“As you know, there are certain unwritten laws which have more influence in some cases as to the guilt of a murderer than any on the statute books,” said the Gouverneur Faulkner with a very great slowness, so that the poor human dog might comprehend him.  “If you killed your brother to save—­save Mary Brown from worse than death, then you have not the right to demand execution from your State to shelter her from publicity when she is no longer in danger of anything worse.  Did you get to her in time to save her or—­” “Yes, good God, I did and I had—­damn you, now I’ll have to kill you for getting words out of me that all the lawyers have tried to make me say all this time,” and with the oath and a snarl the man made a lunge at my Gouverneur Faulkner with something keen and shining that he had drawn from the top of his coarse boot.  But that poor human being of the prison was not of enough quickness to do the killing of his desire in the face of Roberta, Marquise of Grez and Bye, who had twice with her foil pricked the red cloth heart of the young Count de Couertoir, the best swordsman of France, in gay combat in the great hall of the old Chateau de Grez.  With my walking cane of a young gentleman of American fashion, which I had taken with me to call upon the beautiful Madam Whitworth before my Cherry had befallen me as a gift, and which I had without thought brought into that prison with me, I parried the blow of the knife at my beloved Gouverneur Faulkner, but not in such a manner as to prevent a glancing of that knife, which inflicted a scratch of considerable depth upon my forearm under its sleeve of brown cheviot.

“My God, boy!” exclaimed that Gouverneur Faulkner as he caught the knife from the floor where it had fallen from the hand of the poor man who had sunk down on the cot, trembling and panting.  “Two inches to the left and a little more force and the knife would have stuck in your heart.”

“Is it not better my heart than yours, my great Gouverneur Faulkner?  And behold it is the heart of neither and only a small scratch upon my humble arm, which will not even prevent the driving of that new Cherry car,” I answered him as I put that arm behind me and pressed it close in its sleeve of brown cheviot so that there would be no drippings of blood.

“I didn’t go to hurt the young gentleman nor you either, Governor,” said the man from the cot as he sobbed and buried his head in his arms.  “I was always a good man and now I—­”

“Don’t say another word, Timms,” interrupted my Gouverneur Faulkner in a voice that was as gentle as that father of State which he had said himself to be to Timms.  “Nobody will know of this, for your sake.  I was—­was baiting you.  I know what I want to know now and you’ll not hang on the sixteenth.  The State will try you again.  Call the superintendent, Robert.”

“Don’t say nothing to hurt Mary, Governor.  Jest let me hang and I won’t never care what—­” the poor human began to plead.