This legal maxim is but one of many rules which courts of law, or the legislature, enact for the better administration of justice,—rules which cannot be so framed as to be strictly consentaneous, or identical, with the rules of morality. One who owes a just debt takes advantage of the forbearance of an indulgent creditor, and pleads the statute of limitations. The court admits the plea, puts it in his mouth, justifies him for the use of it. But the use of it has dishonoured him for life. To return to our case. Mr Bisset, the owner of the bullock, still associating its death, most erroneously, with the firing heard on the battery, published a newspaper paragraph in the _Guernsey Comet_, headed DISGRACEFUL AFFAIR! in which suspicion was thrown upon Captain Douglas and Ensign Parker, and which terminated with the offer of “A REWARD OF TWENTY POUNDS, to be paid to any one giving information sufficient to convict the party or parties who were shooting at the Frying-pan Battery on Friday the 5th January, between the hours of twelve and three P.M. Mr Bisset also laid his complaint before Major-General Bell, the commanding officer at Guernsey. That officer wrote to Captain Douglas, requiring his explanation of the affair. A great part of the letter referred distinctly to this pistol-firing on the battery. Now then, the reader is prepared to say, Captain Douglas will surely lay aside this needless and silly piece of diplomacy, this concealment of a perfectly innocent act, which is only strengthening suspicion against him. If he could permit himself to trifle with Judge Gaudion, and the petty civil court at Alderney, he will not trifle with his superior officer; he will not run the risk _here_ of being thought to equivocate. Nearly a month had now elapsed since the first visit of Constable Renier. Time had been given him to reflect: and Captain Douglas did reflect. Ensign Parker lets fall in his evidence that he wrote _two_ letters in answer to this communication, and pondered some time which he should send. In the one, he frankly avowed having been firing with his pistol on the battery, whilst he utterly denied the accusation of having shot the bullock; in the other, he adhered to his policy of concealment, confined himself to a denial of the main accusation, and left all that part of the letter relating to the firing on the battery virtually unanswered. He pondered which of the two he should send; but the genius of diplomacy prevailed,—he sent the second!