[CHAPTER VII.]
THE FOOTPRINT.
"I don't believe that he did it," said Mr. Curtis, thoughtfully, as he stood with his back to the mantelpiece in his own little study, with his hands behind him.
"I am convinced that he did not!" exclaimed Mrs. Curtis, from her seat by the table, where she was preparing some work for her girls' school.
"And on what do you found that conviction, my love?" asked the vicar.
"If the sailor had broken the windows, he would have said so at once," answered the lady. "That man could no more stoop to a falsehood than that pine—" she glanced out of the window—"could stoop to crawl on the ground like bindweed! Ned Franks has a soul above lying!"
"You speak very positively upon a very short acquaintance, my dear," said the vicar With a smile, for he had seldom seen his gentle wife roused to give an opinion with such animation.
"What were you yourself just telling Henry? Did you not say that you were struck by the singular frankness with which the sailor owned that he had been trespassing in the park, and that the ball was his, and with the dignity of truth with which he asserted his innocence concerning the glass? And I also have seen him tried, and bearing the trial in a manner that would make me take the sailor's word against that of a dozen other men. Was I not by when Lady Barton questioned Franks hard about her son? Did I not see the pain which her questions gave him! How he flushed and bit his lip, and yet from those lips an untruth could no more come than if they had been of marble! Oh, Henry, I am as sure of that young man's innocence as I am of my own."
"I'm afraid that we shall find it difficult to prove it, my dear."
"The way will be to find out who really did break the glass," said the lady. "I think it very likely that the mischief was done by one of the boys of our school."