“The fire broke out at a quarter to eight.  Had you seen Cutts about that time?”

“I had met him in the street that evening as I came home.”

“Where had you been?”

“Practising in the church.”

“What time was it when you met him?  Be careful.”

Miriam now realised the importance of her answer.

The exact truth was that she had reached home at half-past seven, and had seen Cutts going into his house then.  It must be remembered that although, as before observed, she was naturally truthful, she was so because she was fearless, and had the instinctive tendency to directness possessed by all forceful characters.  Her veracity rested on no principle.  She was not like Jeanie Deans, that triumph of culture, in whom a generalisation had so far prevailed that it was able to overcome the strongest of passions and prevent a lie even to save a sister’s life.  Miriam had been brought up in no such divine school.  She had heard that lying was wrong, but she had no religion, although she listened to a sermon once every Sunday, and consequently the relation in which the several duties and impulses stood to one another was totally different from that which was established in Sir Walter’s heroine.  By some strange chance, too, tradition, which often takes the place of religion, had no power over her; and although hatred of oppression and of harsh dealing is a very estimable quality, and one which will go a long way towards constructing an ethical system for us, it will not do everything.

She began to reflect.  She had no watch with her.  She had noticed the clocks when she returned, and she remembered that they showed half-past seven.  She could not at the moment deliberately say a quarter to eight, although really it did not much matter.  Who would be the worse if she declared it was a quarter to eight?  Nobody, and she knew that Cutts would be the better.  She had not specially observed the clocks; how could she, for she had no notion that anything important depended upon accuracy.  She was short-sighted, and she had not seen the regulator.  Nothing was actually before her eyes but a great Dutch kitchen clock, which showed half-past seven, and might have been wrong.  Something struck when she left the church, and the strokes chimed again in her ears as she was shaping her reply to Mr. Mortimer.  They sounded like half-past, and in that case it must have been a quarter to eight when she stood on her doorstep.  Finally, there was the reason of reasons which superseded the necessity of any further attempt to persuade herself by any casuistry—­she must save Cutts.

“A quarter to eight,” she said decisively,

“Odd that you should have seen him just at that time.  In less than five minutes the place was in a blaze.  He could hardly have lit it up himself.  Would you swear before the Court it was a quarter to eight?”

If she had been asked this at first she would have hesitated, but she now boldly said “Yes.”