he would fain see the perpetrators of that fraud on their trial for perjury, their fraud in no way diminished Caldigate’s guilt.  That a guilty man should escape out of the hands of justice by any fraud was wormwood to Judge Bramber.  Caldigate was guilty.  The jury had found him so.  Could he take upon himself to say that the finding of the jury was wrong because the prosecuting party had concocted a fraud which had not been found out before the verdict was given?  Sir John Joram, whom he had known almost as a boy, had ‘demanded’ the release of his client.  The word stuck in Judge Bramber’s throat.  The word had been injudicious The more he thought of the word the more he thought that the verdict had been a true verdict, in spite of the fraud.  A very honest man was Judge Bramber;—­but human.

He almost made up his mind,—­but then was obliged to confess to himself that he had not quite done so.  ’It taints the entire evidence with perjury,’ Sir John had said.  The woman’s evidence was absolutely so tainted,—­was defiled with perjury.  And the man Crinkett had been so near the woman that it was impossible to disconnect them.  Who had concocted the fraud?  The woman could hardly have done so without the man’s connivance.  It took him all the morning to think the matter out, and then he had not made up his mind.  To reverse the verdict would certainly be a thorn in his side,—­a pernicious thorn,—­but one which, if necessary, he would endure.  Thorns, however, such as these are very persuasive.

At last he determined to have inquiry made as to the woman by the police.  She had laid herself open to an indictment for perjury, and in making inquiry on that head something further might probably be learned.

Chapter LV

How the Conspirators Throve

There had been some indiscretion among Caldigate’s friends from which it resulted that, while Judge Bramber was considering the matter, and before the police intelligence of Scotland Yard even had stirred itself in obedience to the judge’s orders, nearly all the circumstances which had been submitted to the judge had become public.  Shand knew all that Bagwax had done.  Bagwax was acquainted with the whole of Dick’s evidence.  And Hester down at Folking understood perfectly what had been revealed by each of those enthusiastic allies.  Dick, as we know, had been staying at Folking, and had made his presence notable throughout the county.  He had succeeded in convincing uncle Babington, and had been judged to be a false witness by all the Boltons.  In that there had perhaps been no great indiscretion.  But when Bagwax opened a correspondence with Mrs. John Caldigate and explained to her at great length all the circumstances of the postmark and the postage-stamps, and when at her instance he got a day’s holiday and rushed down to Folking, then, as he felt himself, he was doing that of which Sir John Joram and Mr.