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The result was that the police were keen to fasten the guilt upon someone--they

did not care whom, so long as it was someone who was in their custody.

"You may not o' done it," ventured the cell-mate; "but they'll send you up for it, if

they can't hang you. They're goin' to try to get the death sentence. They hain't got

no love for you, Byrne. You caused 'em a lot o' throuble in your day an' they

haven't forgot it. I'd hate to be in your boots."

Billy Byrne shrugged. Where were his dreams of justice? They seemed to have

faded back into the old distrust and hatred. He shook himself and conjured in his

mind the vision of a beautiful girl who had believed in him and trusted him--who

had inculcated within him a love for all that was finest and best in true manhood,

for the very things that he had most hated all the years of his life before she had

come into his existence to alter it and him.

And then Billy would believe again--believe that in the end justice would triumph

and that it would all come out right, just the way he had pictured it.

With the coming of the last day of the trial Billy found it more and more difficult

to adhere to his regard for law, order, and justice. The prosecution had shown

conclusively that Billy was a hard customer. The police had brought witnesses

who did not hesitate to perjure themselves in their testimony--testimony which it

seemed to Billy the densest of jurymen could plainly see had been framed up and

learned by rote until it was letter-perfect.

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

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The Mucker