for 2,000 pounds, signed John Wardlaw, and
made me indorse it, and told me where to get it cashed; he would come
next day for Arthur Wardlaw's share of the money. Well, I suspected no
ill; would you? I went and got the note discounted, and locked the money
up. It was not my money; the greater part was Arthur Wardlaw's. That same
evening a policeman called, and asked several questions, which of course
I answered. He then got me out of the house on some pretense, and
arrested me as a forger."

"Oh!" cried Helen.

"I forgot the clergyman; I was a gentleman, and a man, insulted, and I
knocked the officer down directly. But his myrmidons overpowered me. I
was tried at the Central Criminal Court on two charges. First, the Crown
(as they call the attorney that draws the indictment) charged me with
forging the note of hand; and then with not forging it, but passing it,
well knowing that somebody else had forged it. Well, Undercliff, the
expert, swore positively that the forged note was not written by me; and
the Crown, as they call it, was defeated on that charge; but being proved
a liar in a court of justice did not abash my accuser; the second charge
was pressed with equal confidence. The note, you are to understand, was
forged--that admits of no doubt; and I passed it; the question was
whether I passed it _knowing it to be forged._ How was that to be
determined? And here it was that my own familiar friend, in whom I
trusted, destroyed me. Of course, as soon as I was put in prison, I wrote
and sent to Arthur Wardlaw. Would you believe it? he would not come to
me. He would not even write. Then, as the time drew near, I feared he was
a traitor. I treated him like one. I told my solicitor to drag him into
court as my witness, and make him tell the truth. The clerk went down
accordingly, and found he kept his door always locked; but the clerk
outwitted him, and served him with the subpoena in his bedroom, before he
could crawl under the bed. But he baffled us at last; he never appeared
in the witness-box; and when my counsel asked the court to imprison him,
his father swore he could not come; he was dying, and all out of sympathy
with me. Fine sympathy! that closed the lips, and concealed the truth;
one syllable of which would have saved his friend and benefactor from a
calamity worse than death. Is the truth poison, that to tell it makes a
sick man die? Is the truth hell, that a dying man refuses to speak it?
How can a man die