"Before I deliver sentence on you, Abner Barrow," he said, with an old man's kind severity, "is there anything you have to say on your own behalf?" The District Attorney turned his face, as did all the others, but he did not see the prisoner. He still saw himself holding the court-room with a spell, and heard his own periods ringing against the whitewashed ceiling. The others saw a tall, broad-shouldered man leaning heavily forward over the bar of the prisoner's box. His face was white with the prison tan, markedly so in contrast with those sunburnt by the wind and sun turned toward him, and pinched and hollow-eyed and worn. When he spoke, his voice had the huskiness which comes from non-use, and cracked and broke like a child's. "I don't know, Judge," he said, hesitatingly, and staring stupidly at the mass of faces in the well beneath him, "that I have anything to say--in my own behalf. I don't know as it would be any use. I guess what the gentleman said about me is all there is to say. He put it about right. I've had my fun, and I've got to pay for it--that is, I thought it was fun at the time. I am not going to cry any baby act and beg off, or anything, if that's what you mean. But there is something I'd like to say if I thought you would believe me." He frowned down at the green table as though the words he wanted would not come, and his eyes wandered from one face to another, until they rested upon the bowed head of the only woman in the room. They remained there for some short time, and then Barrow drew in his breath more quickly, and turned with something like a show of confidence to the jury. "All that man said of me is true," he said. He gave a toss of his hands as a man throws away the reins. "I admit all he says. I _am_ a back number; I _am_ out of date; I _was_ a loafer and a blackguard. I never shot any man in the back, nor I never assassinated no one; but that's neither here nor there. I'm not in a place where I can expect people to pick out their words; but, as he says, I _am_ a bad lot. He says I have enjoyed a reputation as a desperado. I am not bragging of that; I just ask you to remember that he said it. Remember it of me. I was not the sort to back down to man or beast, and I'm not now. I am not backing down, now; I'm taking my punishment. Whatever you please to make it, I'll take it; and that," he went on, more slowly, "makes it harder for me to ask what I want to ask, and make you all believe I am not asking it for myself." He stopped, and the silence in the room seemed to give him some faint encouragement of sympathy, though it was rather the silence of curiosity. Colonel Stogart gave a stern look upward, and asked the prisoner's wife, in a whisper, if she knew what her husband meant to say, but she shook her head. She did not know. The District Attorney smiled indulgently at the prisoner and at the men about him, but they were watching the prisoner.