long series of smaller peculations.

It seems a strange irony upon the force of right living, that this man, who had never been arrested before, who had never even been suspected of wrong-doing, should find so few who even at the first telling doubted the story of his guilt.  Many people began to remember things that had looked particularly suspicious in his dealings.  Some others said, “I did n’t think it of him.”  There were only a few who dared to say, “I don’t believe it of him.”

The first act of his lodge, “The Tribe of Benjamin,” whose treasurer he was, was to have his accounts audited, when they should have been visiting him with comfort, and they seemed personally grieved when his books were found to be straight.  The A. M. E. church, of which he had been an honest and active member, hastened to disavow sympathy with him, and to purge itself of contamination by turning him out.  His friends were afraid to visit him and were silent when his enemies gloated.  On every side one might have asked, Where is charity? and gone away empty.