national bowels. All this lasted a whole week of industrious sittings. A
pressman whom I knew told me "He's an idiot." Which was possible. Before
that I overheard once somebody declaring that he had a criminal type of
face; which I knew was untrue. The sentence was pronounced by artificial
light in a stifling poisonous atmosphere. Something edifying was said by
the judge weightily, about the retribution overtaking the perpetrator of
"the most heartless frauds on an unprecedented scale." I don't
understand these things much, but it appears that he had juggled with
accounts, cooked balance sheets, had gathered in deposits months after he
ought to have known himself to be hopelessly insolvent, and done enough
of other things, highly reprehensible in the eyes of the law, to earn for
himself seven years' penal servitude. The sentence making its way
outside met with a good reception. A small mob composed mainly of people
who themselves did not look particularly clever and scrupulous, leavened
by a slight sprinkling of genuine pickpockets amused itself by cheering
in the most penetrating, abominable cold drizzle that I remember. I
happened to be passing there on my way from the East End where I had
spent my day about the Docks with an old chum who was looking after the
fitting out of a new ship. I am always eager, when allowed, to call on a
new ship. They interest me like charming young persons.

I got mixed up in that crowd seething with an animosity as senseless as
things of the street always are, and it was while I was laboriously
making my way out of it that the pressman of whom I spoke was jostled
against me. He did me the justice to be surprised. "What? You here!
The last person in the world . . . If I had known I could have got you
inside. Plenty of room. Interest been over for the last three days. Got
seven years. Well, I am glad."

"Why are you glad? Because he's got seven years?" I asked, greatly