can't assist me in liberating him from his
misfortune. He sees what is patent and clear to him,--that he walked
home on that night without meddling with any one. But I can't see
that, or make others see it, because he sees it."

"His manner of telling you may do something."

"If it do, Mr. Wickerby, it is because I am unfit for my business.
If he have the gift of protesting well, I am to think him innocent;
and, therefore, to think him guilty, if he be unprovided with such
eloquence! I will neither believe or disbelieve anything that a
client says to me,--unless he confess his guilt, in which case my
services can be but of little avail. Of course I shall see him, as he
asks it. We had better meet there,--say at half-past ten." Whereupon
Mr. Wickerby wrote to the governor of the prison begging that Phineas
Finn might be informed of the visit.

Phineas had now been in gaol between six and seven weeks, and the
very fact of his incarceration had nearly broken his spirits. Two of
his sisters, who had come from Ireland to be near him, saw him every
day, and his two friends, Mr. Low and Lord Chiltern, were very
frequently with him; Lady Laura Kennedy had not come to him again;
but he heard from her frequently through Barrington Erle. Lord
Chiltern rarely spoke of his sister,--alluding to her merely in
connection with her father and her late husband. Presents still came
to him from various quarters,--as to which he hardly knew whence they
came. But the Duchess and Lady Chiltern and Lady Laura all catered
for him,--while Mrs. Bunce looked after his wardrobe, and saw that he
was not cut down to prison allowance of clean shirts and socks. But
the only friend whom he recognised as such was the friend who would
freely declare a conviction of his innocence. They allowed him books
and pens and paper, and even cards, if he chose to play at Patience
with them or build castles. The paper and pens he could use because
he could write about himself. From day to day he composed a diary in
which he was never tired of expatiating on the terrible injustice of
his position. But he could not read. He found it to be impossible to
fix his attention on matters outside himself. He assured himself from
hour to hour that it was not death he feared,--not even death from
the hangman's hand. It was the condemnation of those who had known
him that was so terrible to him; the feeling that they with whom he
had aspired to work and live, the leading men a