“Do not speak so loud; and now listen to me. My uncle, for his own good reasons, will not face the exposure of a public trial and the insolence of the Crown lawyers, who would not hesitate to rake up long buried accusations against him, and revive sorrows which even in their decay embitter his life. He will not endure this, and he is right.”
“Right to deny a man his chance of life!”
“You know well—none better—how little my uncle’s testimony could serve this poor man. His case is too serious for that.”
“I won’t go over that again,” said he, impatiently. “I haven’t any time to throw away in arguments. If you put the whole seventy pounds down on the table it wouldn’t do! No, it would not. It will take thirty, to begin with, to get Billy Sloane out of the country, and he it is the Crown relies on for the first charge; he saw old Peter strike the bailiff first. M’Nulty is the cheapest of the ‘silk gowns,’ and he won’t come under fifty, and a retainer of ten more. The Westport Star wants ten pounds to put in the article threatening the jury, if they don’t bring in a verdict of ‘Not Guilty,’ because, as Mr. Potter says, ‘Word it as carefully as you like, it’s a contempt of Court, and may send me for a year to gaol.’ Make money of that, Miss Kitty. Thirty and fifty is eighty, and ten more, ninety, and ten to the newspaper is a hundred; and after that there’s the costs to Tom Crowe, and the expenses of the case, not to speak of the daily livin’ in the gaol, that’s something terrible. There’s not a pint of sperite doesn’t cost three shillings!”
“But if we have no more?—if we have given every farthing we can raise?”
“‘Tis a nice confession for an estated gentleman, for the man that writes himself Luttrell of Arran, that, to save his father, or father-in-law, from the death of a felon, he could only scrape together seventy pounds!”
“You have only to look around you, and see how we are living, to see that it is the truth.”
“Many a miser that won’t give himself bread passes the night counting over his guineas.”
“He is no miser, Sir,” said she, indignantly, for all her self-control failed her at this point. “If he were not a generous gentleman, he would never have made the proposal I have now told you of.”
“Tell the generous gentleman, then, to keep his money, young lady,” and he laid a sarcastic emphasis on the word. “Tell him I’ll not touch a shilling of it. And I’ll tell you more that you may tell him; say that he’ll want it all, to buy himself a new suit of clothes to make a decent appearance when he’s summoned to come forward at the trial.”