pel.

And so it came to pass that there were hard words between him and his
brother. 'You are wrong,' said William.

'How wrong? You cannot say that you believe him to be innocent.'

'If he receives the Queen's pardon he is to be considered as innocent.'

'Even though you should know him to have been guilty?'

'Well,--yes,' said William, slowly, and perhaps indiscreetly. 'It is a
matter in which a man's guilt or innocence must be held to depend upon
what persons in due authority have declared. As he is now guilty of
bigamy in consequence of the verdict, even though he should never have
committed the offence, so should he be presumed to be innocent, when
that verdict has been set aside by the Queen's pardon on the advice of
her proper officers,--even though he committed the offence.'

'You would have your sister live with a man who has another wife alive?
It comes to that.'

'For all legal purposes he would have no other wife alive.'

'The children would be illegitimate.'

'There you are decidedly wrong,' said the barrister. 'The children would
be legitimate. Even at this moment, without any pardon, the child could
claim and would enter in upon his inheritance.'

'The next of kin would claim,' said the attorney.

'The burden of proving the former marriage would then be on him,' said
the barrister.

'The verdict would be evidence,' said the attorney.

'Certainly,' said the barrister; 'but such evidence would not be worth a
straw after a Queen's pardon, given on the advice of the judge who had
tried the former case. As yet we know not what the judge may say,--we do
not know the facts as they have been expounded to him. But if Caldigate
be regarded as innocent by the world at large, it will be our duty so to
regard him.'

'I will never look on him as Hester's husband,' said the attorney.

'I and Fanny have already made up our minds that we would at once ask
them to come to us for a month,' said the barrister.

'Nothing on earth will induce me to speak to him,' said the attorney.

'Then you will be very cruel to Hester,' said the barrister.

'It is dreadful to me,' said the attorney, 'that you should care so
little for your sister's reputation.' And so they quarrelled. Robert,
leaving the house in great dudgeon, went down on the following morning
to Cambridge.

At Puritan Grange the matter was argued rather by rules of religion than
of law; but as the rules of law were made by those interested to fit
t