Your position is ignominious, Mr.
Carruthers; the paltry crime you are charged with is the same; and the name that for centuries has been honored in England will be low in the dust, sir.

I would rather have been dead than have seen such a day." The handsome young face changed slightly; evidently these thoughts had not occurred to him; he seemed to seek solace from some inward source of comfort of which the lawyer knew nothing.
"I must bear it," he said, unflinchingly.
"There is but one thing you can do," said Mr.Forster; "only one means of escape--write a letter at once containing a most indignant denial of the identity.

I will go myself purposely to Paris and post it there." "My dear Forster," said the young man with a smile of languid contempt, "I would not ransom my life, even, with a lie!" "In my opinion," said the lawyer, bluntly, "you have done worse in pleading guilty--you have acted a lie, at least." "I know my own motive.

I am the best judge of my own actions." "Certainly," was the sarcastic reply.

"I should not think any young man of your prospects was ever in such a position before." "Perhaps, as I said before, no man ever had the same motive," and a look of heroism and high resolve came over his face which astonished the lawyer.
"In the name of your dead father," he said, "who held the honor of his house so dear, I pray of you to write that letter!" "Not to save my head from the block!" he replied.