"No," with a grin. "I don't need no more."
"Maybe not. But I've got one witness."
"Oh! Have you. Who is it?"
"I'm going to put the prisoner on the stand."
But Madge was plainly tired of the amusement already. She rose in her place, and her eyes were flashing darkly.
"We will stop this farce here and now," she said. "It won't do any good, anyhow. I can see plainly enough that there are some here who believe he is a spy. I am a good deal of that opinion myself; and as there is a doubt in my mind, I'll just settle the thing right now. Jury, you can find the man guilty. That's what he is, probably."
"Guilty," said the jury, with one voice, and grinning.
"Prisoner," continued Madge, "you have got until to-morrow morning, at nine o'clock, to live. At that time the boys will take you to some convenient tree, and hang you by the neck until you're dead—and that settles it."
Things looked dark for Patsy. It was quite evident that Black Madge was in deadly earnest in what she had said. One life more or less was absolutely nothing to her, and if there was the breath of a suspicion against one, it was, from her standpoint, better to put that one out of the way at once than to run any sort of risk by permitting him to live.
Nor did the hoboes who had gathered there to hear and to witness the trial hesitate to voice their sentiments about it by loud cheering when Madge uttered the sentence of death. It would be a hanging, indeed, and it did not make much difference to them who was hung. It has been said before that they were much like wild beasts, or dogs, who are without any quality of compassion.