Jeanie Abercorn declined rapidly after her statement to me, and in a week had passed to her long rest. Her last message was to her father in prison, telling him that she was only going out of his sight for a time; that God would forgive him, whether men did or no, knowing that it was his great love for her that tempted him to the crime. The old gardener received the message in a stupefied state. He had never appeared the same man since the arrest. He was told that he would be accepted as a witness against Denham, and agreed in a dull, listless manner to tell all he knew, which he did, with the result that Denham was convicted and sentenced to five years’ penal servitude. When the trial was over, the old gardener was told that he might go.
“What have I to gang to?” was his reply, as he wrung his hands and tottered out. “What have I to gang to?”
In a month or two the poor old man had drifted away to join Jeanie in the Great Unknown, beyond earth and sky.
A WOLF IN SHEEP’S CLOTHING.
“Once a criminal, always a criminal,” is a pretty safe maxim. When a man—and more especially one of education—is degraded into a thief and a liar, who would believe him if he expressed a wish for a better life? Nay, if he actually did change, and became a very anchorite or saint, would not the whole world howl out “Hypocrite?”
In the present case there was neither the profession of repentance nor the desire for a different life. The “Rev. Alfred Johnston,” already alluded to in “A Lift on the Road,” [See page [218], ante] on being released from prison, was in bad health, bodily as well as mentally. Some of the wages of sin had been paid out to him during the last year in prison, and he went out into the world a mere wreck, the shadow of his former self. He cursed me as a cause, and the whole world besides—and he even at times, I suspect, cursed himself—but he had no power to retaliate or avenge his fancied wrongs.
The glory of man is strength, and when that is gone, the best bed and blanket are the grave and a green turf. There was still the genteel begging left to him, but somehow the returns were now poor compared with his former gains, and Johnston was impatient for a chance which should allow him to leave this country for the Cape with a good pocketful of money at his command. During his seclusion his consort had drifted out to that colony as a barmaid—his real wife had been laid in the grave years before by his brutality and dissipation—and the moment he learned the truth he conceived the plan of following and joining her there. The climate was just such a one as he needed to restore his health, and a bold rogue, he thought, might in that place realise a fortune in a very short time. He had been landed in Edinburgh, as being the scene of his capture and conviction, and so it was around on the Edinburgh citizens that he now cast his eyes with a view to his own welfare. What is really one’s welfare none can decide for himself, and Fate often steps in and with inexorable hand fixes that for him. I daresay Johnston had often, in his better days, preached that truth, but he had either ceased to believe it, or allowed it to become buried in his mind, for at the strange turn events were to take none could have been more surprised than himself.
By studying carefully the subscription lists of the various local charities, and making diligent inquiries, Johnston decided upon a Mr Samuel Cooper, a retired merchant, living at Bonnington, as the likeliest man to make an easy victim. Mr Cooper was old, and benevolent as well as wealthy, and what was more important, he did not read the newspapers much, and so was not likely to know of Johnston’s past misdeeds. He was indeed a quiet, modest, feeling-hearted man, and the greatest tribute to his goodness was this very selection of him as a victim by the shrewd and unscrupulous Johnston. For a wide radius around his home, and more especially among the poor of Leith, this good man had raised up to his name a hedge of blessings and prayers; and who knows but these were now to be his protection in the hour of need?
The appearance of Johnston at this time was interesting. He had been a good-looking man, and the strict prison life and diet had removed the bloated look from his features, while his cough, and weak chest, and gasping for breath, only served to make him a pitiable object for charity and help. His clothing was the same wretched garb in which I had taken him more than four years before, but that too helped to excite commiseration.
This was the spectacle which greeted Mr Cooper one afternoon at his own home, when he had been told that a visitor, in the person of the Rev. Alfred Johnston, wished to speak with him, and awaited him in the adjoining room. Instead of a gentleman in blacks, he saw before him a ragged outcast, coughing painfully and looking ready to drop into the grave, and he started and looked round the room in wonderment.