you, because I drove a vermilion one with green and gilt wheels...."

His face, peering at me through the bars, had, for a moment, a flush
of pride. Then he suddenly remembered, and, as if to propitiate his own
reproof, he went on:

"I saw the Secretary of State, and he assured me, very civilly, that
not even the highest personage in the land...." He dropped his voice,
"Jackie, boy," he said, his narrow-lidded eyes peering miserably across
at me, "there's not even hope of a reprieve afterwards."

I leaned my face wearily against the iron bars. What, after all, was the
use of fighting if the _Lion_ were not back?

Then, suddenly, as the sound of his words echoed down the bare,
black corridors, he seemed to realize the horror of it. His face grew
absolutely white, he held his head erect, as if listening to a distant
sound. And then he began to cry--horribly, and for a long time.

It was I that had to comfort him. His head had bowed at the conviction
of his hopeless uselessness; all through his own life he had been made
ineffectual by his indulgence in perfectly innocent, perfectly trivial
enjoyments, and now, in this extremity of his only son, he was rendered
almost fantastically of no avail.

"No, no, sir! You have done all that any one could; you couldn't break
these walls down. Nothing else would help."

Small, hopeless sobs shook him continually. His thin, delicate white
fingers gripped the black grille, with the convulsive grasp of a very
weak man. It was more distressing to me than anything I had ever seen or
felt. The mere desire, the intense desire to comfort him, made me get
a grip upon myself again. And I remembered that, now that I could
communicate with the outer air, it was absolutely easy; he would save my
life. I said:

"You have only to go to Clapham, sir."

And the moment I was in a state to command him, to direct him, to give
him something to do, he became a changed man. He looked up and listened.
I told him to go to Major Cowper's. It would be easy enough to find him
at Clapham. Cowper, I remembered, could testify to my having been seized
by Tomas Castro. He had seen me fight on the decks. And what was more,
he would certainly know the addresses of Kingston planters, if any were
in London. They could testify that I had been in Jamaica all the while
Nikola el Escoces was in Rio Medio. I knew there were some. My father
was fidgeting to be gone. He had his name marked for him, and a will
directi