er sentence if
he would, but that was neither here nor there. We obtained leave to see
Ernest for a few minutes before he was removed to Coldbath Fields, where
he was to serve his term, and found him so thankful to have been
summarily dealt with that he hardly seemed to care about the miserable
plight in which he was to pass the next six months. When he came out, he
said, he would take what remained of his money, go off to America or
Australia and never be heard of more.

We left him full of this resolve, I, to write to Theobald, and also to
instruct my solicitor to get Ernest's money out of Pryer's hands, and
Towneley to see the reporters and keep the case out of the newspapers. He
was successful as regards all the higher-class papers. There was only
one journal, and that of the lowest class, which was incorruptible.

CHAPTER LXIII

I saw my solicitor at once, but when I tried to write to Theobald, I
found it better to say I would run down and see him. I therefore
proposed this, asking him to meet me at the station, and hinting that I
must bring bad news about his son. I knew he would not get my letter
more than a couple of hours before I should see him, and thought the
short interval of suspense might break the shock of what I had to say.

Never do I remember to have halted more between two opinions than on my
journey to Battersby upon this unhappy errand. When I thought of the
little sallow-faced lad whom I had remembered years before, of the long
and savage cruelty with which he had been treated in childhood--cruelty
none the less real for having been due to ignorance and stupidity rather
than to deliberate malice; of the atmosphere of lying and self-laudatory
hallucination in which he had been brought up; of the readiness the boy
had shown to love anything that would be good enough to let him, and of
how affection for his parents, unless I am much mistaken, had only died
in him because it had been killed anew, again and again and again, each
time that it had tried to spring. When I thought of all this I felt as
though, if the matter had rested with me, I would have sentenced Theobald
and Christina to mental suffering even more severe than that which was
about to fall upon them. But on the other hand, when I thought of
Theobald's own childhood, of that dreadful old George Pontifex his
father, of John and Mrs John, and of his two sisters, when again I
thought of Christina's long years of hope defe