Mr. Sandon had fallen into the general and delusive mistake of those who err, in supposing himself unfortunate rather than criminal. With an ingenuity, that, exercised in a better cause, would have made him a respectable man, he had been endeavouring to excuse his crime to himself, on various pleas of necessity, and he had even got at last to justify his act, by fancying that some trifling wrong he had received, or which he fancied he had received in the settlement of his own private account, in some measure excused his fraud, although his own denied claim amounted merely to the sum of twenty pounds, and that which he had taken was so large. It was under the influence of such feelings that he made the answer just given.
"A little thoughtless! unlucky! And is this the way Henry Sandon, that you name a crime that might almost raise your upright father from his grave? But I wilt speak no more of feelings that you do not seem to understand. You confess to have taken forty thousand pounds of the public money, to which you have no right or claim?"
"I certainly have in my hands some money, which I do not deny belongs to government."
"It is well; and here is my authority to receive it from you. Gentlemen, will you have the kindness to see that my powers are regular and authentic?"
John Effingham and others cast their eyes over the papers, which seemed to be in rule, and they said as much.
"Now, sir," resumed Mr. Green, "in the first place, I demand the bills you received in London for this money, and your regular endorsement in my favour."
The culprit appeared to have made up his mind to this demand, and, with the same recklessness with which he had appropriated the money to his own use, he was now ready to restore it, without proposing a condition for his own safety The bills were in his pocket, and seating himself at a table, he made the required endorsement, and handed them to Mr Green.
"Here are bills for thirty-eight thousand pounds," said that methodical person, after he had examined the drafts, one by one, and counted their amount; "and you are known to have taken forty thousand. I demand the remainder."
"Would you leave me in a strange country penniless?" exclaimed the culprit, in a tone of reproach.
"Strange country! penniless!" repeated Mr. Green, looking over his spectacles, first at Mr. Truck, and then at Mr. Sandon. "That to which you have no claim must be restored, though it strip you to the skin. Every pound you have belongs to the public, and to no one else."