“And who dares say I am not? Did you, sir, come here to entrap me in my words? Who will dare say I am not innocent, when the most famous lawyer in town shall have proven that I was far from here on the night of the robbery?”
The last words were said in a sneering and almost contemptuous manner.
“I must repeat my regret that I cannot undertake your cause, while at the same time I assure you that I shall be silent as to what has transpired between us.”
“Puppy!” exclaimed Tremaine, thoroughly enraged. “Who asked you to undertake it? Who asked you to come and thrust yourself upon me? Puppy—plebeian! did I seek advice or assistance from you?”
“Mr. Tremaine,” replied Dunning, with a calm and gentlemanly dignity—“Mr. Tremaine, it is vain talking in this manner. I came to you in the spirit of kindness—but my errand has been a fruitless one.”
Before Tremaine had time to reply the door was opened by the keeper, and Dunning passed out of the cell.
It was with a heavy heart Fanny heard from her husband that he could not undertake to plead for the accused, and, gently as she could, she broke the sad news to Sophia. Browne and Tremaine were tried, convicted and sentenced to the State prison. And now the hand which had sinfully lavished thousands—the hand that had been kept so daintily white and soft—the hand of the “son of a gentleman” was roughly manacled, and linked to the brown, hard, weather-beaten hand of a fellow convict. He who had been the pampered heir of luxury was now to be the partaker of coarse fare—the daily companion of all that was base and vile—and the nightly dweller in the lone dark cell of a prison. He, the once flattered, courted and caressed, was to pass shamefully from the haunts of his fellow-man, and, after a few exclamations of wonder and reproach, was finally to be forgotten.
But there was one secretly at work, one who had been spurned, one whose noble hand had been flung aside with contempt—and that one was now busily employed in writing petitions, in traveling to and fro, and doing all in his power to obtain the liberation of the man who had ever treated him with insult and scorn. At length he was successful, and Tremaine was pardoned on condition of his leaving the State. But for Browne, who had been recognized as an old offender, there were no attempts made to procure his release.
It was with mingled feelings of shame and defiance that Tremaine ungraciously received the assurance of his freedom from the mouth of Dunning; for, the better to avoid observation, the latter went himself for the prisoner, brought him from his convict cell, and conveyed him to the warm hospitalities of a happy home, where he was received by Mrs. Dunning with that refined delicacy and unobtrusive kindness which soon placed him comparatively at ease in their society.
A strange and embarrassed meeting was that of Tremaine and his wife. Sophia’s first impulse was to break out into invective against him who had thus brought disgrace and ruin, not only upon himself, but upon her. Better feelings, however, prevailed, for she had learned many a lesson of late, and had already begun to catch the kind and forgiving spirit of those with whom she dwelt; so, after a few moments’ hesitation, a few moments’ struggle between pride, anger and womanly tenderness, she drew near to her husband, laid her head upon his bosom, and sobbed in very grief and sorrow of heart. “Sophia!” “Tremaine!” were the only words uttered during that first outburst of anguish. But soon the fountain of thought was unsealed, when, instead of taunts and mutual upbraidings, the bitter lessons learned in the school of adversity made them self-accusing, and willing to excuse each other.