On the way through the back-streets of the quiet city the porter would fain have extracted from Margaret all that she had to tell. But the girl would reveal nothing; she only said that she wanted to bear witness against Henry Dunbar.
The porter, upon the other hand, was very communicative. He told his companion what had happened at the adjourned examination.
"There was a deal of applause in the court when Mr. Dunbar was told he might consider himself free," said the porter; "but Sir Arden checked it; there was no need for clapping of hands, he says, or for anything but sorrow that such a wicked deed had been done, and that the cruel wretch as did it should escape. A young man as was in the court told me that them was Sir Arden's exack words."
They had reached Sir Arden's house by this time. It was a very handsome house, though it stood in a back sweet; and a grave man-servant, in a linen jacket, admitted Margaret into the oak-panelled hall.
She might have had some difficulty perhaps in seeing Sir Arden, had not the railway porter immediately declared her business. But the name of the murdered man was a passport, and she was ushered at once into a low room, which was lined with book-shelves, and opened into an old-fashioned garden.
Here Sir Arden Westhorpe, the magistrate, sat at a table writing. He was an elderly man, with grey hair and whiskers, and with rather a stern expression of countenance. But he was a good and a just man; and though Henry Dunbar had been the emperor of half Europe instead of an Anglo-Indian banker, Sir Arden would have committed him for trial had he seen just cause for so doing.
Margaret was in nowise abashed by the presence of the magistrate. She had but one thought in her mind, the thought of her father's wrongs; and she could have spoken freely in the presence of a king.
"I hope I am not too late, sir," she said; "I hear that Mr. Dunbar has been discharged from custody. I hope I am not too late to bear witness against him."
The magistrate looked up with an expression of surprise. "That will depend upon circumstances," he said; "that is to say, upon the nature of the statement which you may have to make."
The magistrate summoned his clerk from an adjoining room, and then took down the girl's information.