"Certainly he can't intend to give me more than one month," said Busby to the tipstaff.
"Considering that this is your first offence; that your conduct hitherto has been that of an honest young man, and that the lesson you have learned from this bitter and terrible experience will sink deeply into your heart; that you have opening out to you in the possible future a life of usefulness and honor, with a prospect of redeeming this single error and winning for yourself a respected name—"
"He can't decently give me more than twenty days after that," suggested Busby.
The judge, after wiping the moisture from his eyes and borrowing a morsel of tobacco from the prosecuting attorney, continued:
"In view of all these extenuating circumstances, in view of the fact, fully recognized by this court, that justice is not revengeful, but exercises its highest prerogative in leading the fallen to reformation and moral improvement—in view, I say, of the fact that you are in the very spring-time of your existence, with the vista of the future opening out with alluring brightness before you and giving promise of higher and better things—in view of those sorrowing parents the child of whose prayers you are; of that mother who guided your infant steps and cared for you with the yearning tenderness of maternal love, of that venerable father who looks upon you as the staff of his old age; considering, too, that this is your first misstep from the path of duty—"
"Two weeks as sure as death!" exclaimed Mr. Busby, joyfully, to the officer beside him.
"The path of duty," continued the judge, "and that up to the moment of the commission of the deed you had been above suspicion and above reproach,—in view of all this," remarked the judge, "I have thought it my duty, minister of the law though I am, and bound though I am by my oath to vindicate the insulted majesty of that law—"
"If he gives me more than one week, I will never trust signs again," murmured Busby.