Get a good lawyer, my poor
fellow, as soon as you arrive; and it's an even chance, after all,
that you go free!"
"Miserable wretch!" said Mr. Dodge, confronting the still kneeling and
agonized delinquent, "Wretch! these are the penalties of guilt. You have
forged and stolen, acts that meet with my most unqualified disapprobation,
and you are unfit for respectable society.--I saw from the very first what
you truly were, and permitted myself to associate with you, merely to
detect and expose you, in order that you might not bring disgrace on our
beloved country. An impostor has no chance in America; and you are
fortunate in being taken back to your own hemisphere."
Mr. Dodge belonged to a tolerably numerous class, that is quaintly
described as being "law honest;" that is to say, he neither committed
murder nor petty larceny. When he was guilty of moral slander, he took
great care that it should not be legal slander; and, although his whole
life was a tissue of mean and baneful vices, he was quite innocent of all
those enormities that usually occupy the attention of a panel of twelve
men. This, in his eyes, raised him so far above less prudent sinners as to
give him a right to address his quondam associate as has been just
related. But the agony of the culprit was past receiving an increase from
this brutal attack; he merely motioned the coarse-minded sycophant and
demagogue away, and continued his appeals to the two captains for mercy.
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