The old man had much to say: much of young Mr. Pippitt's virtue, industry, and much of his own fortunes, misfortunes, and wrongs. He usurped the functions of both lawyer and witness, and all the court listened to him. "I'm glad to be here, gentlemen," he said--"glad to be here. I thought I was never going to get out of that cell they put me in, not for long years. But here I am, Joe, thank God!" "Who put you in a cell?" asked the judge. "I'm telling you as fast as I can," answered the old man petulantly. "I'd just written to Joe to send him a bit of money and tell him to look out for me, when they brought a charge of fraud against me--against me, a respectable merchant. And I was tried: tried and found guilty--unjustly, my lord--and sentenced to five years. To think of it! They didn't know me out in Louisiana; no east-coast jury would have convicted." "Why didn't they know you?" "I wasn't going to have my name known. I called myself Brown; and they convicted me--as I wrote to you, Joe--for five years. But the Governor did his duty. He was a white man, the Governor. He let me out." "Why?" asked the judge curiously. "Was a white man to get five years for besting a nigger?" demanded the old man, with his first approach to vigor. "Not if the Governor knew it! Oh, he was a white man. So here I am, Joe--here I am, thank God!" The judge leaned forward and asked, "Have you any letters from the man you say is your son?" The old man pulled a dirty letter out of his pocket, and handed it up with a bewildered look. Young Mr. Pippitt still looked on with his fixed smile, while the judge read: "DEAR FATHER: "It's a bad job that you're nabbed. Five years is no joke. Why were you such a fool? You were right about the name. Keep it quite dark, for God's sake! I'll see what I can do. "Yours, "J. P. "Received your last all right." "Is that your handwriting?" the judge asked of the plaintiff; but young Mr. Pippitt swayed to and fro and fell in a faint in the witness-box. The judge turned to Mr. Budge. "Do you desire," he asked, "that this man should be sworn, and repeat his evidence on oath, so that you may cross-examine him?" Mr. Budge looked at his inanimate client, and answered, "I do not, my lord. I shall probably have your lordship's approval in withdrawing from the case?" While the judge directed the jury to return a verdict for the defendant, the old man had anxiously watched the usher, who was unloosing young Mr. Pippitt's neckcloth. When the plaintiff revived, the old man leaned over to Mr. Budge, and said, with a pleased smile, "Oh, he'll be all right directly, won't he? I thought I could help a bit. I have helped a bit, haven't I?" "You have helped him to twelve months' hard labor," said Mr. Budge. But the old man did not understand what it all meant, till one day they took him to Kensal Green, and showed him a handsome tombstone. The inscription ran: "IN MEMORY OF JAMES PIPPITT."