I feel in being tried by a Judge so just and a jury so
intelligent as that before me; and then, after a slight diversion as
to the blessings of a good conscience, I 'd give you fifteen or twenty
minutes of pathetic lamentation for the good and great man whose
untimely death is the cause of this trial. Now, I'm not about to do any
of these. Judges are generally upright; juries are, for the most part,
painstaking and fair. I conclude, therefore, that I'm as safe with his
Lordship and yourselves as with any others; and as to Mr. Davenport Dunn
and his virtues, why, gentlemen, like the character of him who addresses
you, the least said the better! Not," added he, sternly, "that I fear
comparison with him,--far from it; we were both adventurers, each of us
traded upon the weakness of his fellows; the only difference was, that
he played a game that could not but win, while I took my risks like a
man, and as often suffered as I succeeded. _My_ victims--if that's
the phrase in vogue for them--were young fellows starting in life with
plenty of cash and small experience: _his_ were widows, with a miserable
pittance, scarcely enough for support; orphan children, with a thousand
or two trust money; or, as you might see in the papers, poor governesses
eagerly seizing the occasion to provide for the last years of a toilsome
life. But my opinion is you have no concern with _his_ character or with
_mine_; you are there to know how he came by his death, and I 'll tell
you that."

In a narrative told calmly, without stop or impediment, and utterly free
from a word of exaggeration or a sentiment of passion, he narrated how,
by an appointment, the nature of which he refused to enter upon, he
had met Davenport Dunn on the eventful night in question. The business
matter between them, he said,--and of this, too, he declined to give any
particular information,--had led to much and angry recrimination, till
at length, carried beyond the bounds of all temper and reserve, Davis
rashly avowed that he was in the possession of the secret history of all
Dunn's frauds; he showed, by details the most exact, that he knew how
for years and years this man had been a swindler and a cheat, and he
declared that the time for unmasking him had arrived, and that the world
should soon know the stuff he was made of. "There was, I suspected,"
continued he, "in the red box at my feet a document whose production in
a trial would have saved a friend of my own from ru