To run forward a little: Monckton was tried, and made no defense. He
dared not call Hope as his witness, for it was clear Hope must have seen
him commit the theft and attempt the other villainy. But the false
accusation leaked out as well as the theft. A previous conviction was
proved, and the indignant judge gave him fourteen years.

Thus was Bartley's fatal secret in mortal peril on the day it first
existed; yet on that very day it was saved from exposure, and buried deep
in a jail.

Bartley set Hope over his business, and was never heard of for months.
Then he turned up in Sussex with a little girl, who had been saved from
diphtheria by tracheotomy, and some unknown quack.

There was a scar to prove it. The tender parent pointed it out
triumphantly, and railed at the regular practitioners of medicine.




CHAPTER IV.

AN OLD SERVANT.


Walter Clifford returned home pretty well weaned from trade, and anxious
to propitiate his father, but well aware that on his way to
reconciliation he must pass through jobation.