"
Chapter 5: A Quiet Time.
As the sergeant was telling the story, the squire had sat with his face
shaded by his hand, but more than one tear had dropped heavily on the
table.
"I wish I could say as much," he said sadly, when the other ended. "I
wish that I could say that my conscience is clear, Mr. Wilks. I have
misjudged you cruelly, and that without a tithe of the reason, which
you had, for thinking me utterly heartless and cruel. You will have
heard that I never got those letters my son wrote me, after he was ill,
and that, when I returned home and received them, I posted to
Southampton, only to find that I was too late; and that, for a year, I
did all in my power to find the child. Still, all this is no excuse. I
refused to forgive him, returned his letters unanswered, and left him,
as it seemed, to his fate.
"It is no excuse to say that I had made up my mind to forgive him, when
he was, as I thought, sufficiently punished. He did not know that. As
to the poverty in which you found him, I can only plead that I did not
dream that he would come to that. He had, I knew, some money, for I had
just sent him his half-year's allowance before he wrote to me about
this business. Then there was the furniture of his rooms in London, his
horses, jewels, and other matters.
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