erstood thoroughly each point as it was raised on behalf
of Caldigate, was quite sure that the old squire was spending his money
freely, his own money and his son's, with the view of getting the
verdict set aside. What was so clear as that Dick Shand and Bagwax, and
probably also Smithers from the Stamps and Taxes, were all in the pay of
old Caldigate? At this time the defection of Adamson was not known to
him, but he did know that a strong case was being made with the
Secretary of State. 'If it costs me all I have in the world I will
expose them,' he said up in London to his brother William, the London
barrister.

The barrister was not quite in accord with the other Boltons. He also
had been disposed to think that Dick Shand and Bagwax might have been
bribed by the squire. It was at any rate possible. And the twenty
thousand pounds paid to the accusing witnesses had always stuck in his
throat when he had endeavoured to believe that Caldigate might be
innocent. It seemed to him still that the balance of evidence was
against the man who had taken his sister away from her home. But he was
willing to leave that to the Secretary of State and to the judge. He did
not see why his sister should not have her husband and be restored to
the world,--if Judge Bramber should at last decide that so it ought to
be. No money could bribe Judge Bramber. No undue persuasion could weaken
him. If that Rhadamanthus should at last say that the verdict had been a
wrong verdict, then,--for pity's sake, for love's sake, in the name of
humanity, and for the sake of all Boltons present and to come,--let the
man be considered innocent.

But Robert Bolton was more intent on his purpose, and was a man of
stronger passion. Perhaps some real religious scruple told him that a
woman should not live with a man who was not her true husband,--let any
judge say what he might. But hatred, probably, had more to do with it
than religion. It was he who had first favoured Caldigate's claim on
Hester's hand, and he who had been most grievously deceived. From the
moment in which the conviction had come upon him that Caldigate had even
promised his hand in marriage to Euphemia Smith, he had become
Caldigate's enemy,--his bitter enemy; and now he could not endure the
thought that he should be called upon again to receive Caldigate as his
brother-in-law. Caldigate's guilt was an idea fixed in his mind which no
Secretary of State, no Judge Bramber, no brother could ex