“Well, then, gentlemen and my lord, I mean to say thus much.  Jennings there, the prisoner (and I’m glad to see him standing at the bar), swore at the inquest that he went to quiet Don, going round through the front door; now, none could get through that door without my hearing of him; and certainly a little puny Simon like him could never do so without I came to help him; for the lock was stiff with rust, and the bolt out of his reach.”

“Stop, young man; my respected client, Mr. Jennings, got upon a chair.”

“Indeed, sir? then he must ha’ created the chair for that special purpose:  there wasn’t one in the hall then; no, nor for two days after, when they came down bran-new from Dowbiggins in London, with the rest o’ the added furnitur’ just before my honoured master.”

This was conclusive, certainly; and Floyd proceeded.

“Now, gentlemen and my lord, if Jennings did not go that way, nor the kitchen-way neither—­for he always was too proud for scullery-door and kitchen—­and if he did not give himself the trouble to unfasten the dining-room or study windows, or to unscrew the iron bars of his own pantry, none of which is likely, gentlemen—­there was but one other way out, and that way was through Bridget Quarles’s own room.  Now—­”

“Ah—­that room, that bed, that corpse, that crock!—­It is no use, no use,” the wretched miscreant added slowly, after his first hurried exclamations; “I did the deed, I did it! guilty, guilty.”  And, notwithstanding all Mr. Sharp’s benevolent interferences, and appeals to judge and jury on the score of mono-mania, and shruggings-up of shoulders at his client’s folly, and virtuous indignation at the evident leaning of the court—­the murderer detailed what he had done.  He spoke quietly and firmly, in his usually stern and tyrannical style, as if severe upon himself, for being what?—­a man of blood, a thief, a perjured false accuser?  No, no; lower in the scale of Mammon’s judgment, worse in the estimate of him whose god is gold; he was now a pauper, a mere moneyless forked animal; a beggared, emptied, worthless, penniless creature:  therefore was he stern against his ill-starred soul, and took vengeance on himself for being poor.

It was a consistent feeling, and common with the mercantile of this world; to whom the accidents of fortune are every thing, and the qualities of mind nothing; whose affections ebb and flow towards friends, relations—­yea, their own flesh and blood, with the varying tide of wealth:  whom a luckless speculation in cotton makes an enemy, and gambling gains in corn restore a friend; men who fall down mentally before the golden calf, and offer up their souls to Nebuchadnezzar’s idol:  men who never saw harm nor shame in the craftiest usurer or meanest pimp, provided he has thousands in the three per cents.; and whose indulgent notions of iniquity reach their climax in the phrase—­the man is poor.