oss-examined his son to the extent of his
ability, with an anxious inquisition into all the particulars. He was
too deeply concerned to take anything for granted. He sat up in his
chair with those puckers in his forehead, with that harassed look in his
eyes, making an anxious, vigilant, suspicious investigation, which was
pathetic to behold. If the defendant, who was thus being examined on his
honour, had been guilty, the heart of the judge would have broken; but
that was all the more reason for searching into it with jealous
particularity, and with a suspicion which kept always gleaming out of
his troubled eyes in sudden anxious glances, saying, "You are guilty?
Are you guilty?" with mingled accusations and appeals. The accused,
being innocent, felt this suspicion more hard to bear than if he had
been a hundred times guilty.

"I understand a little about this fellow Wodehouse," said the Squire;
"but what I want to know is, why you took him in? What did you take
him in for, sir, at first? Perhaps I could understand the rest if you
would satisfy me of that."

"I took him in," said the Curate, rather slowly, "because his sister
asked me. She threw him upon my charity--she told me the danger he was
in--"

"What danger was he in?" asked the Squire.

The Curate made a pause, and as he paused Mr Wentworth leaned forward
in his chair, with another pucker in his forehead and a still sharper
gleam of suspicion in his eyes. "His father had been offended time
after time in the most serious way. This time he had threatened to
give him up to justice. I can't tell you what he had done, because it
would be breaking my trust--but he had made himself obnoxious to the
law," said Frank Wentworth. "To save him from the chance of being
arrested, his sister brought him to me."

The Squire's hand shook a good deal as he took out his handkerchief
and wiped his forehead. "Perhaps it would be the best way if one had
not too much regard for the honour of the family," he said,
tremulously, like a man under a sudden temptation; "but the sister,
sir, why did she bring him to you?" he added, immediately after, with
renewed energy. Mr Wentworth was not aware that, while he was
speaking, his eldest son had come into the room. He had his back to
the door, and he did not see Jack, who stood rather doubtfully on the
threshold, with a certain shade of embarrassment upon his ordinary
composure. "It is not everybody that a woman would confide her
brot