Page:Hornung - Rogues March.djvu/105

Rh contemplate; you may even be called as a witness against him!”

“Against him!”

“You certainly would be if last night’s interview leaked out.”

“It never shall.”

“And if you told a jury all you have told me, about the address and all that, I am afraid it would hang him if nothing else did.”

“Hang Tom!”

“Well, Claire, it looks to me very like a hanging matter; it would need a very clever, and probably a very costly defence, to give him the ghost of a chance of having it brought in anything less.”

“Then he must have it!” cried Claire. “Oh, he never could have done it—wilfully! He must have the very best defence that can be got; but, oh! who will pay for it?”

“I am thinking of doing so myself,” replied Mr. Harding, quietly. “I don’t say I will, but I may.”

“You!”

And the girl was sobbing upon his breast, with her arms about his thick red neck, as they had not been for many a year now. He removed them, but almost gently, and told her not to jump at conclusions, as he had by no means made up his mind: indeed, let them first catch their man. But as the lad’s father had been his constituent as well as his enemy, on whom he had perhaps been a little hard, he thought that on the whole it might prove the right and proper thing to do. Claire was overwhelmed, not only with gratitude for a first gleam of comfort, but also with shame. All these years she had misjudged that magnanimous man, her own father; and