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.