“No, sir, thank you; I have saved a little. I cannot speak very well, Mr. Cardew; you know I cannot; I cannot say to you what I ought.”
“I want no thanks, my dear friend. What I do is a simple duty. I am a minister of God’s Word, and I know no obligation more pressing which He has laid upon me than that of bearing witness to the truth.”
Mr. Cardew went off as usual away from what was before him.
“The duty of Christ’s minister is, generally speaking, to take the other side—that is to say, to resist the verdicts passed by the world upon men and things. Preaching mere abstractions, too, is not by itself of much use. What we are bound to do is not only to preserve the eternal standard, but to measure actual human beings and human deeds by it. I sometimes think, too, it is of more importance to say this is right than to say this is wrong, to save that which is true than to assist into perdition that which is false. Especially ought we to defend character unjustly assailed. A character is something alive, a soul; to rescue it is the salvation of a soul!”
He stopped and seemed to wake up suddenly.
“Good-bye! God’s blessing on you.” He shook Tom’s hand and was going out of the yard.
“There is just one thing more, sir: I do not want to leave Eastthorpe with such a character behind me—to leave in the dark, one may say, and not defend myself. It looks as if it were an admission I was wrong. I should, above everything, like to get to the bottom of it, and see who is the liar or what the mistake is.”
“Nobody would listen to you, and if you were to make a noise Mr. Furze might prosecute, and with the evidence he has we do not know what the end might be; I will do my part, as I am bound to do, to set you right. But, above everything, Mr. Catchpole, endeavour to put yourself where the condemnation of the world and even crucifixion by it are of no consequence.” Mr. Cardew gave Tom one more shake of the hand, mounted his horse, and rode off. He had asked Tom for no proofs: he had merely heard the tale and had given his certificate.
Mr Furze distinctly enjoined Orkid Jim to hold his tongue. Neither Mr. nor Mrs. Furze wished to appear in court, and they were uncertain what Catharine might do if they went any further. Mr. Orkid Jim had the best of reasons for silence, but Mr. Humphries, the builder, of course repeated what he himself knew, and so it went about that Tom was wrong in his accounts, and all Eastthorpe affirmed him to be little better than a rascal. Mr. Cardew, with every tittle of much stronger and apparently irresistible testimony before him, never for a moment considered it as a feather’s weight in the balance.
“But the facts, my good sir, the facts; the facts—there they are: the receipt to the bill; Jim’s declaration; his brother’s declaration; the marked coin; the absolute proof that Catchpole gave it to Butterfield, and he could not, as some may think, have changed silver of his own for it, for Mr. Furze paid him in gold, and there was not twenty shillings worth of silver in the till; what have you got to say? Do you tell me all this may be accident and coincidence? If you do, we may just as well give up reasoning and the whole of our criminal procedure.”