When that same morning dawned Mr. Forster was all impatience for his newspaper. Twice he rang the bell and asked if it had come, and when the servant brought it up he looked at it eagerly.
"Give it to me quickly," he said. Then he opened it, and was soon engrossed in the contents. Suddenly he flung it down, and almost stamped upon it in his rage.
"I knew it would be so! Now it will be blazoned all over England! What can have possessed him?"
The paragraph that excited his attention and anger ran as follows:
"We are informed on good authority that the John Smith tried yesterday on the charge of stealing a watch is no less a person than Basil Carruthers, Esquire, the owner of Ulverston Priory, and head of one of the oldest families in England."
"What can I do?" cried Mr. Forster; "it will break his mother's heart; she can never forget it. He is ruined for life. For a lawyer, I am strangely unwilling to tell a lie; but it must be done! He must be saved at any price!" He went to his desk and wrote the following note:
"To the Editor of 'The Times':
"Sir: I beg to call your attention to a paragraph that appears in 'The Times' of today stating that a man, tried under the name of John Smith for stealing a watch, is no less a person than Basil Carruthers, Esq., of Ulverston Priory. As the solicitor of that family, and manager of the Ulverston property, I beg to contradict it. Mr. Carruthers, himself, informed me of his intention to go abroad. Without doubt his indignant denial will follow mine. I am, sir, etc.,
"Herbert Forster."
"That may help him," he said. "I do not like doing it, but I cannot see my old friend's son perish without trying to save him. I may fail, but I must try. Perhaps my lie may be blotted out, like Uncle Toby's oath. If I can persuade him to send a denial, and date it Paris or Vienna, he will be saved."