"It is not such a debt that I wish to owe. I know my own innocence."

"Mr. Chaffanbrass takes that for granted," said Mr. Wickerby.

"To me it is a matter of astonishment that any human being should
believe me to have committed this murder. I am lost in surprise when
I remember that I am here simply because I walked home from my club
with a loaded stick in my pocket. The magistrate, I suppose, thought
me guilty."

"He did not think about it, Mr. Finn. He went by the evidence;--the
quarrel, your position in the streets at the time, the colour of the
coat you wore and that of the coat worn by the man whom Lord Fawn saw
in the street; the doctor's evidence as to the blows by which the man
was killed; and the nature of the weapon which you carried. He put
these things together, and they were enough to entitle the public to
demand that a jury should decide. He didn't say you were guilty. He
only said that the circumstances were sufficient to justify a trial."

"If he thought me innocent he would not have sent me here."

"Yes, he would;--if the evidence required that he should do so."

"We will not argue about that, Mr. Chaffanbrass."

"Certainly not, Mr. Finn."

"Here I am, and to-morrow I shall be tried for my life. My life will
be nothing to me unless it can be made clear to all the world that
I am innocent. I would be sooner hung for this,--with the certainty
at my heart that all England on the next day would ring with the
assurance of my innocence, than be acquitted and afterwards be looked
upon as a murderer." Phineas, when he was thus speaking, had stepped
out into the middle of the room, and stood with his head thrown
back, and his right hand forward. Mr. Chaffanbrass, who was himself
an ugly, dirty old man, who had always piqued himself on being
indifferent to appearance, found himself struck by the beauty and
grace of the man whom he now saw for the first time. And he was
struck, too, by his client's eloquence, though he had expressly
declared to the attorney that it was his duty to be superior to any
such influence. "Oh, Mr. Chaffanbrass, for the love of Heaven, let
there be no quibbling."

"We never quibble, I hope, Mr. Finn."

"No subterfuges, no escaping by a side wind, no advantage taken of
little forms, no objection taken to this and that as though delay
would avail us anything."

"Character will go a great way, we hope."

"It should go for nothing. Though no one would speak a word for me,
still