Lord Medway looked first toward the Semples, and conspicuously bowed to both of them. The Elder was evidently sick, fretful, and suffering. Neil was wounded in every fiber of his proud nature. The loyalty, the honor, the good name of the Semples had been, he believed, irrevocably injured; for he was lawyer enough to know that it is nearly as bad to be suspected as to be guilty. And, small as the matter seemed in comparison, he was intensely mortified at the personal disarray of his father and himself. The men who arrested them had given them no time to arrange their clothing, and Neil knew they looked more suspiciously guilty for want of their clean laces and the renovating influences of water and brushes.
The assistant magistrate, Peter DuBois, was just questioning Elder Semple.
"Look at the prisoner taken on your premises, Mr. Semple. Do you know him?"
"I never saw him in a' my life before his arrest."
"Did you know he was using your landing?"
"Not I. I was fast asleep in my bed."
"Mr. Neil Semple, what have you to say?"
"I was sitting partially dressed, reading in my room. I have no knowledge whatever of the young man, nor can I give you any reason why our landing should have been used by him."
Mr. Curtis then spoke eloquently of the unstained loyalty of the Semples, and of their honorable life for half a century in the city of New York. But Peter DuBois held that they were not innocent, inasmuch as they had been so careless of His Majesty's interests as to permit their premises to be used for treasonable purposes.
"The Court must first prove the treasonable purposes," said Mr. Curtis.