apprehended lest she should have to say that
Benjamin had been of the gang, if, indeed, in some
way the law had not followed on his heels quick
enough to catch him.

But that trial was spared her; she was warned
by John to answer questions, and say no more
than was necessary, for fear of making her story
less clear; and as she was known, by character,
at least to Justice Royds and his clerk, they
made the examination as little formidable as
possible.

When all was over, and John was driving her
back again, he expressed his rejoicing that there
would be evidence enough to convict the men
without summoning Nathan and Hester to identify
them. Bessy was so tired that she hardly
understood what an escape it was; how far greater
than even her companion understood.

Jane Kirkby stayed with her for a week or
more, and was an unspeakable comfort.
Otherwise she sometimes thought she should
have gone mad, with the face of her uncle
always reminding her in its stony expression
of agony, of that fearful night. Her aunt
was softer in her sorrow, as became one of her
faithful and pious nature; but it was easy to
see how her heart bled inwardly. She recovered
her strength sooner than her husband; but as
she recovered, the doctor perceived the rapid
approach of total blindness. Every day, nay,
every hour of the day, that Bessy dared, without
fear of exciting their suspicions of her knowledge,
she told them, as she had anxiously told them at
first, that only two men, and those perfect
strangers, had been discovered as being concerned in
the burglary. Her uncle would never have
asked a question about it, even if she had withheld
all information about the affair; but she
noticed the quick, watching, waiting glance of
his eye whenever she returned from any person
or place where she might have been supposed to
gain intelligence if Benjamin were suspected or
caught; and she hastened to relieve the old
man's anxiety, by always telling all that she had
heard; thankful that as the days passed on the
danger she sickened to think of grew less and
less.

Day by day Bessy had ground for thinking that
her aunt knew more than she had apprehended at
first. There was something so very humble and
touching in Hester's blind way of feeling about for
her husband—stern, woe-begone Nathan—and
mutely striving to console him in the deep agony
of which Bessy learnt from this loving, piteous
manner, that her aunt was conscious. Her aunt's
face looked blankly up into his, tears slowly
running down from her sightless eyes, while from
time to time, when she thought herself unheard
by any save him, she would repeat such texts as
she had heard at church in happier days, and
which she thought, in her true, simple piety,
might tend to console him. Yet day by day her
aunt grew more and more sad.

Three or four days before assize-time, two
summonses to attend the trial at York were sent
to the old people. Neither Bessy, nor John, nor
Jane, could understand this; for their own notices
had come long before, and they had been told
that their evidence would be enough to convict.

But alas! the fact was that the lawyer
employed to defend the prisoners had heard from
them that there was a third person engaged,
and had heard who that third person was;
and it was this advocate's business to diminish
if possible the guilt of his clients, by proving
that they were but tools in the hands of one who
had, from his superior knowledge of the premises
and the daily customs of the inhabitants, been
the originator and planner of the whole affair.
To do this it was necessary to have the evidence
of the parents, who, as the prisoners had said,
must have recognised the voice of the young
man, their son. For no one knew that Bessy,
too, could have borne witness to his having been
present, and, as it was supposed that Benjamin
had escaped out of England, there was no exact
betrayal of him on the part of his accomplices.

Wondering, bewildered, and weary, the old
couple reached York, in company with John and
Bessy, on the eve of the day of trial. Nathan
was still so self-contained, that Bessy could
never guess what had been passing in his mind.
He was almost passive under his old wife's
trembling caresses; he seemed hardly conscious
of them, so rigid was his demeanour.

She, Bessy feared at times, was becoming
childish; for she had evidently so great and
anxious a love for her husband, that her memory
seemed going in her endeavours to melt the
stoniness of his aspect and manners; she
appeared occasionally to have forgotten why he was
so changed, in her piteous little attempts to bring
him back to his former self.

"They'll for sure never torture them when
they see what old folks they are!" cried Bessy, on
the morning of the trial, a dim fear looming over
her mind. "They'll never be so cruel, for sure!"

But "for sure" it was so. The barrister looked
up at the judge, almost apologetically, as he saw
how hoary-headed and woeful an old man was
put into the witness-box when the defence came
on, and Nathan Huntroyd was called on for his
evidence.

"It is necessary, on behalf of my clients, my
lord, that I should pursue a course which, for
all other reasons, I deplore."

"Go on!" said the judge. "What is right
and legal must be done." But, an old man
himself, he covered his quivering mouth with his
hand as Nathan, with grey, unmoved face, and
solemn, hollow eyes, placing his two hands on
each side of the witness-box, prepared to give
his answers to questions, the nature of which he
was beginning to foresee, but would not shrink
from replying to truthfully; "the very stones"
(as he said to himself, with a kind of dulled sense
of the Eternal Justice), "rise up against such a
sinner."

"Your name is Nathan Huntroyd, I believe?"

"It is."

"You live at Nab-end Farm?"

"I do."

"Do you remember the night of November
the twelfth ?"