The feat of substitution this man almost succeeded in accomplishing was palpably an enormous one. He went to England, familiarized himself with the places Roger Tichborne had visited, studied French without managing to learn it, practiced the handwriting of the young Tichborne heir till it deceived even the experts, and likewise learned, in spite of his own lack of schooling, to imitate the English of Tichborne, and to misspell just those words on which the original Roger was weak. He crammed his memory with incidents and details picked up at every hand. He learned to talk almost like a gentleman. He worked with his voice until he got out of it most of the earthy harshness that belonged to it by nature. He cultivated good manners, courtly behavior, gentle ways, and a certain charming deference which went far toward convincing those who took him seriously and gave him their support. In short, he was able to perform an absolute prodigy of adaptiveness, but he could not, with all his talent, quite project himself into the personality and mentality of another and very different man. That, perhaps, is a simulation beyond human capacity. So Arthur Orton, after all, the hero of this magnificent impersonation, went to prison for fourteen years, having made quite too grand a gesture and much too sad a failure. He served nearly eleven years and was then released in view of good conduct. Thereafter he wrote several confessions and retracted them all in turn. Finally, toward the end of his life, he changed his mind once more and prepared a final and fairly complete account of his life and misdeeds, from which some of the facts here used have been taken. He died in April, 1898. The extent to which he had moved the public may be judged from an incident the year following Orton’s conviction and imprisonment. His chief counsel at the criminal trial had been Doctor Edward Kenealy, who was himself scathingly denounced by the court in connection with a misdirected attempt to have Orton identified as a castaway from the _Bella_ by a seaman who swore he had performed the rescue, but was shown to be a perjurer. After the trial Doctor Kenealy was elected to Parliament, so great was his popularity and that of his client. When Kenealy, soon after taking his seat, moved that the Tichborne case be referred to a royal commission, the House of Commons rejected the motion unanimously. This action inflamed the populace. There were angry street meetings, inflammatory speeches, and symptoms of a general riot. The troops had to be called and kept in readiness for instant action. Fortunately the sight of the soldiers sobered the mob, and the matter passed off with only minor bloodshed.