‘He is fairly cheerful and hopeful,’ said he. ‘You will scarcely know him, though. His anxiety during the long voyage home in the man-of-war has pinched and wrinkled and shrunk him. You’ll see him to-morrow. We will go together.’ ‘Uncle, you will employ the very best people on his side.’ He named a well-known Old Bailey pleader of those days. ‘Do not stint in money, uncle. All that I have in the world is Tom’s,’ I said. ‘The deuce of it is,’ exclaimed my uncle, thumping his knee, ‘we have no witnesses to call except as to character. It’s four-tongued positive swearing on one side, and single-tongued negative swearing on the other.’ So ran our talk. It was all about Tom. As on the previous evening so now again I kept my kind-hearted uncle up till past midnight with my feverish questions. My aunt had asked me to sleep in their house, and I gladly consented, partly that I might be instantly ready to accompany my uncle to Newgate at the appointed time, and partly because I dreaded the loneliness of my home, the long and dismal solitude of the evening and the night in a scene crowded with memories of my father and my mother and my sweetheart, of my childhood, of the sunny hours of my holiday rambling and of careless merry days of independence. I could not sleep, through thinking of the morrow’s meeting. It was seven months since Tom and I had kissed and parted. He had sailed away full of hope. He had written in high spirits. And now he was a prisoner in Newgate; his ship taken from him; the prospects of the voyage ruined; his innocent, manly heart infamously shamed and degraded, charged with a crime which might banish him for ever from England! ‘Do not be shocked,’ said my uncle, in the morning, ‘because you will not be suffered to speak to him face to face. You will presently see what I mean. It is mere prison routine--a quite necessary discipline. There’s nothing in it.’