s any criminal verdict can be set aside,--by the
Queen's pardon, then the family would be bound to suppose that they who
advised her Majesty had exercised a sound discretion.

'I am sure you will all agree with me,' he said, 'that no personal
feeling in regard to Caldigate should influence your judgment. For
myself, I like the man. But that, I think, has had nothing to do with my
opinion. If it had been the case that, having a wife living, he had
betrayed my sister into all the misery of a false marriage, and had made
her the mother of a nameless child, I should have felt myself bound to
punish him to every extent within my power. I do not think it
unchristian to say that in such a case I could not have forgiven him.
But presuming it to be otherwise,--as we all shall be bound to do if he
be pardoned,--then, for Hester's sake, we should receive the man with
whom her lot in life is so closely connected. She, poor dear, has
suffered enough, and should not be subjected to the further trouble of
our estrangement.

'Nor, if we acknowledge the charge against him to be untrue, is there
any reason for a quarrel. If he has not been bad to our sister in that
matter, he has been altogether good to her. She has for him that
devotion which is the best evidence that a marriage has been well
chosen. Presuming him to be innocent, we must confess, as to her, that
she has been simply loyal to her husband,--with such loyalty as every
married man would desire. For this she should be rewarded rather than
punished.

'I write to you thinking that in this way I may best reach my father and
Mrs. Bolton. I would go down and see them did I not know that your words
would be more efficacious with them than my own. And I do it as a duty
to my sister, which I feel myself bound to perform. Pray forgive me if I
remind you that in this respect she has a peculiar right to a
performance of your duty in the matter. You counselled and carried out
the marriage,--not at all unfortunately if the man be, as I think,
innocent. But you are bound at any rate to sift the evidence very
closely, and not to mar her happiness by refusing to acknowledge him if
there be reasonable ground for supposing the verdict to have been
incorrect.'

Sift the evidence, indeed! Robert Bolton had done that already very
closely. Bagwax and the stamps had not moved him, nor the direct
assurance of Dick Shand. But the incarceration by Government of Crinkett
and Euphemia Smith had sha