"What do you make of it, Hawtrey?" said the Earl, but, getting no answer, waited. Silence ensued.
"Yes," said the lawyer, breaking it suddenly. He seemed to have seen his way. "Now may I ask whether we have any means of knowing what the forgery was for which this man was transported?"
"Oh yes!" said Gwen. "Old Mrs. Prichard told me what he was accused of, at least. Forging an acceptance—if that's right? I think that was it."
"But whose signature? Did she say?"
"Oh yes—I made her tell me, her father's." Then Gwen fitted the name, just heard, into its place in old Mrs. Prichard's tale, and was illuminated. "I see what you think, Mr. Hawtrey," said she, interrupting herself. The lawyer was examining the direction on the letter-sheet.
"I think I did right to pry into the letter, Gwennie," said her father; seeking, nevertheless, a salve for conscience.
"Of course you did, you darling old thing!... What, Mr. Hawtrey? You were going to say?..."
"I was going to say had you seen an odd thing in the direction. Have you noticed that the word Hobart has kept black, and all the rest has faded to the colour of the writing inside?" So it had, without a doubt, inexplicably. Mr. Hawtrey's impression was that the word was written in a different hand, perhaps filled in by someone who had been able to supply the name correctly, having been entrusted the letter to forward.
"But," said he, "the person who wrote Hobart must have been in England, and the forger of the letter was certainly in Van Diemen's Land."
"Why 'must have been in England'?"