At last Alfred decided that justice must be done, and confided his suspicions to the Dodds.  Edward’s good commonsense at once settled that, as the man who married Julia would be the greatest sufferer by Hardie senior’s fraud, Hardie junior should settle his own L10,000 on her, and marry her as soon as he came of age.  Alfred joyfully agreed, privately arranging that the money should be settled on Julia’s parents, and preparations went on apace.

But on the wedding-day the bridal party waited in vain for the bridegroom, and Edward ran to his lodgings to fetch him.

He came back alone, white with wrath, hurried the insulted bride and her mother into the carriage, and they went home as if from a funeral.  Aye, and a funeral it was; for the sweetest girl in England buried her hopes, her laugh, her May of youth that day.

As soon as possible this heartbroken trio removed to London, where Mrs. Dodd became a dressmaker, and Edward a fireman.

It was true Alfred had received a letter in a female hand, but it was from a discharged servant of his father’s, offering information about the L14,000 if he would come to a house about ten miles off the next morning.  He calculated he could do so, and still be in the church in time, and drove there with all his luggage, only to find himself shut up in a lunatic asylum.

He made a desperate resistance, but was soon overpowered and left handcuffed, hobbled, and strapped down, more helpless than a swaddled infant.  He lay mute as death in his gloomy cell; deeper horror grew and grew, gusts of rage swept over him, gusts of despair.  What would his Julia think?  He shouted, he screamed, he prayed.  He saw her, lovelier than ever, all in white, waiting for him, with sweet concern in her peerless face.  Half-past ten struck.  He struggled, he writhed, he made the very room shake, and lacerated his flesh, but that was all.  No answer, no help, no hope.

By-and-by his good wit told him his only chance was calmness; they could not long confine him as a madman, being sane.  But all his efforts to convince his keepers that he was sane were useless; his letters seemed to go, but he got no answers; his appeals to visiting justices were in vain.  The responsibility rested with the people who signed the certificates, and he could not even find out who they were.  After months of softening hearts and buying consciences, he was on the point of escape, when he was moved to another asylum.  Here there was no brutality, but constant watchfulness; and he had almost prevailed on the doctor to declare him cured when he was again moved to a still more brutal place, if possible, than the first.

One day he found himself locked in his room.  This was unusual, for though they called him a lunatic in words, they called him sane by all their acts.  He thought the commissioners must be in the house; had he known who really was in the house he would have beaten himself to pieces against the door.