What had he done? No more than other river folk had done before him. But it was forbidden by the law and there you were. And the excuse that they had to live and eat carried no weight in the courts of the land. Neither did the courts care that a rich and unscrupulous Josiah Flint had lured these men into his vicious employ at starvation wages only to leave them unwanted and ostracized from honest employment upon his untimely death. And Mr. Josephus Duffy, obeying that primal law of the survival of the fittest, was to be jailed for five years because he stole when employment was denied him. Five years of punishment for bringing food home to his family!