"Violently!"
"Take care. What you say may be used against--" Herries rose with an angry gesture.
"An innocent man such as I am does not need to be careful of his words," he cried. "My life history is miserable enough certainly, but there is no page of which I need be ashamed."
"For an educated man to be in such a plight--."
The prisoner again interrupted.
"Do you know what Jonah's Luck is?
"I know that the person you mention was swallowed by a whale," said Trent with dignity. "I am not entirely a heathen."
In spite of his misery Herries could not help smiling.
"I give you the whale," he said sarcastically. "In spite of my sojourn in the Arctic regions, I have escaped the gullet of that animal. I allude to the prophet's luck. Everything went wrong with him, as it has done with me. Do you know what it is, Inspector, to be unlucky--to try your hardest to earn bread and a roof in the face of circumstances too hard to conquer? Have you ever found doors shut against you? Has your family ever regarded you as a hopeless black sheep, because you had not the money to wash your wool white? I have been hungry, starving, almost without clothes, certainly without fire on freezing days. Life has crushed me into the mire, and every struggle I made to rise, was met with a fresh blow."
"Such miseries as these," said Dogberry, sapiently, "lead men to commit crimes."