Page:What Will He Do With It? - Routledge - Volume 2.djvu/57

 an interest in his own house, gardens, property. For the sake of William's merry companionship, he would even ride over his farms, and actually carried a gun. Meanwhile, the property, I am told, was really well managed. Ah! that fellow Willy was a born genius, and could have managed everybody's affairs except his own. I heard of all this with pleasure--(people say I hear everything)--when one day a sporting man seizes me by the button at Tattersall's--'Do you know the news? Will Losely is in prison on a charge; of robbing his employer.'"

"Robbing! incredible!" exclaimed Lionel.

"My dear Lionel, it was after hearing that news that I established as invariable my grand maxim, _Nil admirari_--never to be astonished at anything!"

"But of course he was innocent?"

"On the contrary, he confessed,--was committed; pleaded guilty, and was transported! People who knew Willy said that Gunston ought to have declined to drag him before a magistrate, or, at the subsequent trial, have abstained from giving evidence against him; that Willy had been till then a faithful steward; the whole proceeds of the estate lead passed through his hands; he might, in transactions for timber, have cheated undetected to twice the amount of the alleged robbery; it must have been a momentary aberration of reason; the rich man should have let him off. But I side with the rich man. His last belief in his species was annihilated. He must have been inexorable. He could never be amused, never be interested again. He was inexorable and--vindictive."

"But what were the facts?--what was the evidence?"

"Very little came out on the trial; because, in pleading guilty, the court had merely to consider the evidence which had sufficed to commit him. The trial was scarcely noticed in the London papers. William Losely was not like a man known about town. His fame was confined to those who resorted to old-fashioned country-houses, chiefly single men, for the sake of sport. But stay. I felt such an interest in the case, that I made an abstract or praecis, not only of all that appeared, but all that I could learn of its leading circumstances. 'Tis a habit of mine, whenever any of my acquaintances embroil themselves with the Crown--" The Colonel rose, unlocked a small glazed bookcase, selected from the contents a MS. volume, reseated himself, turning