"My dear sir, you have done me justice, and from my heart I thank you for your good opinion. To simplify all your proceedings, however, I will at once admit that I am Henry Hayley."
"I beg your pardon, my dear sir," said Mr. Hargrave, laughing; "but you are under a mistake. You are not Henry Hayley. My brother magistrates and myself have just this moment agreed that you are not, and I can take upon myself to affirm, of my own positive knowledge, that we are right."
"Then why admit it?" asked Mr. Scriven, harshly, while Mr. Stolterforth and most of the party present looked perfectly bewildered.
"Nay, let me make the admission, my dear sir," said Henry, addressing Mr. Hargrave. "This painful scene has already continued too long, and I have only suffered it to do so in order to show the vehement animosity excited against me. I will, therefore, in order to curtail every unnecessary detail, admit, moreover, that I was charged with forgery upon a due and formal information upon oath, that a warrant was granted against me, and that I fled the country----"
"That is enough, I think!" exclaimed Mr. Scriven: "the matter ought now to be sent to a competent court."
"Stop, sir!" said Henry, sternly, "and be so good as to hear me out. I admit, I say, that I fled the country, but not to escape the arm of the law, for I had with me full proof of my innocence; and, as you have heard from the witness Joshua Brown, the man who burned the pocket-book, of which he had robbed me, acknowledged that there was in it a document purporting to have been written by the late Mr. Hayley, which clearly stated that the forgery was his, that I knew nothing of it, and that I had consented to abandon my country, and rest under the imputation of crime, in order to save a father from death."
"All very pretty," said Mr. Scriven; "but we have not the paper to examine. We cannot ascertain whether it was genuine. I myself believe it to have been a fabrication, and the evidence was overpowering against you. You fled at once to Northumberland, thence went to Wales, thence to London, thence to the Continent, changing everywhere the notes in which the forged bill had been paid."
"I wish, sir, you would not interrupt me," said Henry; "you have surely had sufficient license of the tongue to-day. Allow me, at least, to make my own statement connectedly. Mr. Hayley one day gave me a draft upon your house, of which he had been very lately a partner, apparently accepted by yourself, to discount at Messrs. Stolterforth's bank. At the same time he entered into an explanation of some of his affairs, which I already knew to be seriously deranged, telling me that he must absolutely have two thousand pounds more within a week, and that as soon as I had got the draft discounted I must go down with all speed to this very house, and borrow that sum for him of his friend Lord Mellent, then in attendance on his father at this house. Mr. Stolterforth kindly discounted the bill at once. I now believe the money to be obtained from Lord Mellent was destined by Mr. Hayley to take up the bill before the forgery was discovered; but I knew nothing of that, and set out that night for Belford. When I arrived here, I found that the Earl of Milford was dead, and that his son had set out to convey the body to the family vault near Caermarthen. As I had been told that the necessity of Mr. Hayley's case was urgent, I followed, changing, as Mr. Scriven says, several of the notes which Mr. Hayley had given me, at different places, to pay my expenses. I missed Lord Milford at Caermarthen, but passed him, while in the mail on my road to London, as he was being carried into an inn with concussion of the brain, his carriage having been overturned and nearly dashed to pieces. It is false, however, that I changed any notes whatsoever after I went to the Continent; for Mr. Hayley had himself provided for me foreign gold, so that I had no notes whatever to change."
"I recollect, I recollect," said Mr. Stolterforth; "I have a memorandum of it here. Several notes were traced to a money-changer, who said he had received them for napoleons from an elderly man, of whom he could give no particular description, and could not identify him."
"I went to London in the most open manner," continued Henry, "in the public mail-coach, with my name at large on my portmanteau, and proceeded from the post-office at once to Mr. Hayley's house. There I found him up and waiting for me, and for the first time learned the crime he had committed. Everything was already prepared for my instant departure; and he besought me, in an agony of distress and agitation, to save him from disgrace and death. Could a son refuse a father under such circumstances? I could not, and I fled."