C.  N.  Oh, spare me, spare me!  I’ll work so hard for you.  Keep it dark as to who I am.  It will be such an advantage you’re having me all to yourself.

W.  J.  Would it, indeed?  Well, I doubt that.

C.  N.  Oh, I think so.  I really am a good lawyer.

W.  J.  H’m, that would be rather less useful than a dead jackass—­unless one came to the conclusion of making cat’s meat of you.

C.  N. (aside, Oh, I’m sick at heart at his hinted threats).  Mr. Socialist, don’t you see I could put you up to all sorts of dodges by which you could get hold of odds and ends of property—­as I suppose you have some sort of property still—­and the titles of the land must be very shaky just after a revolution?  I tell you I could put you up to things which would make you a person of great importance; as good as what a lord used to be.

W.  J. (aside, Oh, you old blackguard!  What’s bred in the bone won’t come out of the flesh.  I really must frighten the old coward a little; besides, the council has got to settle what’s to be done with him, or the old idiot will put us to shame by dying on our hands of fright and stupidity.) (To N.) Nupkins, I really don’t know what to do with you as a slave; I’m afraid that you would corrupt the morals of my children; that you would set them quarrelling and tell them lies.  There’s nothing for it but you must come before the Council of our Commune:  they’ll meet presently under yonder tree this fine day.

C.  N.  No, no, don’t!  Pray let me go and drag out the remainder of a miserable existence without being brought before a magistrate and sent to prison!  You don’t know what a dreadful thing it is.

W.  J.  You’re wrong again, Nupkins.  I know all about it.  The stupid red tape that hinders the Court from getting at the truth; the impossibility of making your stupid judge understand the real state of the case, because he is not thinking of you and your life as a man, but of a set of rules drawn up to allow men to make money of other people’s misfortunes; and then to prison with you; and your miserable helplessness in the narrow cell, and the feeling as if you must be stifled; and not even a pencil to write with, or knife to whittle with, or even a pocket to put anything in.  I don’t say anything about the starvation diet, because other people besides prisoners were starved or half-starved.  Oh, Nupkins, Nupkins! it’s a pity you couldn’t have thought of all this before.

C.  N. (aside:  Oh, what terrible revenge is he devising for me?) (to W. J.) Sir, sir, let me slip away before the Court meets. (Aside:  A pretty Court, out in the open-air!  Much they’ll know about law!)

W.  J.  Citizen Nupkins, don’t you stir from here!  You’ll see another old acquaintance presently—­Jack Freeman, whom you were sending off to six years of it when the red flag came in that day.—­And in good time here he is.