During the afternoon the matter was discussed very freely throughout the borough.  ‘I thought they would have agreed almost at once,’ said the mayor, at about four o’clock, to Mr. Seely, who, at this moment, had retired to his own office where the great magistrate of the borough was closeted with him.  The mayor had been seated on the bench throughout the trial, and had taken much interest in the case.  ’I never imagined that there could be much doubt after Judge Bramber’s summing up.’

‘I hear that there’s one man holding out,’ said the attorney in a low voice.

‘Who is it?’ whispered the mayor.  The mayor and Mr. Seely were very intimate.

’I suppose it’s Jones, the tanner at Ely.  They say that the Caldigates have had dealings with his family from generation to generation.  I knew all about it, and when they passed his name, I wondered that Burder hadn’t been sharper.’  Mr. Burder was the gentleman who had got up the prosecution on the part of the Crown.

‘It must be something of that kind,’ said the mayor.  ’Nothing else would make a jury hesitate after such a charge as that.  I suppose he did marry her.’  Mr. Seely shrugged his shoulders.  ’I have attended very closely to the case, and I know I should have been against him on a jury.  God bless my soul!  Did any man ever write to a woman as his wife without having married her?’

‘It has been done, I should think.’

’And that nobody should have been got to say that they weren’t man and wife.’

‘I really have hardly formed an opinion,’ said Mr. Seely, still whispering, ’I am inclined to think that there was probably some ceremony, and that Caldigate salved his conscience, when he married Bolton’s daughter, by an idea that the ceremony wasn’t valid.  But they’ll convict him at last.  When he told me that he had been up to town and paid that money, I knew it was all up with him.  How can any juryman believe that a man will pay twenty thousand pounds, which he doesn’t owe, to his sworn enemy, merely on a point of conscience?’

At the same time the old banker was sitting in his room at the bank, and Robert Bolton was with him.  ‘There cannot be a doubt of his guilt,’ said Robert Bolton.

‘No, no,—­not a doubt.’

‘But the jury may disagree?’

‘What shall we do then?’ said the banker.

‘There must be another trial.  We must go on till we get a verdict.’

‘And Hester?  What can we do for Hester?’

’She is very obstinate, and I fear we have no power.  Even though she is declared not to be his wife, she can choose her own place of living.  If he is convicted, I think that she would come back.  Of course she ought to come back.’

‘Of course, of course.’

’Old Caldigate, too, is very obstinate; but it may be that we should be able to persuade him.  He will know that she ought to be with her mother.’

‘Her poor mother!  Her poor mother!  And when he comes out of prison?’