nce the previous evening, when the police,
conducting him to Norcaster, had told him of the Mayor's escape from the
Town Hall. Nobody but an absolute fool, a consummate idiot, thought
Cotherstone, would have done a thing like that. The man who flies is the
man who has reason to fly--that was Cotherstone's opinion, and in his
belief ninety-nine out of every hundred persons in Highmarket would
share it. Mallalieu would now be set down as guilty--they would say he
dared not face things, that he knew he was doomed, that his escape was
the desperate act of a conscious criminal. Ass!--said Cotherstone, not
without a certain amount of malicious delight: they should none of them
have reason to say such things of him. He would make no attempt to
fly--no, not if they left the gate of Norcaster Gaol wide open to him!
It should be his particular care to have himself legally cleared--his
acquittal should be as public as the proceedings which had just taken
place. He went out of the dock with that resolve strong on him; he
carried it away to his cell at Norcaster; he woke in the morning with
it, stronger than ever. Cotherstone, instead of turning tail, was going
to fight--for his own hand.

As a prisoner merely under detention, Cotherstone had privileges of
which he took good care to avail himself. Four people he desired to see,
and must see at once, on that first day in gaol--and he lost no time in
making known his desires. One--and the most important--person was a
certain solicitor in Norcaster who enjoyed a great reputation as a sharp
man of affairs. Another--scarcely less important--was a barrister who
resided in Norcaster, and had had it said of him for a whole generation
that he had restored more criminals to society than any man of his
profession then living. And the other two were his own daughter and
Windle Bent. Them he must see--but the men of law first.

When the solicitor and the barrister came, Cotherstone talked to them as
he had never talked to anybody in his life. He very soon let them see
that he had two definite objects in sending for them: the first was to
tell them in plain language that money was of no consideration in the
matter of his defence; the second, that they had come there to hear him
lay down the law as to what they were to do. Talk he did, and they
listened--and Cotherstone had the satisfaction of seeing that they went
away duly impressed with all that he had said to them. He went back to
his cell fr