“Proof, sir!” returned Roland, subsiding, however, into a tone of more respect: “does it want proof to establish the innocence of Arthur Channing? Every action of his past life is proof. He is honest as the day.”
“This warm feeling does you credit, in one sense—”
“It does me no credit at all,” fiercely interrupted Roland. “I don’t defend him because he is my friend; I don’t defend him because we are in the same office, and sit side by side at the same desk; I do it, because I know him to be innocent.”
“How do you know it?”
“He could not be guilty. He is incapable of it. Better accuse me, or Jenkins, than accuse him!”
“You and Jenkins were not at the office during the suspected time.”
“Well, I know we were not,” acknowledged Roland, lowering his voice to a more reasonable tone. “And, just because it happened, by some cross-grained luck, that Channing was, Butterby pitches upon him, and accuses him of the theft. He never did it! and I’ll say it with my last breath.”
With some trouble: threatenings on the part of the court; and more explosions from himself: Mr. Roland Yorke was persuaded to retire. He went as far as the back of the room, and there indulged in under-currents of wrath, touching injustice and Mr. Butterby, to a select circle who gathered round him. Warm-hearted and generous, by fits and starts, was Roland Yorke; he had inherited it with his Irish blood from Lady Augusta.
But meanwhile, where was Mr. Galloway? He did not make his appearance, and it was said he could not be found. Messenger after messenger was despatched to his office, to his house; and at length Mr. Butterby went himself. All in vain; his servants knew nothing about him. Jenkins, who had the office to himself, thought he must be “somewhere in the town,” as he had not said he was going out of it. Mr. Butterby went back crest-fallen, and confessed that, not to take up longer the time of their worships unnecessarily, the case must be remanded to the morrow.
“We will take bail,” said the magistrates, before the application was made. “One surety will be sufficient; fifty pounds.”