ALDER. I was half frantic all that morning, sir.

CLEAVER. Now, now! You don't deny that the 'ty' and the nought were
so like the rest of the handwriting as to thoroughly deceive the
cashier?

FALDER. It was an accident.

CLEAVER. [Cheerfully] Queer sort of accident, wasn't it? On which
day did you alter the counterfoil?

FALDER. [Hanging his head] On the Wednesday morning.

CLEAVER. Was that an accident too?

FALDER. [Faintly] No.

CLEAVER. To do that you had to watch your opportunity, I suppose?

FALDER. [Almost inaudibly] Yes.

CLEAVER. You don't suggest that you were suffering under great
excitement when you did that?

FALDER. I was haunted.

CLEAVER. With the fear of being found out?

FALDER. [Very low] Yes.

THE JUDGE. Didn't it occur to you that the only thing for you to do
was to confess to your employers, and restore the money?

FALDER. I was afraid. [There is silence]

CLEAVER. You desired, too, no doubt, to complete your design of
taking this woman away?

FALDER. When I found I'd done a thing like that, to do it for
nothing seemed so dreadful. I might just as well have chucked myself
into the river.

CLEAVER. You knew that the clerk Davis was about to leave England
--didn't it occur to you when you altered this cheque that suspicion
would fall on him?

FALDER. It was all done in a moment. I thought of it afterwards.

CLEAVER. And that didn't lead you to avow what you'd done?

FALDER. [Sullenly] I meant to write when I got out there--I would
have repaid the money.

THE JUDGE. But in the meantime your innocent fellow clerk might have
been prosecuted.

FALDER. I knew he was a long way off, your lordship. I thought
there'd be time. I didn't think they'd find it out so soon.

FROME. I might remind your lordship that as Mr. Walter How had the
cheque-book in his pocket till after Davis had sailed, if the
discovery had been made only one day later Falder himself would have
left, and suspicion would have attached to him, and not to Davis,
from the beginning.

THE JUDGE. The question is whether the prisoner knew that suspicion
would light on himself, and not on Davis. [To FALDER sharply] Did
you know that Mr. Walter How had the cheque-book till after Davis
had sailed?

FALDER. I--I--thought--he----

THE JUDGE. Now speak the truth-yes or no!

FALDER. [Very low] No, my lord. I had no means of knowing.

THE JUDGE. That disposes of your point,