Name, Jo.  Nothing else that he knows on.  Don’t know that everybody has two names.  Never heerd of sich a think.  Don’t know that Jo is short for a longer name.  Thinks it long enough for him.  He don’t find no fault with it.  Spell it?  No.  He can’t spell it.  No father, no mother, no friends.  Never been to school.  What’s home?  Knows a broom’s a broom, and knows it’s wicked to tell a lie.  Don’t recollect who told him about the broom or about the lie, but knows both.  Can’t exactly say what’ll be done to him arter he’s dead if he tells a lie to the gentlemen here, but believes it’ll be something wery bad to punish him, and serve him right—­and so he’ll tell the truth.

“This won’t do, gentlemen!” says the coroner with a melancholy shake of the head.

“Don’t you think you can receive his evidence, sir?” asks an attentive juryman.

“Out of the question,” says the coroner.  “You have heard the boy.  ‘Can’t exactly say’ won’t do, you know.  We can’t take that in a court of justice, gentlemen.  It’s terrible depravity.  Put the boy aside.”

Boy put aside, to the great edification of the audience, especially of Little Swills, the comic vocalist.

Now.  Is there any other witness?  No other witness.

Very well, gentlemen!  Here’s a man unknown, proved to have been in the habit of taking opium in large quantities for a year and a half, found dead of too much opium.  If you think you have any evidence to lead you to the conclusion that he committed suicide, you will come to that conclusion.  If you think it is a case of accidental death, you will find a verdict accordingly.

Verdict accordingly.  Accidental death.  No doubt.  Gentlemen, you are discharged.  Good afternoon.

While the coroner buttons his great-coat, Mr. Tulkinghorn and he give private audience to the rejected witness in a corner.

That graceless creature only knows that the dead man (whom he recognized just now by his yellow face and black hair) was sometimes hooted and pursued about the streets.  That one cold winter night when he, the boy, was shivering in a doorway near his crossing, the man turned to look at him, and came back, and having questioned him and found that he had not a friend in the world, said, “Neither have I. Not one!” and gave him the price of a supper and a night’s lodging.  That the man had often spoken to him since and asked him whether he slept sound at night, and how he bore cold and hunger, and whether he ever wished to die, and similar strange questions.  That when the man had no money, he would say in passing, “I am as poor as you to-day, Jo,” but that when he had any, he had always (as the boy most heartily believes) been glad to give him some.

“He was wery good to me,” says the boy, wiping his eyes with his wretched sleeve.  “Wen I see him a-layin’ so stritched out just now, I wished he could have heerd me tell him so.  He wos wery good to me, he wos!”