He was a most benevolent-looking rascal. His white beard and whiskers were carefully trimmed; his rubicund face was invariably wreathed with smiles; his portly figure had an aldermanic contour; and altogether he suggested the railway director or the rich stage uncle. No one would have taken him for the editor of a tenth-rate provincial paper, or the clumsy forger who was so careless in his criminality as to sign his victim’s name at the top rather than at the bottom of a letter on the acceptance of which everything depended. Once I met him in Coventry Street late at night, and asked him into the American Bar of the Criterion. He hesitated a good deal before accepting my invitation, and was evidently ill at ease while he remained there with me. He was greatly disconcerted by the apparent interest which two men who were drinking cocktails were taking in him. They certainly looked our way and whispered together. Pigott took leave of me hurriedly and left the place. I called on him next day, desirous, if possible, of ascertaining his exact suspicion about the men, whose presence had so obviously disturbed him, and their connection with a conspiracy of which he was obviously in dread. But Pigott could be as close as an oyster when he desired. He assured me that he had not particularly noticed anyone at the Criterion, and explained that he never really liked the place. The “company is so mixed, you see,” declared the venerable liar. Pigott presented a strange psychological problem with singular physiological developments. Immediately after the appearance of his forgeries in the _Times_, he suddenly lost flesh: the incessant smile and inflated waist had disappeared; his face was haggard; he was but the shadow of his former self. Pigott was a sick man. The thing accomplished, fear possessed him and reacted on his body. But he put on flesh again, and when he appeared before the Commission he was the same sleek, obese, oleaginous charlatan of former days. On his oath he was as unctuous and specious as when off it, and quite untrammelled by its obligations. His flight to Spain, and his suicide when his pursuers were close on his trail—these are matters of history. That which is not quite a matter of history is an incident redounding very much to the charity and humanity of Mr. Labouchere. It will be recollected, perhaps, that the exposure and flight of the traitor and forger were brought about at a conference which he had with Sala and Labouchere at the house of the latter. That which has gone unrecorded is that Labouchere charged himself with the maintenance of the dead man’s children.