“Oh, I say, Sam!” protested Poke. “That’s going too far.”
“Not at all,” Sam insisted. “We were wrong in charging Orkney with a lot of things he never did.”
“I know—you’ve harped on that before.”
“Well, I’ll harp on it again.”
“But we thought he did ’em. He was mean enough to do ’em, if they’d occurred to him.”
“Go to it, Poke!” cried Step. “Now you’re shouting!”
Sam frowned. “Here!” he said impatiently. “Do I get my chance to talk, or don’t I?”
Poke made a burlesque bow. “Sir, I yield the floor,” said he.
“I say we made a mistake, and I mean it,” Sam went on. “Not liking Orkney, we forgot the old rule that you’ve got to hold anybody innocent of a charge till he’s proved guilty. Don’t stop me! You’ll try to argue that we had evidence against him, but, as we know now, it wasn’t proof, by a long shot. There was that business of the cap. Did we investigate it? We didn’t. If any one of us had taken the trouble to ask Mrs. Benton about it at the time, there’d be another story to tell. Then every one of us jumped to the conclusion that Orkney came near drowning Little Perrine. Evidence? We hadn’t a bit.”
“But people said——” Poke began.