at I could compromise so many in my own fall. Well, time
has thinned the number marvellously. Many have died. The Cholera, the
Crimea, the Marshalsea, broken hearts, and what not, have done their
work; and of the few remaining, some have grown indifferent to exposure,
others have dropped out of view, and now it would be as much as I could
do to place four or five men of good names in the dock beside me. That
ain't enough. I must have connections.

"I want those relations that can't afford disgrace. Let me only have
_them_, they 'll take care of their own reputations. You don't know, but
I know, what great folk can do in England. There 's not a line in the
Ten Commandments they could n't legalize with an Act of Parliament. They
can marry and unmarry, bind and loosen, legitimize or illegitimize, by a
vote 'of the House;' and by a vote of society they can do just as much:
make a swindling railroad contractor the first man in London, and, if
they liked it, and saw it suited their book, they could make Kit Davis
a member of White's, or the Carlton; and once they did it, girl, they 'd
think twice before they 'd try to undo it again. All I say is, give me a
Viscount for a son-in-law, and see if I don't 'work the oracle.' Let me
have just so much backing as secures a fair fight, and my head be
on't if they don't give in before I do! They 're very plucky with one
another, girl, because they keep within the law; but mark how they
tremble before the fellow that does n't mind the law,--that goes through
it, at one side of it, or clean over it. That's the pull _I_ have over
them. The man that don't mind a wetting can always drag another into the
water; do you see that?"

Davis had now so worked upon himself that he walked the room with
hasty steps, his cheeks burning, and his eyes wildly, fiercely glaring.
Amongst the traits which characterize men of lawless and depraved lives,
none is more remarkable than the boastful hardihood with which they will
at times deploy all the resources of their iniquity, even exaggerating
the amount of the wrongs they have inflicted on society. There is
something actually satanic in their exultation over a world they have
cheated, bullied, injured, and insulted, so that, in their infernal
code, honesty and trustfulness seem only worthy of contempt, and he
alone possessed of true courage who dares and defies the laws that bind
his fellow-men.

Davis was not prone to impulsiveness; very few men were le