terest, and
claims my sympathy. Shake hands, Mr. Dubourg."

I spoke to him in a good hearty voice, and I gave him a good hearty
squeeze. The poor, weak, lonely, persecuted young fellow dropped his head
on my shoulder like a child, and burst out crying.

"Don't despise me!" he said, as soon as he had got his breath again. "It
breaks a man down to have stood in the dock, and to have had hundreds of
hard-hearted people staring at him in horror--without his deserving it.
Besides, I have been very lonely, ma'am, since my brother left me."

We sat down again, side by side. He was the strangest compound of
anomalies I had ever met with. Throw him into one of those passions in
which he flamed out so easily--and you would have said, This is a tiger.
Wait till he had cooled down again to his customary mild temperature--and
you would have said with equal truth, This is a lamb.

"One thing rather surprises me, Mr. Dubourg," I went on. "I can't quite
understand----"

"Don't call me Mr. Dubourg," he interposed. "You remind me of the
disgrace which has forced me to change my name. Call me by my Christian
name. It's a foreign name. You are a foreigner by your accent--you will
like me all the better for having a foreign name. I was christened
'Oscar'--after my mother's brother: my mother was a Jersey woman. Call me
'Oscar.'--What is it you don't understand?"

"In your present situation," I resumed, "I don't understand your brother
leaving you here all by yourself."

He was on the point of flaming out again at that.

"Not a word against my brother!" he exclaimed fiercely. "My brother is
the noblest creature that God ever created! You must own that
yourself--you know what he did at the trial. I should have died on the
scaffold but for that angel. I insist on it that he is not a man. He is
an angel!"

(I admitted that his brother was an angel. The concession instantly
pacified him.)

"People say there is no difference between us," he went on, drawing his
chair companionably close to mine. "Ah, people are so shallow!
Personally, I grant you, we are exactly alike. (You have heard that we
are twins?) But there it ends, unfortunately for _me._ Nugent--(my
brother was christened Nugent after my father)--Nugent is a hero! Nugent
is a genius. I should have died if he hadn't taken care of me after the
trial. I had nobody but him. We are orphans; we have no brothers or
sisters. Nugent felt the disgrace even more than I felt it--but _he_