hion."

"We must follow him, that's certain. They will reach Liverpool by the
10th or 12th. When can we sail from this?"

"There's a packet sails on Wednesday next; that's the earliest."

"That must do, then. Let them be active as they may, they will scarcely
have had time for much before we are up with them."

"It's as good as a squirrel-hunt," said Quackinboss. "I 'm darned if
it don't set one's blood a-bilin' out of sheer excitement. What do you
reckon this chap's arter?"

"He has, perhaps, found out this girl, and got her to make over her
claim to this property; or she may have died, and he has put forward
some one to personate her; or it is not improbable he may have arranged
some marriage with himself, or one of his friends, for her."

"Then it ain't anythin' about the murder?" asked the Colonel, half
disappointedly.

"Nothing whatever; that case was disposed of years ago. Whatever guilt
may attach to those who escaped, the law cannot recognize now. They were
acquitted, and they are innocent."

"That may be good law, sir, but it's strange justice. If I owed you a
thousand dollars, and was too poor to pay it, I 'm thinkin' you 'd have
it out of me some fine day when I grew rich enough to discharge the
debt."

Layton shook his head in dissent at the supposed parallel.

"Ain't we always a-talkin' about the fallibility of our reason and the
imperfection of our judgments? And what business have we, then, to say,
'There, come what will tomorrow of evidence or proof, my mind is made
up, and I 'm determined to know nothin' more than I know now'?"

"What say you to the other side of the question,--that of the man
against whom nothing is proven, but who, out of the mere obscurity that
involves a crime, must live and die a criminal, just because there is no
saying what morning may not bring an accusation against him? As a man
who has had to struggle through a whole life against adverse suspicions,
I protest against the doctrine of not proven! The world is too prone
to think the worst to make such a practice anything short of an
insufferable tyranny."

With a delicacy he was never deficient in, Quackinboss respected the
personal application, and made no reply.

"Calumny, too," continued the old man, whose passion was now roused,
"is conducted on the division-of-labor principle. One man contributes so
much, and another adds so much more; some are clever in suggesting the
motive, some indicate the act; others ar