will be known to you, as I am now aware
that it was frequently mentioned in the course of the late trial. It
will probably seem odd to you that I had never even heard of the
trial till I reached my father's house last night. I did not know
that Caldigate had married Miss Bolton, nor that Euphemia Smith had
claimed him as her husband.

'I am able and willing to swear that they had not become man and
wife up to June 1873, and that no one at Ahalala or Nobble conceived
them to be man and wife. Of course, they had lived together. But
everybody knew all about it. Some time before June,--early, I should
say, in that autumn,--there had been a quarrel. I am sure they were
at daggers drawn with each other all that April and May in respect
to certain mining shares, as to which Euphemia Smith behaved very
badly. I don't think it possible that they should ever have come
together again; but in May '73,--which is the date I have heard
named,--they certainly were not man and wife.

'I have thought it right to inform you of this immediately on my
return, and am, your obedient servant,

'RICHARD SHAND.'

Mr. Seely, when he received this letter, found it to be his duty to take
it at once to Sir John Joram, up in London. He did not believe Dick
Shand. But then he had put no trust in Bagwax, and had been from the
first convinced, in his own mind, that Caldigate had married the woman.
As soon as it was known to him that his client had paid twenty thousand
pounds to Crinkett and the woman, he was quite sure of the guilt of his
client. He had done the best for Caldigate at the trial, as he would
have done for any other client; but he had never felt any of that
enthusiasm which had instigated Sir John. Now that Caldigate was in
prison, Mr. Seely thought that he might as well be left there quietly,
trusting to the verdict, trusting to Judge Bramber, and trusting still
more strongly on his own early impressions. This letter from Dick,--whom
he knew to have been a ruined drunkard, a disgrace to his family, and
an outcast from society,--was to his thinking just such a letter as
would be got up in such a case, in the futile hope of securing the
succour of a Secretary of State. He was sure that no Secretary of State
would pay the slightest attention to such a letter. But still it would
be necessary that he should show it to Sir John, and as a trip to London
was not disagr