unt of the bond
before detection. In the second place, he had almost the certainty of a
legacy from a rich relative, old and in ill-health, whose death might
be fairly expected from day to day. If both these prospects failed (and
they _did_ fail), there was still a third chance--the chance that his
rich patron would rather pay the money than appear against him. In those
days they hung for forgery. My father believed it to be impossible that
a man at whose table he had sat, whose relatives and friends he had
amused and instructed by his talents, would be the man to give evidence
which should condemn him to be hanged on the public scaffold.

"He was wrong. The wealthy patron held strict principles of honour
which made no allowance for temptations and weaknesses; and was moreover
influenced by high-flown notions of his responsibilities as a legislator
(he was a member of Parliament) to the laws of his country. He appeared
accordingly, and gave evidence against the prisoner; who was found
guilty, and left for execution.

"Then, when it was too late, this man of pitiless honour thought himself
at last justified in leaning to the side of mercy, and employed his
utmost interest, in every direction, to obtain a mitigation of the
sentence to transportation for life. The application failed; even a
reprieve of a few days was denied. At the appointed time, my father died
on the scaffold by the hangman's hand.

"Have you suspected, while reading this part of my letter, who the
high-born gentleman was whose evidence hung him? If you have not, I
will tell you. That gentleman was _your father._ You will now wonder
no longer how I could have inherited the right to be his enemy, and the
enemy of all who are of his blood.

"The shock of her husband's horrible death deprived my mother of reason.
She lived a few months after his execution; but never recovered her
faculties. I was their only child; and was left penniless to begin life
as the son of a father who had been hanged, and of a mother who had died
in a public madhouse.

"More of myself to-morrow--my letter will be a long one: I must pause
often over it, as I pause to-day."

*****

"Well: I started in life with the hangman's mark on me--with the
parent's shame for the son's reputation. Wherever I went, whatever
friends I kept, whatever acquaintances I made--people knew how my father
had died: and showed that they knew it. Not so much by shunning or
s