CHAPTER III.
The Papers Again.
Mr. Foster went home in a terrible rage. His clerks could not imagine what had happened. He looked pale, worried, anxious and miserable. "I should not think," he said to himself, "that such a thing ever happened in the world before." His clients thought him bad tempered; he had the air of a man with whom everything had gone wrong—out of sorts with all the world.
"The man is mad," he said to himself, with a shrug of his shoulders; "neither more nor less than mad to fling away his life and disgrace his name. It is useless to think it will never be known; those stupid papers are sure to get hold of it, and then there is little chance of secrecy."
He went about his work with a very unsettled, wretched expression on his shrewd face. Something or other had evidently disturbed him very much. While on his part John Smith, with the same light in his face and the same fire in his eyes, went off in the prison van.
He heard very little of what was going on around him. He seemed to be quite apart in some dreamland, some world of his own. When the coarse suit of prison clothes was brought to him, instead of the disgust the attendants expected to see, there came over his face a smile. To himself he said: "I could almost kiss them for her sweet sake."
"That man is no thief," said one of the warders. "I do not care if they did catch him with the watch in his hand, he is no thief! I know the stamp!"
How he passed that first day and night was best known to himself. The jailer who brought his breakfast the next morning said, "You look tired."
He smiled and said to himself, "I would have gone to death for her sweet sake! This will be easy to bear."