and mitigated his solitude. It even
slept with him at night.

All this was, of course, against the prison rules. But the mouse had
no reason to obey them.

One unhappy day a warder came into the cell, when the poor mouse
peeped out from his tiny hiding-place, and the officer, I presume, as
a matter of duty, seized the little intruder on the spot and captured
it.

God help the world if every one did his strict duty in it! But--what
to the prisoner seemed inexcusable barbarity--he killed the poor
little mouse in the sight of the unhappy man whose friend and
companion it had been.

This infuriated him to such an extent that, having the dinner-knife in
his hand--the knife which would have assisted at the mouse's banquet
as well as his own--he rushed at the warder, who fortunately escaped
through the open door of the cell, the prisoner striking the knife
into the door.

In the result the prisoner was indicted on the charge of attempting
to murder the warder. The defence was that, as murder in the
circumstances was impossible, _the attempt could not be established_,
and on the authority of a case (which has, however, since been
overruled) I felt bound to direct an acquittal; and I confess _I was
not sorry_ to come to that conclusion, for it would have been a sad
thing had the prisoner been convicted of an offence committed in a
moment of such great and not unnatural excitement, and one for which
penal servitude must have been awarded.

The poor fellow had suffered enough without additional punishment. I
can conceive nothing more keen than the torture of returning to his
cell to grieve for the little friend which could never come to him
again.

CHAPTER XLIV.

THE LAST OF LORD CAMPBELL--WINE AND WATER--SIR THOMAS WILDE.

Life, alas! must have its sad stories as well as its mirthful. I have
told few of the former, not because they have not been present to my
mind, but because I think it useless to perpetuate them by narration.
But for its occasional gleams of humour, life would indeed be dull,
and ever eclipsed by the shadow of sorrow.

One of the stories the Chief Baron told me is as indelibly fixed on
my memory as it was on his. Lord Campbell had been so long and so
prominently before the country that his death would be a theme of
conversation in the world of literature, science, law, and fashion.
But it was not his death that impressed me; it was the incidents that
immediately attended it.

"His lords