While the feast was in progress, Sam Dene went by, walking very fast. We dashed out to catch him. Good Mrs. Mountford chanced to be in the shop and knew us, or they might have thought we were decamping without payment.
Sam Dene, in answer to Tod’s hasty questions, went into a passion; swearing at the world in general, and Captain Cockermuth in particular, as freely as though the justices, then taking their places in the Guildhall, were not as good as within earshot.
“It is a fearful shame, Todhetley!—to bring such a charge against me, and to lug me up to the criminal bar like a felon. Worse than all, to let it go forth to the town and county in to-day’s glaring newspapers that I, Sam Dene, am a common thief!”
“Of course it is a fearful shame, Sam—it’s infamous, and all your friends know it is,” cried Tod, with eager sympathy. “My father wishes he could hang the printers. I say, what do you think has become of the box?”
“Become of it!—why, that blundering Charles Cockermuth has got it. He was off his head with excitement at its being found. He must have come into the room and put it somewhere and forgotten it: or else he put it into his pocket and got robbed of it in the street. That’s what I think. Quite off his head, I give you my word.”
“And what fable is it the wretches have got up about finding one of the guineas in your pocket, Sam?”
“Oh, bother that! It was my own guinea. I swear it—there! I can’t stay now,” went on Sam, striding off down High Street. “I am due at the town hall this minute; only out on bail. You’ll come with me.”
“You go in and pay for the tarts, Johnny,” called back Tod, as he put his arm within Sam Dene’s. I looked in, pitched a shilling on the counter, said I didn’t know how many we had eaten; perhaps ten; and that I couldn’t wait for change.
Crushing my way amidst the market women and their baskets in the Guildhall yard, I came upon Austin Chance. His father held some post connected with the law, as administered there, and Austin said he would get me in.
“Can it be true that the police found one of the guineas about him?” I asked.