'But the mere truth won't do,' rejoined my guardian.
'Won't it indeed, sir? Rather a bad look-out for me!' Mr. George good-humouredly observed.
'You must have a lawyer,' pursued my guardian. 'We must engage a good one for you.'
'I ask your pardon, sir,' said Mr. George with a step backward. 'I am equally obliged. But I must decidedly beg to be excused from anything of that sort.'
'You won't have a lawyer?'
'No, sir.' Mr. George shook his head in the most emphatic manner.
'I thank you all the same, sir, but-no lawyer!'
'Why not?'
'I don't take kindly to the breed,' said Mr. George. 'Gridley didn't. And-if you'll excuse my saying so much-I should hardly have thought you did yourself, sir.'
'That's equity,' my guardian explained, a little at a loss; 'that's equity, George.'
'Is it, indeed, sir?' returned the trooper in his off-hand manner.
'I am not acquainted with those shades of names myself, but in a general way I object to the breed.'
Unfolding his arms and changing his position, he stood with one massive hand upon the table and the other on his hip, as complete a picture of a man who was not to be moved from a fixed purpose as ever I saw. It was in vain that we all three talked to him and endeavoured to persuade him; he listened with that gentleness which went so well with his bluff bearing, but was evidently no more shaken by our representations that his place of confinement was.
'Pray think, once more, Mr. George,' said I. 'Have you no wish in reference to your case?'
'I certainly could wish it to be tried, miss,' he returned, 'by court-martial; but that is out of the question, as I am well aware.
If you will be so good as to favour me with your attention for a couple of minutes, miss, not more, I'll endeavour to explain myself as clearly as I can.'
He looked at us all three in turn, shook his head a little as if he were adjusting it in the stock and collar of a tight uniform, and after a moment's reflection went on.
'You see, miss, I have been handcuffed and taken into custody and brought here. I am a marked and disgraced man, and here I am. My shooting gallery is rummaged, high and low, by Bucket; such property as I have-'tis small-is turned this way and that till it don't know itself; and (as aforesaid) here I am! I don't particular complain of that. Though I am in these present quarters through no immediately preceding fault of mine, I can very well understand that if I hadn't gone into the vagabond way in my youth, this wouldn't have happened. It HAS happened. Then comes the question how to meet it.'
He rubbed his swarthy forehead for a moment with a good-humoured look and said apologetically, 'I am such a short-winded talker that I must think a bit.' Having thought a bit, he looked up again and resumed.
'How to meet it. Now, the unfortunate deceased was himself a lawyer and had a pretty tight hold of me. I don't wish to rake up his ashes, but he had, what I should call if he was living, a devil of a tight hold of me. I don't like his trade the better for that.
If I had kept clear of his trade, I should have kept outside this place. But that's not what I mean. Now, suppose I had killed him.
Suppose I really had discharged into his body any one of those pistols recently fired off that Bucket has found at my place, and dear me, might have found there any day since it has been my place.
What should I have done as soon as I was hard and fast here? Got a lawyer.'
He stopped on hearing some one at the locks and bolts and did not resume until the door had been opened and was shut again. For what purpose opened, I will mention presently.
'I should have got a lawyer, and he would have said (as I have often read in the newspapers), 'My client says nothing, my client reserves his defence': my client this, that, and t'other. Well, 'tis not the custom of that breed to go straight, according to my opinion, or to think that other men do. Say I am innocent and I get a lawyer. He would be as likely to believe me guilty as not; perhaps more. What would he do, whether or not? Act as if I was-shut my mouth up, tell me not to commit myself, keep circumstances back, chop the evidence small, quibble, and get me off perhaps!
But, Miss Summerson, do I care for getting off in that way; or would I rather be hanged in my own way-if you'll excuse my mentioning anything so disagreeable to a lady?'
He had warmed into his subject now, and was under no further necessity to wait a bit.
'I would rather be hanged in my own way. And I mean to be! I don't intend to say,' looking round upon us with his powerful arms akimbo and his dark eyebrows raised, 'that I am more partial to being hanged than another man. What I say is, I must come off clear and full or not at all. Therefore, when I hear stated against me what is true, I say it's true; and when they tell me, 'whatever you say will be used,' I tell them I don't mind that; I mean it to be used. If they can't make me innocent out of the whole truth, they are not likely to do it out of anything less, or anything else. And if they are, it's worth nothing to me.'
Taking a pace or two over the stone floor, he came back to the table and finished what he had to say.
'I thank you, miss and gentlemen both, many times for your attention, and many times more for your interest. That's the plain state of the matter as it points itself out to a mere trooper with a blunt broadsword kind of a mind. I have never done well in life beyond my duty as a soldier, and if the worst comes after all, I shall reap pretty much as I have sown. When I got over the first crash of being seized as a murderer-it don't take a rover who has knocked about so much as myself so very long to recover from a crash-I worked my way round to what you find me now. As such I shall remain. No relations will be disgraced by me or made unhappy for me, and-and that's all I've got to say.'
The door had been opened to admit another soldier-looking man of less prepossessing appearance at first sight and a weather-tanned, bright-eyed wholesome woman with a basket, who, from her entrance, had been exceedingly attentive to all Mr. George had said. Mr.
George had received them with a familiar nod and a friendly look, but without any more particular greeting in the midst of his address. He now shook them cordially by the hand and said, 'Miss Summerson and gentlemen, this is an old comrade of mine, Matthew Bagnet. And this is his wife, Mrs. Bagnet.'
Mr. Bagnet made us a stiff military bow, and Mrs. Bagnet dropped us a curtsy.
'Real good friends of mine, they are,' sald Mr. George. 'It was at their house I was taken.'
'With a second-hand wiolinceller,' Mr. Bagnet put in, twitching his head angrily. 'Of a good tone. For a friend. That money was no object to.'
'Mat,' said Mr. George, 'you have heard pretty well all I have been saying to this lady and these two gentlemen. I know it meets your approval?'
Mr. Bagnet, after considering, referred the point to his wife.
'Old girl,' said he. 'Tell him. Whether or not. It meets my approval.'
'Why, George,' exclaimed Mrs. Bagnet, who had been unpacking her basket, in which there was a piece of cold pickled pork, a little tea and sugar, and a brown loaf, 'you ought to know it don't. You ought to know it's enough to drive a person wild to hear you. You won't be got off this way, and you won't be got off that way-what do you mean by such picking and choosing? It's stuff and nonsense, George.'
'Don't be severe upon me in my misfortunes, Mrs. Bagnet,' said the trooper lightly.
'Oh! Bother your misfortunes,' cried Mrs. Bagnet, 'if they don't make you more reasonable than that comes to. I never was so ashamed in my life to hear a man talk folly as I have been to hear you talk this day to the present company. Lawyers? Why, what but too many cooks should hinder you from having a dozen lawyers if the gentleman recommended them to you.'
'This is a very sensible woman,' said my guardian. 'I hope you will persuade him, Mrs. Bagnet.'
'Persuade him, sir?' she returned. 'Lord bless you, no. You don't know George. Now, there!' Mrs. Bagnet left her basket to point him out with both her bare brown hands. 'There he stands! As self-willed and as determined a man, in the wrong way, as ever put a human creature under heaven out of patience! You could as soon take up and shoulder an eight and forty pounder by your own strength as turn that man when he has got a thing into his head and fixed it there. Why, don't I know him!' cried Mrs. Bagnet. 'Don't I know you, George! You don't mean to set up for a new character with ME after all these years, I hope?'
Her friendly indignation had an exemplary effect upon her husband, who shook his head at the trooper several times as a silent recommendation to him to yield. Between whiles, Mrs. Bagnet looked at me; and I
