THE SPORT OF THE GODS
former good name. The judge and the jury saw otherwise. Berry was convicted. He was given ten years at hard labour.
He hardly looked as if he could live out one as he heard his sentence. But Nature was kind and relieved him of the strain. With a cry as if his heart were bursting, he started up and fell forward on his face unconscious. Some one, a bit more brutal than the rest, said, "It's five dollars' fine every time a nigger faints," but no one laughed. There was something too portentous, too tragic in the degradation of this man.
Maurice Oakley sat in the court-room, grim and relentless. As soon as the trial was over, he sent for Fannie, who still kept the cottage in the yard.
"You must go," he said. "You can't stay here any longer. I want none of your breed about me."
And Fannie bowed her head and went away from him in silence.
All the night long the women of the
62
