tly releasing
them. "Why, do you begin to understand what this actually means to me?
It means the retention of manhood, of self-respect. It will save me
the degradation which I dreaded most of all--the toiling in the fields
beside negro slaves, and the sting of the lash. Ay, it means even
more--"

I hesitated, instantly realizing that I must not utter those impetuous
words leaping to my lips.

"More!" she exclaimed. "What more?"

"This," I went on, my thought shifting into a new channel. "A longer
servitude. Up to this moment my one dream has been to escape, but I
must give that up now. You have placed me under obligations to serve."

"You mean you feel personally bound?" "Yes; not quite so much to
your uncle, perhaps, as to yourself. But between us this has become a
debt of honor."

"But wait," she said earnestly "for I had even thought of that. I was
sure you would feel that way--any gentleman would. Still there is a
way out. You were sentenced as an indentured servant."

"I suppose so."

"It is true; you were so entered on the books of this ship. Uncle
Roger had to be sure of all this before he paid his money, and I saw
the entry myself. It read: 'Geoffry Carlyle, Master Mariner,
indentured to the Colonies for the term of twenty years, unless sooner
released; crime high treason.' Surely you must know the meaning of
those words?"

"Servitude for twenty years."

"'Unless sooner released.'"

"That means pardoned; there is no hope of that."

"Perhaps not, but that is not all it means. Any indentured man, under
our Maryland laws, can buy his freedom, after serving a certain
proportion of his sentence. I think it is true in any of the Colonies.
Did you not know that?"

I did know it, yet somehow had never connected the fact before
directly with my own case. I had been sentenced to twenty
years--twenty years of a living death--and that alone remained
impressed on my mind. I could still see Black Jeffries sitting on the
bench, glaring down at me in unconcealed anger, his eyes blazing with
the fury of impotent hate, as he roared, that, by decree of the King,
my sentence to be hung was commuted to twenty years of penal
servitude beyond seas. It had never even seemed an act of mercy to me.
But now it did, as the full truth suddenly came home, that I could buy
my freedom. God! what a relief; I stood up straight once more in the
stature of a man. I hardly know what wild words I might have spoken
had the opportu