If it was the last word I had to
speak, against that vortex with my utmost powers I strove, and out of it
I came. I argued that if I had been rude, apologies was due, and those
apologies without a question of demeaning, I did make. And now, when
I've been so wishful to show that one thought is next to being a holy
one with me and goes before all others--now, after all, you dodge me
when I ever so gently hint at it, and throw me back upon myself. For, do
not, sir,' said Young John, 'do not be so base as to deny that dodge you
do, and thrown me back upon myself you have!'

All amazement, Arthur gazed at him like one lost, only saying, 'What is
it? What do you mean, John?' But, John, being in that state of mind in
which nothing would seem to be more impossible to a certain class of
people than the giving of an answer, went ahead blindly.

'I hadn't,' John declared, 'no, I hadn't, and I never had the
audaciousness to think, I am sure, that all was anything but lost. I
hadn't, no, why should I say I hadn't if I ever had, any hope that it
was possible to be so blest, not after the words that passed, not even
if barriers insurmountable had not been raised! But is that a reason why
I am to have no memory, why I am to have no thoughts, why I am to have
no sacred spots, nor anything?'

'What can you mean?' cried Arthur.

'It's all very well to trample on it, sir,' John went on, scouring a
very prairie of wild words, 'if a person can make up his mind to be
guilty of the action. It's all very well to trample on it, but it's
there. It may be that it couldn't be trampled upon if it wasn't there.
But that doesn't make it gentlemanly, that doesn't make it honourable,
that doesn't justify throwing a person back upon himself after he has
struggled and strived out of himself like a butterfly. The world may
sneer at a turnkey, but he's a man--when he isn't a woman, which among
female criminals he's expected to be.'

Ridiculous as the incoherence of his talk was, there was yet a
truthfulness in Young john's simple, sentimental character, and a sense
of being wounded in some very tender respect, expressed in his burning
face and in the agitation of his voice and manner, which Arthur must
have been cruel to disregard. He turned his thoughts back to the
starting-point of this unknown injury; and in the meantime Young John,
having rolled his green packet pretty round, cut it carefully into three
pieces, and laid it on a plate as if it were