“Not one of them; disloyalty was no more his than cowardice. I never knew the Englishman with such a pride of country as he had, nor could you have held out a greater bribe to him, for any achievement of peril, than to say, 'What a gain it would be for England!'”
“How was it that such a man should have had a host of enemies?”
“Nothing so natural. Barrington was the most diffident of men; his bashfulness amounted to actual pain. With strangers, this made him cold to very sternness, or, as is often seen in the effort to conquer a natural defect, gave him a manner of over-easy confidence that looked like impertinence. And thus the man who would not have wounded the self-love of the meanest beggar, got the reputation of being haughty, insolent, and oppressive. Besides this, when he was in the right, and felt himself so, he took no pains to convince others of the fact. His maxim was,—have I not heard it from his lips scores of times,—'The end will show.'”
“And yet the end will not show, father; his fame has not been vindicated, nor his character cleared.”
“In some measure the fault of those who took up his cause. They seemed less to insist on reparation than punishment. They did not say, 'Do justice to this man's memory;' but, 'Come forward and own you wronged him, and broke his heart.' Now, the accusation brought against George Barrington of assuming sovereign power was not settled by his death; his relatives forgot this, or merged it in their own charge against the Company. They mismanaged everything.”
“Is it too late to put them on the right track, father; or could you do it?” asked the youth, eagerly.
“It is not too late, boy! There is time for it yet. There is, however, one condition necessary, and I do not see how that is to be secured.”
“And what is that?”
“I should see Mr. Barrington and confer with him alone; he must admit me to his confidence, and I own to you, I scarcely deem that possible.”
“May I try—may I attempt this?”