Hal laughed freely.
“No,” he answered, “I am not a lawyer.”
“Glad to hear it. The precious rastals! they have been driving a roaring trade lately. Ah, sir! what a glorious country this would have been without lawyers! No writs, no executions, no imprisonment for debt. By Jove! what a splendid state of things.”
The man shut his eyes to enjoy the ecstacy he felt even in imagining such an Utopia.
“For swindlers no doubt!” observed Hal, with a smile; “but lawyers are essentially necessary to prevent honest men being devoured by rogues.”
“Very true, sir; that is one side of the question. If they confined themselves to that line, they would be a valuable body of professionals, but unfortunately they do not. You are too young and too inexperienced to know that they are much more the rogue’s friend than the honest man’s counsellor and servant.”
Hal shook his head.
“Ah! you don’t know. I hope you may never have occasion to know. I do; God knows I do. I have been here eighteen years, sir. Never in all that time beyond the door through which you entered this pandemonium. The lawyers brought me here, and here I am likely to die.”
“But can’t you take the Benefit”——
“Of the Act. No! I am here for contempt of court—a contempt of which I am intentionally as innocent as you are—a contempt about which I knew nothing—yet the rascally lawyers clapped me in here for it, and here I have been ever since, because I am not able to purge my contempt, as they call it. Besides, if it were not for contempt that I am here, I couldn’t take the Benefit, for I am connected with a large property, and I don’t intend to let the villains have that simply because I should, like a bird, be glad to get out of my cage. However, sir, you want to see Mr. Wilton, and not to listen to my doleful history. Come along, sir, this way.”