Stranica 166 [166]
OCR
120 wards. That’s the usual way of doing business.” vh Lights were then procured, and Messrs. Blathers and Duff, attended by the native constable, Brittles, Giles, and everybody . else in short, went into the little room at the end of the passage, and looked out at the window, and afterwards went round by way of the lawn, and looked in at the window, and after that had a candle and after that a lantern to trace the footsteps with, and after that a pitchfork to poke the bushes with. ‘This done amidst the breathless interest of all beholders, they came in again, and Mr. Giles and Brittles were put through a melo-dramatic representation of their share in the previous night’s adventures, which they performed some six times over, contradicting each other in not more than one important respect the first time, and in not more than a dozen the last. consummation being arrived at, Blathers and Duff cleared the room, and held a long council together, compared with which, for secrecy and solemnity, a consultation of great doctors on the knottiest eee in medicine would be mere child’s play. Meanwhile the doctor walked up and down the next room in a very uneasy state, and Mrs. Maylie and Rose looked on with anxious faces. “Upon my word,” he said, making a halt after a great number of very rapid turns, “I hardly know what to do.” “ Surely,” said Rose, “ the poor child’s story, faithfully repeated to these men, will be sufficient to exonerate him.” “T doubt it, my dear young lady,” said the doctor, shaking his head. “I don’t think it would exonerate him, either with them or with legal functionaries of a higher grade. What is he, after all, they would say—a runaway. Judged by mere worldly considerations and probabilities, his story is a very doubtful one.” “You credit it, surely?" interrupted Rose in haste. 6 I believe it, strange as it is, and perhaps may be an old fool for doing so,” rejomed the doctor; “but I don’t think it is exactly the tale for a practised police officer, nevertheless.” “ Why not?” demanded Rose. c Because, my pretty cross-examiner,” replied the doctor, “ because, viewed with their eyes, there are so many ugly points . about it; he can only prove the parts that look bad, and none of those that look well, Confound the fellows, they wil have the why. and the wherefore, and take nothing for ted. On his own showing, you see, he has been the companion of thieves for some time past; he has been carried to a police-office on .a charge of picking a gentleman’s pocket, and is taken away forcibly from that gentleman’s house to a place which he cannot describe or point out, and of the situation of which he has not the remotest idea. He is brought down to Chertsey by men who seem to have taken a violent fancy to him, whether he will or no, and put through a window to rob a house, and then, just at the very moment when he is going to alarm the inmates, and so do the very thing that would set him all to rights, there rushes into the way that blundering dog of a half-bred butler and shoots: him, as if on purpose to prevent his doing any good for himself. Don’t you see all this?” “T see it, of course,” replied Rose, smiling at the doctor s impetuosity ; “ but still I do not see anything in it to criminate the poor child.” “No,” replied the doctor; of course not! Bless the bright eyes of your sex! They never see, whether for good or bad, more than one side of any question; and that is, invariably, the one which first presents itself to them.” | Having given, vent to this result of exerlence, the doctor put his. hands: into is pockets, and walked up and down the cae with even greater rapidity than beore. “The more I think of it,” said the doctor, "5 the more I see that it will occasion endless trouble and difficulty to put these men into possession of the boy’s real story. I am certain it will not be believed; and, even if they can do nothing to him in the end, still the dragging it forward, and giving publicity to all the interfere materially with your benevolent plan of rescuing him from misery.” 6 Oh ! what is to be done ?” cried Rose. “ Dear, dear! why did they send for these people?" | “ Why, indeed!” exclaimed Mrs. Mayhe. “IJ would not have had them here for the world !” c All I know is,” said Mr. Losberne at last, sitting dow with a kind of desperate calmness, “that we must try and carry it off with a bold face, that’s all! The object is a good one, and that must be the excuse. The boy has strong symptoms of fever upon him, and is in no condition to be talked to any more; that’s
