“Let us have no misunderstanding and no obligation—­that is my motto.”

The speaker was a thin, gray man, whose entrance into the apartment Balfour had not perceived, and who was seated in an elevated chair, which had apparently been reserved for him as president of the assembly.  The face was unfamiliar, for twenty years had made an old man of the astute and lively detective; but his phrase, and the manner of delivering it, identified him at once as his old friend Mr. Dodge.

“It was in this very room,” continued the latter, “that I sat and talked with him as sociable as could be, not a quarter of an hour before I put the darbies on him; and it’s a thing that has been upon my mind ever since.  I was only doing my duty, of course, but still it seemed hard to take advantage of such a frank young fellow.  As for stealing them notes, it’s my belief he had no more intention of doing it than I had.”

“And yet he got it hot at the ’sizes, Mr. Dodge, didn’t he?” inquired one of the company.

“Got it hot, Sir?” replied Mr. Dodge, with dignity; “he got an infamous and most unjustly severe sentence, if you mean that, Sir.  Of course what he did was contrary to law, but it’s my opinion as the law was strained agin him.  There was some as swore hard and fast to get him punished as knew he deserved no such treatment.  Why, the girl as he loved, and whose picture I found upon him myself when I searched him, and gave it him back, too—­ay, that I did—­even she took a false oath, as Weasel himself told me, who was his lawyer, and had built up his case with that same hussy for its corner-stone.  Ah!” said Mr. Dodge, with a gesture of abhorrence, “if there ever was a murdered man, it was that poor young fellow, Richard Yorke.”

“But I thought he got twenty years’ penal servitude,” observed the same individual who had interposed before, and whose thankless office it seemed to be to draw the old gentleman out for the benefit of society.

“I say he was murdered, Sir.  He was shut up for nigh twenty years, and then shot in the back in trying to get away from Lingmoor.  It was the hardest case I ever knew in all my professional experience.  Lord, if you had seen him—­the handsomest, brightest, gayest young chap!  And he was what some folks call well-born, too; he was the son—­that is, though, in a left-handed sort of way, it’s true—­of mad Carew of Crompton, about whose death the papers were so full a month ago or so; and that, in my judgment, was the secret of all his misfortune:  it was the Carew blood as did it.  To take his own way in the world; to seek nobody’s advice, nor use it if ’twas given; to be spoiled and petted by all the women and half the men as came nigh him; to own no master nor authority; to act without thought, and to scorn consequences—­well, all that was bred in the bone with him.”

“Then he had never any one to look after him at home, I reckon, Mr. Dodge?”