“I am the Rev. Alfred Johnston,” said the outcast, reading aright the expression of Mr Cooper’s face. “I am really a clergyman, reduced to this state by my own folly and the wicked persecution of others. I have heard of your goodness—of your great heart, and your truly Christ-like compassion, and therefore I have crawled here to implore your help. Christ did not turn away the greatest sinner, and if I have sinned you can see I have also suffered. Ah, sir! if my life were but given me to begin again, how different would be my condition!”
“But how do you come to be thus reduced?” cried the benevolent old man, exceedingly sceptical of the truth of the statement. “Surely you have friends to whom you could appeal before a stranger like me?”
“Friends!” echoed Johnston, in a choking voice, and with a bitterness which was not exactly assumed; “when did a friend cling to one in adversity? No, sir! Give me the cold, callous world—the most unfeeling stranger—before the dearest friend. But I do not ask you to trust to my statements being true. Write to some of the deacons of my former church—with all their prejudice and ill-will they will at least bear testimony to the truthfulness of my statements;” and at random he named a small town in the west, the furthest away he could think of on the spur of the moment.
“Give me their names,” gravely returned Mr Cooper. “I may write, and I may not, but it can do no harm to leave the address. One is so liable to be imposed upon,” he soothingly added, afraid that he might have hurt the feelings of an unfortunate and injured man.
Thus cornered, Johnston gave two names, assuring Mr Cooper that the town was small, and that no other address was necessary to find these prominent deacons. He then launched out into a history of himself, partly real and partly imaginative. He had been unfortunate—exceedingly—in his congregation, and had roused opposition and animosity by his very bluntness and truthfulness. At length he had been forced to resign, and supported himself by tuition and other means till reduced to the verge of starvation. Then a wicked woman got up a plot against him, and, because he refused to marry her, lodged information with the police and had him arrested on a false charge. This charge she supported with gross perjury, and Johnston had been sent to prison a martyr to his own resolute goodness. The confession regarding the prison experience was thrown out merely in case the good man to whom he appealed might know something of it already. It would be quite impossible to convey in writing any idea of the plausible manner in which his story was concocted and narrated. As a preacher Johnston had been eloquent and persuasive; and now, when so much depended upon the exercise of these gifts, he carried all before him. It was not all false, and the hardships he had endured were not all imaginative. Several times Mr Cooper was moved to tears; and when Johnston concluded by saying he did not want money, but merely some decent clothing and his passage paid to the Cape, the good old man was on the point of giving him what he wished without a word of inquiry. Prudence prevailed, and in the end Johnston was delighted to hear him say—
“If all you have told me is true, I shall see that you are helped as you desire. I shall interest several members of our own church, and perhaps the pastor as well, in your unhappy circumstances, and possibly they may be disposed to give you help as well.”
“Excuse me, sir,” interposed Johnston, getting alarmed at the proposal; “spare a sensitive if a fallen man the degradation of having his sins and sufferings paraded before others. I had rather want their help than have to appear before these gentlemen and answer their questions. Let me creep out of the country unseen and unknown, to begin in a far-off land a nobler life, fearless alike of recognition and of censure.”
This seemed such a natural request that Mr Cooper hastily agreed, and promised strict secrecy to all in the city. He then dismissed him with a trifling sum for his immediate needs, and the request that he should come back in a day or two—as soon, indeed, as it was possible to receive answers from the deacons, whose addresses he had just taken down.
Those who do not know the boundless resources of the rogue of education will imagine that Johnston had got to the end of his tether, and would never again dare to look near the benevolent Mr Cooper, knowing that certain exposure would follow the written inquiries. Nothing of the kind. The circumstances were just such as roused Johnston to his keenest activity. From Mr Cooper’s house he went to a stationer’s and bought some notepaper and envelopes of different kinds, and, being accommodated with a pen and ink, he wrote out two polite notes, addressed to the postmaster of the town in the west he had named, in two different hands, and signed with the names he had given to Mr Cooper, requesting that any letters which might arrive for him should be re-addressed to two different addresses in Edinburgh. No one but an expert looking at these notes could have guessed that they were penned by the same man—the handwriting, the phraseology, the notepaper, and the style were entirely different. They were posted at once, and thus arrived one mail in advance of Mr Cooper’s two notes, which were at once re-addressed as directed, and duly delivered into Johnston’s hands. To write replies for the two imaginary deacons was then an easy matter; to get them duly authenticated with the post-mark of the town in question was more difficult. But during the interval, Johnston had called upon Mr Cooper, and made such rapid progress in his favour that he had not only been provided with a complete suit of clothes, but had been allowed to dine with Mr Cooper and his wife. So much familiarity implied also the gift of some money, and part of this money Johnston now hastened to use in a trip to the west. He left Edinburgh by an early train, posted the letters in the town, and took the first train back to Edinburgh, which he reached in time to take tea with the good man he had imposed upon. The same evening Mr Cooper chanced to mention that in a day or two he would have in his possession a large sum of money, out of which he intended to pay a steerage passage for Johnston to the Cape. The place where he kept his money was already known to Johnston, from the fact that a pound note had been taken from the drawer as a present to the broken-down minister. This place was a small parlour on the ground floor, easily accessible from a green behind the house. The window was fastened with an ordinary spring check, but that was no impediment to a man of Johnston’s experience; and the shutters were seldom closed, and certainly not fastened at night. A great scheme flashed upon Johnston’s brain. At first his only desire and concern had been to get clothing and a passage to the Cape; now, however, the bloodthirsty excitement of the old convict and jail-bird crept over his faculties, and goaded him on to a greater haul. He would empty the drawer the first night the money was there to take. There would be but one night in which the crime could be committed, for Mr Cooper had shown no reserve or concealment of his plans, and Johnston knew that on the following day most of the money would be paid away in quarterly accounts, &c. With part of the money given him by the benevolent man, he bought some housebreaking implements—a thin putty knife to force open the spring fastening of the window, a bracebit to cut an arm-hole in the shutters if they should happen to be closed and fastened; and lastly, a leaden-headed neddy or life-preserver with which to smash the skull of anyone who might oppose or attempt to capture him. Fate might order it that that victim should be the white-haired and warm-hearted man who had helped him in his sore plight—well, so be it; he had not the ordering of fate, and was content to risk even that. As to escaping after the crime, he trusted to his own experience and skill in disguising himself; and even if a swift flight were impossible, he knew several who would be only too glad to hide him, with such a sum in his possession, till the hue and cry were over.
Thus provided for every emergency, Johnston went down to the house at Bonnington one evening after dark, ostensibly to hear the result of Mr Cooper’s letters to the imaginary deacons, but really to ascertain if the money was in the house, and to see how the room lay for his midnight attempt. He was shown into the very parlour he was most anxious to reconnoitre, and left there so long alone that he began to get alarmed, although the interval had given him the opportunity to draw back the spring fastening of the windows and reclose the shutters as he found them, adjusting the slender hook which fastened them so lightly that a mere touch from the outside would drive them open. At length Mr Cooper appeared, looking grave and concerned, but Johnston’s alarm was speedily dispelled by hearing his benefactor say—