"Ah, that isn't imaginable. There isn't a hole or corner left where the newspapers don't penetrate, nowadays."
"Not in Boston. But if he were in hiding in some little French village down the St. Lawrence—"
"Isn't that as romantic as the other notion, parson?" crowed old Corey.
"No, I don't think so," said the minister. "The cases are quite different. He might have a morbid shrinking from his own past, and the wish to hide from it as far as he could; that would be natural; but to leave his children to believe a rumor of his death in order to save their feelings, would be against nature; it would be purely histrionic; a motive from the theatre; that is, perfectly false."
"Pretty hard on Hilary, who invented it," Bellingham suggested; and they all laughed.
"I don't know," said Hilary. "The man seems to be posing in other ways. You would think from his letter that he was a sort of martyr to principle, and that he'd been driven off to Canada by the heartless creditors whom he's going to devote his life to saving from loss, if he can't do it in a few months or years. He may not be a conscious humbug, but he's certainly a humbug. Take that pretence of his that he would come back and stand his trial if he believed it would not result in greater harm than good by depriving him of all hope of restitution!"
"Why, there's a sort of crazy morality in that," said Corey.
"Perhaps," said Bellingham, "the solution of the whole matter is that Northwick is cracked."
"I've no doubt he's cracked to a certain extent," said Sewell, "as every wrong-doer is. You know the Swedenborgians believe that insanity is the last state of the wicked."
"I suppose," observed old Corey, thoughtfully, "you'd be very glad to have him keep out of your reach, Hilary?"