Mr Crawley was then asked to explain in what way he came possessed of the cheque.  The question was first put by Lord Lufton; but it soon fell into Mr Walker’s hands, who certainly asked it with all the kindness with which such an inquiry could be made.  Could Mr Crawley at all remember by what means that bit of paper had come into his possession, or how long he had had it?  He answered the last question first.  ’It had been with me for months.’  And why had he kept it.  He looked round the room sternly, almost savagely, he answered, fixing his eyes for a moment upon almost every face around him as he did so.  Then he spoke.  ’I was driven by shame to keep it—­and then by shame to use it.’  That his statement was true, no one in the room doubted it.

And then the other question was pressed upon him; and he lifted up his hands, and raised his voice, and swore by the Saviour in whom he trusted, and he knew not from whence the money had come to him.  Why then had he said that it had come from the dean?  He had thought so.  The dean had given him money, covered up, in an enclosure, ’so that the touch of the coin might not add to my disgrace in taking alms,’ said the wretched man, thus speaking openly and freely in his agony of the shame which he had striven so persistently to hide.  He had not seen the dean’s monies as they had been given, and he had thought that the cheque had been with them.  Beyond that he could tell them nothing.

Then there was a conference between the magistrates and Mr Walker, in which Mr Walker submitted that the magistrates had no alternative but to commit the gentleman.  To this Lord Lufton demurred, and with him Dr Thorne.

‘I believe, as I am sitting here,’ said Lord Lufton, ’that he has told the truth, and that he does not know any more than I do from whence the cheque came.’

‘I am quite sure he does not,’ said Dr Thorne.

Lord George remarked that it was the ’queerest thing he had ever come across.’  Dr Tempest merely shook his head.  Mr Fothergill pointed out that even supposing the gentleman’s statement to be true, it by no means went towards establishing the gentleman’s innocence.  The cheque had been traced to the gentleman’s hands, and the gentleman was bound to show how it had come into his possession.  Even supposing that the gentleman had found the cheque in his house, which was likely enough, he was not thereby justified in changing it; and applying the proceeds to his own purposes.  Mr Walker told them that Mr Fothergill was right, and that the only excuse to be made for Mr Crawley was that he was out of his senses.

‘I don’t see it,’ said Lord Lufton.  ’I might have a lot of paper money on me, and not know from Adam where I got it.’

’But you would have to show where you got it, my lord, when inquiry was made,’ said Mr Fothergill.

Lord Lufton, who was not particularly fond of Mr Fothergill, and was very unwilling to be instructed by him in any of the duties of a magistrate, turned his back at once upon the duke’s agent; but within three minutes afterwards he had submitted to the same instructions from Mr Walker.