I wasn't here myself above seven year before you.

I shan't last long.

When I'm off the lock for good and all, you'll be the Father of the Marshalsea.' The turnkey went off the lock of this world next day.

His words were remembered and repeated; and tradition afterwards handed down from generation to generation--a Marshalsea generation might be calculated as about three months--that the shabby old debtor with the soft manner and the white hair, was the Father of the Marshalsea.
And he grew to be proud of the title.

If any impostor had arisen to claim it, he would have shed tears in resentment of the attempt to deprive him of his rights.