“ ‘And have you been able to form any theory at all?’
“ ‘None. Had there been robbery, I should have suspected gipsies. Our own people about here are quiet and harmless. Such a thing as wilful and deliberate murder would be impossible for them.’
“ ‘So the case only becomes the more mysterious.’
“ ‘I felt so strongly as to the man’s innocence that I not only provided him with counsel, but I also provided counsel with my own full statement of the case. The murderer of my brother-in-law, the slayer of my wife’—here Mr. Campaigne turned very pale—‘will be discovered; some time or other he must be discovered. I have understood that murder lies on the conscience until life becomes intolerable. Then the man confesses, and welcomes the shameful death to end it. Let us wait till the murderer finds his burden too heavy to be borne.’
“ ‘Yet,’ said the Judge, ‘one would like to find him out by means of the Law.’
“ ‘Well,’ said Mr. Campaigne, ‘for my own part, I resolved that I would do all in my power so that an innocent man should not suffer for the guilty if I could prevent it.’
“ ‘Sir,’ said the Judge, ‘your conduct is what the world expects of a noble gentleman. There remains one conclusion. It is that there was someone concealed in the wood. The boy said that no one went out. He was thinking of the two ends; but he could not perhaps see through the wood, or beyond the wood. It is not yet, perhaps, too late to search for footsteps. However, no doubt all that can be done will be done.’
“So the trial was finished. I have not heard that any further examination of the spot was made. As all the village, and people from neighbouring villages and the nearest market-towns, crowded over every Sunday for weeks after, gazing at the spot where the body was found, it was of very little use to look for footsteps.
“The man John Dunning went back to work. But the village folk—his old friends—turned against him. They would no longer associate with him; the taint of murder was upon him, though he was as innocent a man as ever stepped. The Vicar spoke to the people, but it was in vain; anyone who had been tried for murder must be a murderer, and he was shunned like a leper or a madman.
“Then the Vicar spoke about it to the Squire, who gave John money so that he might emigrate; and with all his family he went to Botany Bay, where the people are not all convicts, I am told. There, at least, it ought not to be thrown in a man’s teeth that he had been tried and acquitted for murder. I have never heard what became of John Dunning and his family afterwards.