It was taken, and hard wrung—just that one moment’s understanding—and the two fell apart.
“Thank you, sir,” said the boy simply. “I did not do it, of course.”
The father laughed; it wrung one to hear him, and to see his face.
“One of your judges, Hughie,” he said, wheezing hilariously—“old Crosson; you know him—told me not to lose heart—that appearances weren’t always to be trusted. He ought to know, eh, after three attempts?”
“I wanted you just to hear me say,” said the other hurriedly, “that I’m glad it’s come—not the way it has, but the truth. I’ve behaved like a blackguard, sir, and it’s been weighing on me; you don’t know how it’s been weighing. It’s been making my life hell for some little time past. But now you know, and it’s the worst of me—bad enough, but not the unutterable brute they’d make me out.” He turned to me. “So they got at you, Viv.,” he said. “Never mind, old boy; you meant the best.”
“It was an infamous breach of confidence,” I burst out. “It was that Sergeant led me on.”
“Yes,” said Hugh: “I supposed he was at the bottom of all this. But I can’t help his witnesses. It was the truth I told.”
“He has betrayed the house,” I said hotly. “He was engaged to serve.”
But to this Sir Calvin, greatly to my surprise and indignation, demurred, in a hoarse broken way: “If he thought his duty lay this road, it was his business like an honest man to take it. We want no absolution on sufferance—eh, Hughie, my boy?”
“No, sir, no. You will see that I am properly advised as to the best way to go to clear myself. Thank God my mother isn’t alive!”