After a few moments’ conversation she asked Larry: “I may keep now my own name, it is quite safe, is not? They are gone now––those for whom I feared.”
“Wait a little,” said Richard. “Wait until you have been down in the world long enough to be sure. It is a hard thing to live under suspicion, and until you have means of knowing, the other will be safer.”
“You think so? Then is better. Yes? Ah, Sir Kildene, how it is beautiful to see your son does so very much resemble our friend.”
They arrived at the bank, and Larry entered while Richard and Amalia strolled on together. “We had a friend, Harry King,”––she paused and would have corrected herself, but then continued––“he was very much like to you––but he is here in trouble, and it is for that for which we have come here. Sir Kildene is so long in that bank! I would go in haste to that place where is our friend. Shall we turn and walk again a little toward the bank? So will we the sooner encounter him on the way.”
They returned and met Larry coming out, stepping briskly. He too was eager to be at the courthouse. He took his son’s arm and rapidly and earnestly told him the situation as he had just heard it from the cashier. He told him that which he had been keeping back, and impressed on him the truth that unless he had returned when he did, the talk in the town was that the trial was likely to go against the prisoner. Richard would have broken into a run, in his excitement, but Larry held him back.
“Hold back a little, boy. Let us keep pace with you. There’s really no hurry, only that impulse that sent you home––it was as if you were called, from all I can learn.”
“It is my reprieve. I am free. He has suffered, too. Does he know yet that I too live? Does he know?”
“Perhaps not––yet, but listen to me. Don’t be too hasty in showing yourself. If they did not know him, they won’t know you––for you are enough different for them never to suspect you, now that they have, or think they 474 have, the man for whom they have been searching. See here, man, hold back for my sake. That man––that brother-in-law of mine––has walked for years over my heart, and I’ve done nothing. He has despised me, and without reason––because I presumed to love your mother, lad, against his arrogant will. He––he––would––I will see him down in the dust of repentance. I will see him willfully convict his own son––he who has been hungering to see you––my son––sent to a prison for life––or hanged.”
Richard listened, lingering as Larry wished, appalled at this revelation, until they arrived at the edge of the crowd around the door, eagerly trying to wedge themselves in wherever the chance offered.