to the
commission of an act which turned out a great error in tactics, whatever
place we assign it in morality. Morally, the forgery of a signature,
especially if it be to bring about a diminution of cash in a well-filled
pocket, is a mere peccadillo compared with the malversation of a young
girl's life. Legally it is felony, and he who commits it may get as long
a term of penal servitude as the murderer of whose guilt the jury is not
confident up to hanging point.

The severity of the penal laws in the reign of George III. was due no
doubt to a vindictiveness against the culprit which--in theory at any
rate--is nowadays obsolete, legislation having for its object rather the
discouragement of crime on the _tapis_ than the meting out of their
deserts to malefactors. In those days the indignation of a jury would
rise to boiling-point in dealing with an offence against sacred
Property, while its blood-heat would remain normal over the deception
and ruin of a mere woman. Therefore the jury that tried Thornton
Daverill for forging the signature of Isaac Runciman on the back of a
promissory note found the accused guilty, and the judge inflicted the
severest penalty but one that Law allows. For Thornton might have been
hanged.

But neither judge nor jury seemed much interested in the convict's
behaviour to the daughter of the man he had tried to swindle out of
money. On the contrary, they jumped to the conclusion that his wife was
morally his accomplice; and, indeed, if it had not been for her great
beauty she would very likely have gone to the galleys too. There was,
however, this difference between their positions, that the prosecution
was dependent on her father's affidavit to prove that the signature was
a forgery, and so long as only the man he hated was legally involved,
he was to be relied on to adhere to his first disclaimer of it. Had
Maisie been placed beside her husband in the dock, how easily her
father might have procured the liberation of both by accepting his
liability--changing his mind about the signature and discharging the
amount claimed! If the continuance of the prosecution had depended on
either payer or payee, this would have been the end of it. What the
creditor--a usurer--wanted was his money, not revenge. Indeed, Thornton
would never have been made the subject of a criminal indictment at his
instance, except to put pressure on Isaac Runciman for payment for his
daughter's sake.

The bringing of th