ith which this one was received; nobody smiled;
and it had killed twenty-two men. The joke was bad, devilish bad;
counsel for the defence was frowning, and an usher was looking in a
little bag for something the judge wanted. And at this moment, as
though from far away, without his wishing it, there entered the
prisoner's head, and shone there and would not go, this old bad
proverb: "As well be hung for a sheep as for a lamb." The jury seemed
to be just about to retire. "I have another joke," said Watkyn-Jones,
and then and there he read from the second slip of paper. He watched
the paper curiously to see if it would go blank, occupying his mind
with so slight a thing as men in dire distress very often do, and the
words were almost immediately expunged, swept swiftly as if by a hand,
and he saw the paper before him as blank as the first. And they were
laughing this time, judge, jury, counsel for the prosecution, audience
and all, and the grim men that watched him upon either side. There was
no mistake about this joke.

He did not stay to see the end, and walked out with his eyes fixed on
the ground, unable to bear a glance to the right or left. And since
then he has wandered, avoiding ports and roaming lonely places. Two
years have known him on the Highland roads, often hungry, always
friendless, always changing his district, wandering lonely on with his
deadly joke.

Sometimes for a moment he will enter inns, driven by cold and hunger,
and hear men in the evening telling jokes and even challenging him;
but he sits desolate and silent, lest his only weapon should escape
from him and his last joke spread mourning in a hundred cots. His
beard has grown and turned grey and is mixed with moss and weeds, so
that no one, I think, not even the police, would recognise him now for
that dapper tout that sold The Briton Dictionary of Electricity in
such a different land.

He paused, his story told, and then his lip quivered as though he
would say more, and I believe he intended then and there to yield up
his deadly joke on that Highland road and to go forth then with his
three blank slips of paper, perhaps to a felon's cell, with one more
murder added to his crimes, but harmless at last to man. I therefore
hurried on, and only heard him mumbling sadly behind me, standing
bowed and broken, all alone in the twilight, perhaps telling over and
over even then the last infernal joke.

THE END