"Give a dog a bad name and hang him; but surely, doctor, you can't be aware what a very bad name you have somehow got in these parts, or you would have been more eager to draw your neck out of the halter in time. Why, bless my soul, man alive, do you know what folk make you out to be?" "This discussion is growing foreign to the matter in hand," interrupted the governor, who I felt had never taken his sharp eyes off me. "The question is merely this: that any officer in authority among criminals must of necessity bear an unblemished character. Neither in the establishment nor out of it ought people to be able to say of him that--that--" "Say it out, sir."--"That there were circumstances in his former life which would not bear inspection, and that merely accident drew the line between himself and the convicts he was bent on reforming." "Hear, hear!" said a justice, who had long thwarted me in my schemes; having a conscientious objection to reforming everybody--including himself. "Nay," said the governor. "I did not give this as a fact,--only a report. These reports have come to such a height, that they must either be proved or denied. And therefore I wished, before any public inquiry became necessary--unless, indeed, Doctor Urquhart will consent to the explanatory self-defence which he definitely refused Mr. Thorley--" And they both looked anxiously at me--these two whom I have always found honest, honorable men, and who were once my friends, or at least friendly associates--the chaplain and the governor. Theodora, no one need ever dread lest the doctrine of total forgiveness should make guilt no burthen, and repentance pleasant and easy. There are some consequences of sin which must haunt a sinner to the day of his death. It might have been one minute or ten, that I stood motionless, feeling as if I could have given up life and all its blessings without a pang, to be able to face those men with a clear conscience, and say, "It is all a lie. I am innocent." Then, for my salvation, came the thought--it seemed spoken into my ear, the voice half like Dallas's, half like yours--"If God hath forgiven thee, why be afraid of men?" And I said, humbly enough--yet, I trust, without any cringing or abjectness of fear--that I wished, before taking any further step, to hear the whole of the statements current against myself, and how far they were credited by the gentlemen before me.