"Indeed, one of them!"
"That's what the young gentleman from the hall say, when he was in here this afternoon. But the governor, Master Palmer—O Lord! how he do hate him! 'Unhung?' he say. 'Why, hangun's too good for him.' An' so it is, come to think of it: to go and do what he done, an' to top all by settun fire to his own church!"
"Come," said Carlton, "that wasn't proved."
"But everybody know it, bless you!"
"Though the charge was dismissed in open court?"
"Bah! 'Not guilty, but don't do that again!'"
And the stout youth nodded sagely over his tankard's rim.
"So that's the opinion of the neighbourhood, is it?"
"That is, and that's not likely to change."
Carlton was not astonished. He had foreseen this even from the prisoner's dock, in that pause of the proceedings when he had felt ashamed of his facility in self-defence, a haunting doubt of the propriety of his defending himself at all. And yet the virile instinct which had inspired him then was not yet dead in his breast; he could not let all this pass; the conversation was none of his seeking, yet he must say something more.