‘If so, Sir John, even that is not much,—­towards upsetting a verdict.’

’A good deal, I think, when the characters of the persons are considered.  Now comes this man, whom we all should have believed, had he been present, and tells this story.  You had better get hold of him and bring him to me, Mr. Seely.’

Then Mr. Seely hung up his hat in London for three or four days, and sent to Pollington for Dick Shand.  Dick Shand obeyed the order, and both of them waited together upon Sir John.  ’You have come back at a very critical point of time for your friend,’ said the barrister.

Dick had laid aside the coat and waistcoat with the broad checks, and the yellow trousers, and had made himself look as much like an English gentleman as the assistance of a ready-made-clothes shop at Pollington would permit.  But still he did not quite look like a man who had spent three years at Cambridge.  His experiences among the gold diggings, then his period of maddening desolation as a Queensland shepherd, and after that his life among the savages in a South Sea island, had done much to change him.  Sir John and Mr. Seely together almost oppressed him.  But still he was minded to speak up for his friend.  Caldigate had, upon the whole, been very good to him, and Dick was honest.  ’He has been badly used any way,’ he said.

’You have had no intercourse with any of his friends since you have been home, I think?’ This question Sir John asked because Mr. Seely had suggested that this appearance of the man at this special moment might not improbably be what he called a ‘plant.’

’I have had no intercourse with anybody, sir.  I came here last Friday, and I hadn’t spoken a word to anybody before that.  I didn’t know that Caldigate had been in trouble at all.  My people at Pollington were the first to tell me about it.’

‘Then you wrote to Mr. Seely?  You have heard of Mr. Seely?’

’The governor,—­that’s my father,—­he had heard of Mr. Seely.  I wrote first as he told me.  They knew all about it at Pollington as well as you do.’

‘You were surprised, then, when you heard the story?’

’Knocked off my pins, sir.  I never was so much taken aback in my life.  To be told that John Caldigate had married Euphemia Smith after all that I had seen,—­and that he had been married to her in May ’73!  I knew of course that it was all a got-up thing.  And he’s in prison?’

‘He is in prison, certainly.’

‘For bigamy?’

‘Indeed he is, Mr. Shand.’

‘And how about his real wife?’

‘His real wife, as you call her——­’

‘She is, as sure as my name is Richard Shand.’

’It is on behalf of that lady that we are almost more anxious than for Mr. Caldigate himself.  In this matter she has been perfectly innocent; and whoever may have been the culprit,—­or culprits,—­she has been cruelly ill-used.’

‘She’ll have her husband back again, of course,’ said Dick.