As he waited for the jury to return its verdict Billy sat in his cell trying to read a newspaper which a kindly guard had given him.  But his eyes persisted in boring through the white paper and the black type to scenes that were not in any paper.  He saw a turbulent river tumbling through a savage world, and in the swirl of the water lay a little island.  And he saw a man there upon the island, and a girl.  The girl was teaching the man to speak the language of the cultured, and to view life as people of refinement view it.

She taught him what honor meant among her class, and that it was better to lose any other possession rather than lose honor.  Billy realized that it had been these lessons that had spurred him on to the mad scheme that was to end now with the verdict of “Guilty”—­he had wished to vindicate his honor.  A hard laugh broke from his lips; but instantly he sobered and his face softened.

It had been for her sake after all, and what mattered it if they did send him to the gallows?  He had not sacrificed his honor—­he had done his best to assert it.  He was innocent.  They could kill him but they couldn’t make him guilty.  A thousand juries pronouncing him so could not make it true that he had killed Schneider.

But it would be hard, after all his hopes, after all the plans he had made to live square, to show them.  His eyes still boring through the paper suddenly found themselves attracted by something in the text before them—­a name, Harding.

Billy Byrne shook himself and commenced to read: 

The marriage of Barbara, daughter of Anthony Harding, the multimillionaire, to William Mallory will take place on the twenty-fifth of June.

The article was dated New York.  There was more, but Billy did not read it.  He had read enough.  It is true that he had urged her to marry Mallory; but now, in his lonesomeness and friendlessness, he felt almost as though she had been untrue to him.

“Come along, Byrne,” a bailiff interrupted his thoughts, “the jury’s reached a verdict.”

The judge was emerging from his chambers as Billy was led into the courtroom.  Presently the jury filed in and took their seats.  The foreman handed the clerk a bit of paper.  Even before it was read Billy knew that he had been found guilty.  He did not care any longer, so he told himself.  He hoped that the judge would send him to the gallows.  There was nothing more in life for him now anyway.  He wanted to die.  But instead he was sentenced to life imprisonment in the penitentiary at Joliet.

This was infinitely worse than death.  Billy Byrne was appalled at the thought of remaining for life within the grim stone walls of a prison.  Once more there swept over him all the old, unreasoning hatred of the law and all that pertained to it.  He would like to close his steel fingers about the fat neck of the red-faced judge.  The smug jurymen roused within him the lust to kill.  Justice!  Billy Byrne laughed aloud.