These witnesses could recall with startling accuracy every
detail that had occurred between seventeen minutes after eight
and twenty-one minutes past nine on the night of September
23 over a year before; but where they had been and what
they had done ten minutes earlier or ten minutes later, or
where they were at nine o'clock in the evening last Friday
they couldn't for the lives of them remember.
And Billy was practically without witnesses.
The result was a foregone conclusion. Even Billy had to
admit it, and when the prosecuting attorney demanded the
death penalty the prisoner had an uncanny sensation as of the
tightening of a hempen rope about his neck.
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.
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