“Secure of such wealth, sir, and having yielded to the temptation, is it likely he would have returned straight to the office, with the property upon him, to risk discovery at the very beginning?”
“Now, Mrs Baxter, you must understand that what I say is said with the view to make clear to myself the pros and cons of this business, and is without prejudice to the real truth of the case. I do not know what is the procedure of the Post Office in such matters; but in the event, say, of your son not having been called upon, in the hurry of business, to produce his receipt, until the complaints of the sender of the packet made its production imperative, he would have had plenty of time, would he not, to dispose of the goods?”
“He was never, sir, a penny the richer by it.”
“I am afraid that proves nothing; and no doubt all these assumptions were taken into consideration at the trial.”
The visitor’s small face flushed, and for the first time she bit her lip to keep back the tears.
“It was hard, sir,” she said, “that his very innocence should have been used to witness against him, and that his sentence was made the severer because he would not confess to the whereabouts of things he had never stolen.”
She was staunch to her fine belief. Gilead felt very pitifully towards the broken little soul.
“And then,” she cried, “to bring up that old affair against him, when it had proved the very making of his character! The error of a boy, sir, ignorant of what he was doing, though I don’t defend it; but he had pledged things for his father when alive, and he knew nothing of the law. It was a girl egged him on to it, and Charlie never could resist a pretty face. But it was a lesson and a warning that he never forgot—no not, as the dear God shall witness, when he walked on that last round that ruined him.”
She blinked away the tears that would come.
“It is very sad,” said Gilead—“horribly sad indeed.”