as though they
were deaf, said, in my hearing, 'And so you tell me he was once a Fellow
of Trinity?' 'Yes, my Lord,' said I, assuming the reply, 'a Regius
Professor and a Medallist, now a Madman and a Pauper. The converse is
the gentleman at your side. _He_ began as a fool, and has ended as a
Poor Law Commissioner!' They both turned away, but I cried out, 'Mr.
Ogden, one word with you before you go.' He came back. 'I have been
placed here,' said I, 'at the instance of a man who has robbed me. I am
not mad, but I am friendless. The name of my persecutor is Holmes. He
writes himself Captain Nicholas Holmes--'

"He would not hear another word, but hurried away without answering
me. I know no more than that I was released ten days after,--that I was
turned out in the streets to starve or rob. My first thought was to find
out this man Holmes. To meet and charge him with his conduct towards me,
in some public place, would have been a high vengeance; but I sought
him for weeks in vain, and at last learned he had gone abroad.

"How I lived all that time I cannot tell you; it is all to me now like
a long and terrible dream. I was constantly in the hands of the police,
and rarely a day passed that I had not some angry altercation with the
authorities. I was in one of these one morning, when, half stupefied
with cold and want, I refused to answer further. The magistrate asked,
'Has he any friends? Is there no one who takes any interest in him?'
The constable answered, 'None, your worship; and it is all the better,
he would only heap disgrace on them!'

"It was then, for the first moment of my life, the full measure of all I
had become stood plainly before me. In those few words lay the sentence
passed upon my character. From that hour forth I determined never
to utter my name again. I kept this pledge faithfully, nor was it
difficult; few questioned, none cared for me. I lived--if that be the
word for it--in various ways. I compounded drugs for chemists, corrected
the press for printers, hawked tracts, made auction catalogues, and at
last turned pyrotechnist to a kind of Vauxhall, all the while writing
letters home with small remittances to your mother, who had died when I
was in the madhouse. In a brief interval of leisure I went down to the
North, to learn what I might of her last moments, and to see where
they had laid her. There was a clergyman there who had been kind
and hospitable towards me in better days, and it was to