whatever of evidence against him. He had
walked straight home from his club with the life-preserver in his
pocket, and had never turned to the right or to the left. Till he
found himself committed, he would not believe that any serious and
prolonged impediment could be thrown in the way of his liberty. He
would not believe that a man altogether innocent could be in danger
of the gallows on a false accusation. It had seemed to him that the
police had kept their hold on him with a rabid ferocity, straining
every point with the view of showing that it was possible that he
should have been the murderer. Every policeman who had been near him,
carrying him backward and forward from his prison, or giving evidence
as to the circumstances of the locality and of his walk home on that
fatal night, had seemed to him to be an enemy. But he had looked for
impartiality from the magistrate,--and now the magistrate had failed
him. He had seen in court the faces of men well known to him,--men
known in the world,--with whom he had been on pleasant terms in
Parliament, who had sat upon the bench while he was standing as a
culprit between two constables; and they who had been his familiar
friends had appeared at once to have been removed from him by some
unmeasurable distance. But all that he had, as it were, discounted,
believing that a few hours,--at the very longest a few days,--would
remove the distance; but now he was sent back to his prison, there to
await his trial for the murder.

And it seemed to him that his committal startled no one but himself.
Could it be that even his dearest friends thought it possible that he
had been guilty? When that day came, and he was taken back to Newgate
on his last journey there from Bow Street, Lord Chiltern had returned
for a while to Harrington Hall, having promised that he would be back
in London as soon as his business would permit; but Mr. Low came to
him almost immediately to his prison room. "This is a pleasant state
of things," said Phineas, with a forced laugh. But as he laughed he
also sobbed, with a low, irrepressible, convulsive movement in his
throat.

"Phineas, the time has come in which you must show yourself to be a
man."

"A man! Oh, yes, I can be a man. A murderer you mean. I shall have to
be--hung, I suppose."

"May God, in His mercy, forbid."

"No;--not in His mercy; in His justice. There can be no need for
mercy here,--not even from Heaven. When they take my life may He