"Ay, Sam, without loss of an hour. I've begun with the magistrates--and
a fine sensation the news made amidst 'em, I can tell you; and now I'm
going round to the newspapers; and I shall go over to Elm Farm the first
thing to-morrow. The town took up the cause against you, Sam: take care
it does not eat you now in its repentance. Look here, you'll have to
come round to Betty, or she'll moan her heart out: you won't bear
malice, Sam?"
"No, that I won't," said Sam warmly. "Miss Betty did not bear it to me.
She has been as kind as can be all along."
The town did want to eat Sam. It is the custom of the true Briton to go
to extremes. Being unable to shake Sam's hands quite off, the city would
fain have chaired him round the streets with honours, as it used to
chair its newly returned members.
Captain Cockermuth, sent for post haste, came to Worcester all
contrition, beseeching Sam to forgive him fifty times a-day, and wanting
to press the box of guineas upon him as a peace-offering. Sam would not
take it: he laughingly told the captain that the box did not seem to
carry luck with it.
And then Sam's troubles were over. And no objection was made by his
people (as it otherwise might have been) to his marrying Maria Parslet,
by way of recompense. "God never fails to bring good out of evil, my
dear," said old Mrs. Jacobson to Maria, the first time they had her
on a visit at Elm Farm. As to Sam, he had short time for Elm Farm,
or anything else in the shape of recreation. Practice was flowing in
quickly: litigants arguing, one with another, that a young man, lying
for months under an imputation of theft, and then coming out of it with
flying colours, must needs be a clever lawyer.
"But, Johnny," Sam said to me, when talking of the past, "there's one
thing I would alter if I made the laws. No person, so long as he is only
suspected of crime, should have his name proclaimed publicly. I am not
speaking of murder, you understand, or charges of that grave nature;
but of such a case as mine. My name appeared in full, in all the local
newspapers, Samson Reginald Dene, coupled with theft, and of course
it got a mark upon it. It is an awful blight upon a man when he is
innocent, one that he may never quite live down. Suspicions must arise,
I know that, of the innocent as well as the guilty, and they must
undergo preliminary examinations in public and submit to legal
inquiries: but time enough to proclaim who the man is when evidence
strengthens against him, and he is committed for trial; until then let
his name be suppressed. At least that is my opinion."
And it is mine as well as Sam's.