better than speaking the truth? How can he die worse
than withholding it? I believe his sickness and his death were lies like
himself. For want of one word from Arthur Wardlaw to explain that I had
every reason to expect a note of hand from him, the jury condemned me.
They were twelve honest but shallow men--invited to go inside another
man's bosom, and guess what was there. They guessed that I knew and
understood a thing which to this hour I neither know nor understand, by
God!"

He paused a moment, then resumed:

"I believe they founded their conjecture on my knocking down the officer.
There was a reason for you! Why, forgers and their confederates are
reptiles, and have no fight in them. Experience proves this. But these
twelve men did not go by experience; they guessed, like babies, and,
after much hesitation, condemned me; but recommended me to mercy. Mercy!
What mercy did I deserve? Either I was innocent, or hanging was too good
for me. No; in their hearts they doubted my guilt; and their doubt took
that timid form instead of acquitting me. I was amazed at the verdict,
and asked leave to tell the judge why Arthur Wardlaw had defied the
court, and absented himself as my witness. Had the judge listened for one
minute, he would have seen I was innocent. But no. I was in England where
the mouth of the accused is stopped, if he is fool enough to employ
counsel. The judge stopped my mouth, as your father just now tried to
stop it; and they branded me as a felon.

"Up to that moment my life was honorable and worthy. Since that moment I
have never wronged a human creature. Men pass from virtue to vice, from
vice to crime; this is the ladder a soul goes down. But you are invited
to believe that I jumped from innocence into a filthy felony, and then
jumped back again none the worse, and was a gardener that fought for his
employer, and a lover that controlled his passion. It is a lie--a lie
that ought not to take in a child. But prejudice degrades a man below the
level of a child. I'll say no more; my patience is exhausted by wrongs
and insults. I am as honest a man as ever breathed; and the place where
we stand is mine, for I made it. Leave it and me this moment. Go to
England, and leave me where the animals, more reasonable than you, have
the sense to see my real character. I'll not sail in the same ship with
any man, nor any woman either, who can look me in the face and take me
for a felon."

He swelled and towered wi