The Living Link | Page 8

Dalton was willing to risk honor and life; but their search was completely baffled. Dalton's silence was therefore taken as an evidence of guilt, and his refusal to confess on a friend was regarded as a silly attempt to excite public sympathy. When the counsel ventured to bring this forward to the jury, and tried to portray Dalton as a man who chose rather to suffer than to say that which might bring a friend to destruction, it was regarded as a wild, Quixotic, and maudlin piece of sentimentalism on the part of said counsel, and was treated by the prosecution with unspeakable scorn and ridicule. Under such circumstances the result was inevitable: Frederick Dalton was declared guilty, and sentenced to transportation for life.
Among the notes which had been written by Miss Plympton, Edith was very forcibly struck by some which referred to John Wiggins.
"Who is this J.W.?" was written in one place. "How did F.D. become acquainted with him?"
In another place, where Wiggins gave his testimony about the note, was written: "Where was J.W. during that hour? Had he gone to Everton himself?"
And again: "J.W. was the friend of F.D., and wished to save him. Might he not have done more?"
Again: "Mark well! J.W. is a Liverpool man. H. was a Liverpool man. Had F.D. ever heard of even the name of H. before the forgery? What was the nature of the dealings between F.D. and J.W.?"
Again, when Dalton's silence was so sharply commented on and urged as proof of his guilt, there occurred the following: "If F.D. was silent, why did not J.W. open his mouth? Must he not have known at least something? Could he not have set the authorities upon the track of the real criminal, and thus have saved F.D.?"
Again: "The Maltese cross did not belong to Dalton. He had ordered it to be made. For whom? Was it not for this same friend for whom he was now suffering? Was not this friend the murderer? Has he not thrown suspicion upon F.D. by that writing in blood? The same one who committed the murder wrote the false charge, and left the Maltese cross."
Other notes of similar character occurred in various places, but those which impressed Edith most were the following:
"F.D. was evidently betrayed by his false friend. Was not that false friend the real murderer? Did he not contrive to throw on F.D. the suspicion of the murder? Might not the forgery itself from the very beginning have been part of a plan to ruin F.D.? But why ruin him? Evidently to gain some benefit. Now who has been more benefited by the ruin of F.D.? Whoever he is, must he not he be the murderer and the false friend?"
Again, a little further on: "Has any one gained any thing from the ruin of F.D. but J.W.? Has not J.W. ever since had control of Dalton property? Is he not rich now? Has not the ruin of F.D. made the fortune of J.W.?"
Such was the substance of the papers which Edith perused. They were voluminous, and she continued at her task all through that night, her heart all the time filled with a thousand contending emotions.
Before her mind all the time there was the image of her father in the judgment-hall. There he stood, the innocent man, betrayed by his friend, and yet standing there in his simple faith and truth to save that friend, obstinate in his self-sacrificing fidelity, true to faith when the other had proved himself worthless, suffering what can only be suffered by a generous nature as the hours and the days passed and the end approached, and still the traitor allowed him to suffer. And there was the hate and scorn of man, the clamor for vengeance from society, the condemnation of the jury who had prejudged his case, the sneer of the paid advocate, the scoff of the gaping crowd, to whom the plea of noblesse oblige and stainless honor and perfect truth seemed only maudlin sentimentality and Quixotic extravagance.
All these thoughts were in Edith's mind as she read, and these feelings swelled within her indignant heart as all the facts in that dread tragedy were slowly revealed one by one. Coming to this task with a mind convinced at the outset of her father's innocence, she met with not one circumstance that could shake that conviction for a moment. In her own strong feeling she was incapable of understanding how any one could honestly think otherwise. The testimony of adverse witnesses seemed to her perjury, the arguments of the lawyers fiendish malignity, the last summing up of the judge bitter prejudice, and the verdict of the jury a mockery of justice.
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CHAPTER III.
THE MOMENTOUS RESOLVE.
Early on the following morning Miss Plympton called on Edith,