“You’ll excuse me, sir,” he said, when this pause had given him time to reflect, “for running on in this way about my own feelings, like that foolish dog of mine howling in a storm, when there’s nobody wants to listen to me.  I came to hear you speak, not to talk myself—­if you’ll take the trouble to tell me what the poor lad’s doing.”

“Don’t put yourself under any restraint, Bartle,” said Mr. Irwine.  “The fact is, I’m very much in the same condition as you just now; I’ve a great deal that’s painful on my mind, and I find it hard work to be quite silent about my own feelings and only attend to others.  I share your concern for Adam, though he is not the only one whose sufferings I care for in this affair.  He intends to remain at Stoniton till after the trial:  it will come on probably a week to-morrow.  He has taken a room there, and I encouraged him to do so, because I think it better he should be away from his own home at present; and, poor fellow, he still believes Hetty is innocent—­he wants to summon up courage to see her if he can; he is unwilling to leave the spot where she is.”

“Do you think the creatur’s guilty, then?” said Bartle.  “Do you think they’ll hang her?”

“I’m afraid it will go hard with her.  The evidence is very strong.  And one bad symptom is that she denies everything—­denies that she has had a child in the face of the most positive evidence.  I saw her myself, and she was obstinately silent to me; she shrank up like a frightened animal when she saw me.  I was never so shocked in my life as at the change in her.  But I trust that, in the worst case, we may obtain a pardon for the sake of the innocent who are involved.”

“Stuff and nonsense!” said Bartle, forgetting in his irritation to whom he was speaking.  “I beg your pardon, sir, I mean it’s stuff and nonsense for the innocent to care about her being hanged.  For my own part, I think the sooner such women are put out o’ the world the better; and the men that help ’em to do mischief had better go along with ’em for that matter.  What good will you do by keeping such vermin alive, eating the victual that ’ud feed rational beings?  But if Adam’s fool enough to care about it, I don’t want him to suffer more than’s needful....Is he very much cut up, poor fellow?” Bartle added, taking out his spectacles and putting them on, as if they would assist his imagination.

“Yes, I’m afraid the grief cuts very deep,” said Mr. Irwine.  “He looks terribly shattered, and a certain violence came over him now and then yesterday, which made me wish I could have remained near him.  But I shall go to Stoniton again to-morrow, and I have confidence enough in the strength of Adam’s principle to trust that he will be able to endure the worst without being driven to anything rash.”

Mr. Irwine, who was involuntarily uttering his own thoughts rather than addressing Bartle Massey in the last sentence, had in his mind the possibility that the spirit of vengeance to-wards Arthur, which was the form Adam’s anguish was continually taking, might make him seek an encounter that was likely to end more fatally than the one in the Grove.  This possibility heightened the anxiety with which he looked forward to Arthur’s arrival.  But Bartle thought Mr. Irwine was referring to suicide, and his face wore a new alarm.