nameless grandson, and by letting it be known to all
that the misery of their condition would have been
spared had her word prevailed. That they should
live together a stern, dark, but still sympathetic
life, secluded within the high walls of that lonely
abode, and that she should thus be able to prove how
right she had been, how wicked and calamitous their
interference with her child,—that had been
the scheme of her life. And now her scheme was
knocked on the head, and Hester was to become a prosperous
ordinary married woman amidst the fatness of the land
at Folking! It was all wormwood to her.
But still, as she walked, she acknowledged to herself,
that as that old man had said so,—so it
must be. With all her labour, with all her care,
and with all her strength, she had not succeeded in
becoming the master of that weak old man.
The News Reaches Cambridge
The tidings of John Caldigate’s pardon reached
Cambridge on the Saturday morning, and was communicated
in various shapes. Official letters from the
Home Office were written to the governor of the jail
and to the sub-sheriff, to Mr. Seely who was still
acting as attorney on behalf of the prisoner, and
to Caldigate himself. The latter was longer than
the others, and contained a gracious expression of
Her Majesty’s regret that he as an innocent
person should have been subjected to imprisonment.
The Secretary of State also was described as being
keenly sensible of the injustice which had been perpetrated
by the unfortunate and most unusual circumstances
of the case. As the Home Office had decided that
the man was to be considered innocent, it decided
also on the expression of its opinion without a shadow
of remaining doubt. And the news reached Cambridge
in other ways by the same post. William Bolton
wrote both to his father and brother, and Mr. Brown
the Under-Secretary sent a private letter to the old
squire at Folking, of which further mention shall be
made. Before church time on the Sunday morning,
the fact that John Caldigate was to be released, or
had been released from prison, was known to all Cambridge.
Caldigate himself had borne his imprisonment on the
whole well. He had complained but little to those
around him, and had at once resolved to endure the
slowly passing two years with silent fortitude,—as
a brave man will resolve to bear any evil for which
there is no remedy. But a more wretched man than
he was after the first week of bitterness could hardly
be found. Fortitude has no effect in abating such
misery other than what may come from an absence of
fretful impatience. The man who endures all that
the tormentors can do to him without a sign, simply
refuses to acknowledge the agonies inflicted.
So it was with Caldigate. Though he obeyed with
placid readiness all the prison instructions, and
composed his features and seemed almost to smile when
that which was to be exacted from him was explained,
