sent down their agent to
investigate the matter. A third individual stood beside them--the person
in my own immediate neighbourhood to whom I had paid the second note;
this, by some means or other, before the coming down of the agent, had
found its way to the same provincial bank, and also being pronounced a
forgery, it had speedily been traced to the person to whom I had paid it.
It was owing to the apparition of this second note that the agent had
determined, without further inquiry, to cause me to be summoned before
the rural tribunal.

"In a few words the magistrates' clerk gave me to understand the state of
the case. I was filled with surprise and consternation. I knew myself
to be perfectly innocent of any fraudulent intention, but at the time of
which I am speaking it was a matter fraught with the greatest danger to
be mixed up, however innocently, with the passing of false money. The
law with respect to forgery was terribly severe, and the innocent as well
as the guilty occasionally suffered. Of this I was not altogether
ignorant; unfortunately, however, in my transactions with the stranger,
the idea of false notes being offered to me, and my being brought into
trouble by means of them, never entered my mind. Recovering myself a
little, I stated that the notes in question were two of three notes which
I had received at Horncastle, for a pair of horses, which it was well
known I had carried thither.

"Thereupon, I produced from my pocket-book the third note, which was
forthwith pronounced a forgery. I had scarcely produced the third note,
when I remembered the one which I had changed for the Horncastle dealer,
and with the remembrance came the almost certain conviction that it was
also a forgery; I was tempted for a moment to produce it, and to explain
the circumstance--would to God I had done so!--but shame at the idea of
having been so wretchedly duped prevented me, and the opportunity was
lost. I must confess that the agent of the bank behaved, upon the whole,
in a very handsome manner; he said that as it was quite evident that I
had disposed of certain horses at the fair, it was very probable that I
might have received the notes in question in exchange for them, and that
he was willing, as he had received a very excellent account of my general
conduct, to press the matter no farther, that is, provided--" And here
he stopped. Thereupon, one of the three magistrates, who were present,
asked me whethe