These circumstances must be taken into consideration in Hook’s favour in examining the charge of embezzlement.  It must also be stated that the information of the deficit was sent in a letter to the governor by a man named Allan, chief clerk in the Treasury, who had, for irregular conduct, been already threatened with dismissal.  Allan had admitted that he had known of the deficit for fifteen months, and yet he had not, till he was himself in trouble, thought of making it known to the proper authorities.  Before his examination, which of course followed, could be concluded, Allan committed suicide.  Now, does it not, on the face of it, seem of the highest probability that this man was the real delinquent, and that knowing that Hook had all the responsibility, and having taken fair precautions against his own detection, he had anticipated a discovery of the affair by a revelation, incriminating the treasurer? Quien sabe;—­dead men tell no tales.

The chest, however, was examined, and the deficit found far greater yet than had been reported.  Hook could not explain, could not understand it at all; but if not criminal, he had necessarily been careless.  He was arrested, thrown into prison, and by the first vessel despatched to England to take his trial, his property of every kind having been sold for the Government.  Hook, in utter destitution, might be supposed to have lost his usual spirits, but he could not resist a joke.  At St. Helena he met an old friend going out to the Cape, who, surprised at seeing him on his return voyage after a residence of only five years, said:  ‘I hope you are not going home for your health.’—­’Why,’ said Theodore, ’I am sorry to say they think there is something wrong in the chest. Something wrong in the chest’ became henceforward the ordinary phrase in London society in referring to Hook’s scrape.

Arrived in England, he was set free, the Government here having decided that he could not be criminally tried; and thus Hook, guilty or not, had been ruined and disgraced for life for simple carelessness.  True, the custody of a nation’s property makes negligence almost criminal; but that does not excuse the punishment of a man before he is tried.

He was summoned, however, to the Colonial Audit Board, where he underwent a trying examination; after which he was declared to be in the debt of Government:  a writ of extent was issued against him; nine months were passed in that delightful place of residence—­a Sponging-house, which he then exchanged for the ’Rules of the Bench’—­the only rules which have no exception.  From these he was at last liberated, in 1825, on the understanding that he was to repay the money to Government if at any time he should be in a position to do so.

His liberation was a tacit acknowledgment of his innocence of the charge of robbery; his encumberment with a debt caused by another’s delinquencies was, we presume, a signification of his responsibility and some kind of punishment for his carelessness.  Certainly it was hard upon Hook, that, if innocent, he should not have gone forth without a stain on his character for honesty; and it was unjust, that, if guilty, he should not have been punished.  The judgment was one of those compromises with stern justice which are seldom satisfactory to either party.